Harvard Profs Get Public Mention

Harvard claims more top public intellectuals than any other institution, according to a list released last week by two political magazines.

The list of the 100 top public intellectuals, compiled by Foreign Policy (FP) and Prospect magazines, includes 10 Harvard affiliates. The list is made up of intellectuals from 33 countries and boasts three Pulitzer Prize winners and 10 Nobel Prize recipients. An online vote will select the top five intellectuals, who will be announced in November.

The list includes Harvard experts from a wide range of fields, from economists such as University President Lawrence H. Summers and Nobel laureate Lamont University Professor Amartya Sen to humanities scholars such as Carr Center for Human Rights Director Michael Ignatieff and Chair of the African and African American Studies Department Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr.

After asking contributors and notable scholars in various disciplines to nominate people worthy of the fields, the editorial staffs of FP and Prospect worked together to create the list, said FP Media Relations Manager Jeff R. Marn.

The lineup, available on the magazines’ websites as well as in Prospect’s October print edition, is an expansion of a list Prospect published last year of the top 100 public intellectuals in Britain. Marn said that FP was eager to collaborate with Prospect on this project.

“When Prospect expressed interest to go global, we thought, ‘The project is a perfect fit,’” Marn said.

The project garnered over 3,600 votes in the first 48 hours after its launch last Wednesday, he said.

Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education Howard E. Gardner wrote in an e-mail that he was surprised and “pleased” to be included on the list.

“My 94-year-old mother is even more pleased!” he wrote.

One student of two other Harvard professors who made the list—Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker and Malkin Professor of Public Policy Robert D. Putnam—said they both deserved the honor.

“They both can explain their theories in a very straightforward manner that’s not overwhelming,” said Emily F. Murphy ’07, a former student of Pinker and a current student of Putnam. “They both would get my vote.”

Murphy said she appreciates that their theories are widely applicable and that they are both very accessible.

Putnam “doesn’t seem like an intellectual who is an isolated researcher who doesn’t really do anything that is relevant to the world around him—in a way that makes him respectable,” she said.

Another Harvard professor who made the list, Weatherhead University Professor Samuel P. Huntington, also received high praise from a former student. Huntington co-founded FP 35 years ago.

“Huntington is a wonderful iconoclast of an intellectual,” said Jordan L. Hylden ’06, who took Huntington’s class, Government 2785, “Religion in Global Politics” two years ago. “He recognizes the importance of culture in a way that many intellectuals today have not.”

In addition to selecting the top five intellectuals from the published list, voters can also nominate a write-in candidate who they felt was snubbed by the list.

“With any list, there are obviously going to be names that are left off that people feel should be on, and we’re totally up front with that,” Marn said. “We want this list to be a conversation starter—half of the fun of who gets nominated for the Oscars is arguing over who gets snubbed.”

Gardner said he can think of at least one Harvard faculty member who was passed over—Louis Menand, who is Bass Professor of English and American Literature and Language.

In the event of a tie, two situations could occur, Marn said. If two people tie for fifth place, both would be declared fifth. If two people tie for any other placement, they would both be listed in that place and there would be no subsequent place.

The other Harvard intellectuals on the list are Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value Elaine Scarry and biologist E. O. Wilson, who is Pellegrino University Professor, Emeritus.

—Staff writer Lulu Zhou can be reached at luluzhou@fas.harvard.edu.