Four Canadians make magazines' "hot 100" list of public individuals

Not that I'd want to encourage one more ranking or list, of which there are plenty, but isn't it interesting that Foreign Policy magazine (Washington) and Prospect (a kind of British Walrus) jointly created a list of leading intellectuals?

According to a story carried by CanWest News Services, four Canadians or expatriates found their way onto the list of the top 100 public thinkers, including deputy opposition leader Michael Ignatieff. The others were philosopher Charles Taylor and pop psychologist Steven Pinker, both of Montreal, and writer Malcolm Gladwell, who was born in the United Kingdom, raised in Elmira, Ontario, and who now lives and works in New York City as a staff writer for the New Yorker. (Pinker and Gladwell are listed as sort of hybrid Canada-U.S. nominees.)

The list, which not surprisingly is top heavy with U.S. and UK names, includes Pope Benedict XVI, former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, Czech statesman and playwright Vaclav Havel, British novelist Salman Rushdie, American linguist Noam Chomsky and Russian democracy activist and Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.

"We have compiled our list of the men and women who shape the tenor of our time with the power of their thoughts, words and discoveries," Foreign Policy explained in its May-June edition.

"It's a diverse group drawn from across the globe whose ranks include activists, political scientists, journalists, economists, playwrights, scientists, and many more."

Candidates were required to be active publicly and to "have shown both distinction in their particular field and an ability to influence wider debate, often far from the places they call home.