Intellectual Elitism: The Fake Foreign Policy Genius List

How do you feel about a new “Genius List” of the “top 100 public intellectuals” that was decided by — and then published by — Foreign Policy in May?  Yesterday we had a curious, and oddly strange, addition to that list as voted by their readership to create the “top 20 public intellectuals.” 

Do these lists unite us or set us against each other?

Foreign Policy worried about the effect of their list:

Rankings are an inherently dangerous business. Whether offering a
hierarchy of countries, cities, or colleges, any such list–at least any such list worth compiling–is likely to generate a fair amount of debate. In the last issue, when we asked readers to vote for their picks of the world’s top public intellectuals, we imagined many people would want to make their opinions known. But no one expected the
avalanche of voters who came forward. During nearly four weeks of voting, more than 500,000 people came to ForeignPolicy.com to cast ballots.

That sort of rabid response from readership is bothersome because one begins to wonder why there is such fervor over the “public election” of the ascertained, but not ascribed, intellectual elite:

Such an outpouring reveals something unique about the power of the men and women we chose to rank. They were included on our initial list of 100 in large part because of the influence of their ideas. But part of being a “public intellectual” is also having a talent for communicating with a wide and diverse public. This skill is certainly an asset for some who find themselves in the list’s top ranks. For example, a number of intellectuals–including Aitzaz Ahsan, Noam Chomsky, Michael Ignatieff, and Amr Khaled–mounted voting drives by promoting the list on their Web sites. Others issued press releases or gave interviews to local newspapers. Press coverage profiling these intellectuals appeared
around the world, with stories running in Canada, India, Indonesia, Qatar, Spain, and elsewhere.

As Foreign Policy was right to reveal, there was a certain amount of “online ballot stuffing” that adversely affected the scope of the intellectualism being celebrated on their pages:

No one spread the word as effectively as the man who tops the list. In early May, the Top 100 list was mentioned on the front page of Zaman, a Turkish daily newspaper closely aligned with Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. Within hours, votes in his favor began to pour in. His supporters–typically educated, upwardly mobile Muslims–were eager to
cast ballots not only for their champion but for other Muslims in the Top 100. Thanks to this groundswell, the top 10 public intellectuals in this year’s reader poll are all Muslim. The ideas for which they are known, particularly concerning Islam, differ significantly. It’s clear that, in this case, identity politics carried the day.

If I were the editor of Foreign Policy, I would’ve tossed out those voter-generated results as fatally flawed and wholly fraudulent because there was confessed politicking and influence-peddling at play in the minds of those casting the ballots. 

The results of the Foreign Policy reader poll were actually non-intellectual and rather emotional — and that clash of the opposite-ending inherently poisons, and therefore negates, the effort because it creates a “Fake Genius” list.

Does this Foreign Policy “reader poll” hit you in your gut as a sham — or do you think that was, perhaps, the purpose of the public vote? 

Did Foreign Policy want to smoke out the pockets of power and influence at play in the world and tip over the who and the what and the where of caring about how wearing an “international intellectual” label echoes in the marketplace of politics, publicity and economics?

Here’s how Foreign Policy self-describes their overall mission:

Founded in 1970 by Samuel Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel, and now published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., FOREIGN POLICY
is the premier, award-winning magazine of global politics, economics,
and ideas. Our mission is to explain how the world works–in particular,
how the process of globalization is reshaping nations, institutions,
cultures, and, more fundamentally, our daily lives.

What’s your final verdict? 

Is the Foreign Policy “Genius List” helpful — or does a stuffed effort actually hinder international understanding by playing to the worst of us and exploiting its fakery for publication profit?