Chomsky is voted world's top public intellectual

[John Doe]

Cool!

--- Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Chomsky is voted world's top public intellectual
> 
> · Missing from list: young, women, and the French
> · Honour leaves linguistics professor underwhelmed
> 
> Duncan Campbell
> Tuesday October 18, 2005
> 
> Guardian
> 
> He is in his 70s and first became known for his
> theory
> of transformational grammar - and now he is top of
> the
> thinkers' hit parade. Noam Chomsky, the linguistics
> professor who has become one of the most outspoken
> critics of US foreign policy, has won a poll that
> names him as the world's top public intellectual.
> 
> Chomsky, who was underwhelmed by the honour, beat
> off
> challenges from Umberto Eco, Richard Dawkins, Vaclav
> Havel and Christopher Hitchens to win the
> Prospect/Foreign Policy poll.
> 
> More than 20,000 voters from around the world took
> part in selecting the winners from a list of 100.
> The
> most striking aspect of the list is the shortage of
> the young, the female and the French. Only two of
> the
> top 10, Hitchens and Salman Rushdie, were born after
> the war, and Naomi Klein is the highest placed
> woman,
> at 11. France provides one name in the top 40, fewer
> than Peru and Iran.
> 
> Since the poll was for the world's leading
> intellectuals, it should come as no surprise that
> websites manned by supporters of Chomsky, Hitchens
> and
> Abdolkarim Soroush were used to draw attention to
> the
> poll. Chomsky's supporters are clearly the most
> energetic: he took 4,800 votes to Eco's 2,500.
> Voters
> came mainly from Britain and the US. "I don't pay a
> lot of attention to them," said Chomsky of the poll
> last night. "It was probably padded by some friends
> of
> mine."
> 
> Pondering the absence of younger intellectuals from
> the list, David Herman asks in the new issue of
> Prospect: "Who are the younger equivalents to
> [Jürgen]
> Habermas, Chomsky and Havel? Great names are formed
> by
> great events. But there has been no shortage of
> terrible events in the last 10 years." Only two of
> the
> top 20 have yet to reach the age of 50.
> 
> The choice of Chomsky will be welcomed and contested
> by many of the same names who responded delightedly
> or
> furiously to the award of the Nobel prize for
> literature to Harold Pinter last week.
> 
> In recognition of this, Prospect offers alternative
> perspectives, with Robin Blackburn arguing for
> Chomsky's right to head the list as both a brilliant
> expositor of linguistics and a vital critic of the
> US
> abroad, while Oliver Kamm dismisses him as a
> kneejerk
> anti-American who is cavalier about his sources.
> 
> Top five
> 
> 1 Noam Chomsky linguistics expert and critic of US
> foreign policy
> 
> 2 Umberto Eco writer and academic
> 
> 3 Richard Dawkins Oxford professor of public
> understanding of science
> 
> 4 Vaclav Havel playwright and leader of Czech velvet
> revolution
> 
> 5 Christopher Hitchens journalist, author, pro-Iraq
> war polemicist
> 
>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1594654,00.html
> 
> 
> 		
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