Thursday, April 10, 2014

The Parochial World of Global Thinkers

The magazine Prospect has just published its list of fifty candidates for the title of global thinker. It is rather different from last year. Number one in 2013, Richard Dawkins, biologist and atheist spokesman, is out. Jonathon Derbyshire, Managing Editor of Prospect, in an interview with the Digital Editor of Prospect says that is because Dawkins  has been saying the same thing for several years. Presumably Prospect only noticed this year.

The list is top heavy with philosophers and economists and Americans and Europeans. There is one candidate from China, one from Africa, one from Brazil and none from Russia. There is one husband and wife. A large number are graduates of Harvard or have taught there and quite a few are from Yale, MIT, Berkeley, Cambridge and Oxford. One wonders if the selectors made some of their choices by going through the contents pages of New Left Review. So far I have counted six contributors.

There are also no Muslims. Was Prospect worried about a repetition of that unfortunate affair in 2008?

All in all, apart from Pope Francis, this does not look like a global list. Unless, that is, thinking has largely retreated to the humanities and social science faculties of California, New England and Oxbridge.








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