In today’s Australian, we have a sneak peek of a top 10 list of influential Australian intellectuals.
From a poll of 200 senior Australian academics conducted by Professor Richard Nile of Curtin University
1. La Trobe University political scientist Robert Manne
2. Father of the “violent frontier” school of Australian indigenous history, Henry Reynolds
2. Environmental scientist Tim Flannery
3. Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson
3. The Australian’s columnist and ABC Radio National host Phillip Adams
4. Philosopher Peter Singer
5. Indigenous scholar Marcia Langton
6. Historian Geoffrey Blainey
6. Political scientist Hugh Stretton
7. World Vision chief Tim Costello
7. Cultural theorist Meaghan Morris
7. Historian Inga Clendinnen
8. High Court justice Michael Kirby
9. Novelist and poet David Malouf
9. Catholic priest Frank Brennan
9. Writer Peter Craven
10. Philosopher Raimond Gaita
10. Anthropologist Ghassan Hage
10. Journalist David Marr
10. Author and former Keating speechwriter Don Watson
The full list of the top 40 thinkers will appear in Richard Nile’s column in the October issue of The Australian Literary Review, in The Australian on October 4.
These lists are always interesting, but I wonder about how “influential” was defined. For instance, Robert Manne is prominent, but I doubt that his writing influences politics much, whereas people like Brennan, Flannery, Pearson, Langton, etc, have real influence or have had it over policy and outcomes. I think that it could have done with a bit more precision about what constitutes “influence” and perhaps a few discrete categories.
That’s why I find the AFR’s annual powerful people lists and profiles useful – they differentiate between different fields (ie politics, business, media etc) and provide argument and justification, not just a list.
It’s useful to think about how we ourselves would complete a survey. I’d be stuffed if I could rank those people in a meaningful order without more criteria coming into play.
True, it’ll be interesting to see the entire piece in the magazine, I’m sure the criteria will be listed there.
here here, Mark. I wonder what time-scale people were thinking of in terms of influence? Fairly short-term I’d guess. It’d be hard to judge a living person’s influence in the medium or long term.
Glad to see two natural scientists amongst the 20.
Yes, no doubt, Phil.
Another point – if at the moment you’d really want to measure “influence”, you’d need to have more right wingers on the list. The definition of “intellectual” will also be interesting. Paul Kelly and Hendo probably are more influential at the moment than some of the folk here – I’m also a bit sceptical of polling 200 “senior academics” – I hate to say it but let’s have a look at generationalist stuff here – a lot of 60 something baby boomer Professors are going to have a different take on the world than others. And presumably the respondents are not all sociology or media studies or pol sci academics who could give some sort of professional take on what counts as influence and what doesn’t, but a grab bag.
I had attached a comment to this about the lack of “conservative” names in this top ten but removed it, no question that currently the cons have the running in the public battles regarding the culture’history/education wars.
BTW would someone like Judith Brett be classed as an academic or has she crossed over to influential intellectual? I find her writing to be very persuasive in both cases. I would rather read her than Manne.
Agreed, Sacha.
The more I think about it the more I think a sample of just “senior academics” is the wrong one to generate a useful list.
I doubt anyone very much outside academia has heard of Meaghan Morris – her work is really good and really interesting and has made a big contribution to cultural studies – but what sort of influence are we talking about? Academics will be prone to thinking about it in academic terms – ie prominence in a discipline, citations, etc. You might be able to make a better case for Hage – and I think his work is fab too – but how prominent in the public sphere is this Sydney Uni anthropologist really?
It might have been better to poll people from a range of backgrounds – perhaps pollies, business, union and community sector figures, journos, etc.
Well, Brett’s still an academic, but also a public intellectual. I agree, Phil – and her work probably influences other debates on politics more than Manne’s too.
That’s where the definition of “intellectual” in this list is really crucial for making sense of it – who are we talking about? Just academics? People with a public profile? Pearson is not an academic for instance…
And how does Malouf sit there? I could make a case for him – but it would be a very different sort of influence from many of the others named.
Pearson is more in the realm of public intellectual that intellectual in a pure sense. But his work does resonate with the conservatives and those who have a conservative view about the politics (and outcomes) in dealing with aboriginality in this country.
Yes – I agree – but the point I’m making is that the list, on the face of it, seems fairly confused as to both what sorts of people are listed, and what “influence” is…
Well I hope that Andrew Bolt is somewhere in the next 20 names.
Otherwise there’ll be hell to pay.
Isn’t it about time these 200 “senior academic” opinionators applied their PC leftie-luvvie thinking to their own actions. Why not perform a bit of “affirmative action” on their choices and provide a much needed hand-up to that suppressed minority of right-wing thinkers, like Andrew Bolt, and Keith Windschuttle, and Alan Jones, and Miranda Devine. It’s not their fault that their ideas are absurd on the face of it. They’re victims, and their opinions are a cry for help.
Unfeeling hypocrites.
Polling 200 people, senior academics notwithstanding, to get a top 40….can someone with a clue about statistics help me out, here?
Even a maths loser like me can guess than it probably only takes two or three
SMS’svotes to get someone on the list, when the electorate is that small.I am therefore more interested in seeing who moved up the charts, who moved down, and who got
evictedvoted out altogether, compared with last year’s Top 40.and another thing: seventeen men, three women. I blame the frickin patriarchy
Ghassan Hage has just started to pop up in the media (at least I’ve only recently heard his name mentioned). I remember him because he was one of my lecturers and tutors in first year Anthropology at Syd Uni in the mid 90′s. If he’s started making it onto mainstream media I would guess that he’s been in the background for a fair while. From memory he was off doing stuff even then.
Ghassan Hage’s work on ethnicity and nationalism is very good indeed, Mindy.
Agree with the comments about right-wing commentators. I would think that Paul Kelly has been influential for quite a while.
Am I the only one who thinks that there would be an uncanny aligment between this list, and a list of, say, promincence in the media? Or is this too cynical?
Cheers…
You’re calling Paul Kelly an intellectual? God help us!
Maybe we need to concentrate on the definition of intellectual rather than influential.
Wouldn’t this list be more accurately titled “10 people who left-wing academics think are just swell”?
I’ve never heard of at least half the people on this list, and it’s quite simply ridiculous to have a high profile judge like Michael Kirby or Peter Singer (who is world-renown) ranked lower than someone like Phillip Adams.
Agreed, Yobbo. Phillip Adams is about as influential an opinion-setter as the average blogger. As far as I can see he’s simply retained by the Australian as a long-standing in-house joke.
um, help me out, peoples.
Just wondering why the list doesn’t stop after Tim Costello? For instance if two people tied at 2nd, then doesnt that mean the next person is 4th, and so on?
Not quite sure why a top 10 list has 20 names.
Well cowgirl, it’s one of those post modern things, you know like not giving anyone a fail when they’ve flunked the course so as not to harm their further intellectual development. I’m sure that when the whole list is relased it’ll have 20,000,000 names on it numbered from 1-40.
Why does poor old Phil Adams get a bollocking everytime he is mentioned online? You don’t have to share his every view to appreciate the fact that LNL is consistently interesting and has featured just about every prominent figure on the planet over the past god knows how many years. The man has at least been exposed to a far wider range of thinkers than anyone reading this blog, and the data on podcast downloads speaks to his influence. And the criteria for who he speaks to are far tighter than, say, Counterpoint, where you only have to have something provocative to say … like a radio version of Today Tonight. Of course his written columns are different – but there you have to cram something provocative into a short essay, so most regular opinion piece writers ending up writing something stupid sooner or later.
I’d call Paul Kelly influential – I forgot about the intellectual bit.
One does need an intellect to be an intellectual otherwise I qualify.
About half on the list simply don’t have the intellect!
What Robyn said.
Where’s George Pell?
Have to agree with Katz that Bolta, much as we might despise him, has to be up there somewhere.
e.g. On a recent visit to my brother we mentioned old school colleagues that’d gone on to greater things. When I mentioned Terry Lane, my brother was not impressed, gloating about his recent exposure to a dud story from the net, and adding that Lane’d also hoped that Australians got killed in Iraq. Couldn’t imagine where he’d got this idea from, and it was only afterwards it occurred to me that it’d come from A Bolt. (My brother is a regular HUN reader, mainly for the racing and sport.)
I glanced at Bolt a few days later and it confirmed my guess. Bolt was not impressed with Lane’s Mea Culpa that we sometimes believe what we want to believe. He thought it was a sad decline in journalistic standards. Apparently he’d long forgotten his ‘Just one phone call’ line (PM’s Dept spin) from Vivian Solon would have led to the stuffup being fixed and her being returned.
My point being that Bolt, and probably Ackerman for that matter, have quite a bit of influence which we’d underestimate at our peril.
Yobbo is right. It seems like a list of who left-wing academics think are influential.
What Don said. And I’m not at all religious, and I think Pell should be on this list. Along with Bolt, Windschuttle at least one senior Centre for Independent Studies scholar.
CL has a point. Where’s Jensen, for that matter?
Kyle Sandilands?
Molly Meldrum?
Pell’s worth considering. He’s certainly no worse than Craven ..
We should take our own damn poll & be done with it.
“Why does poor old Phil Adams get a bollocking everytime he is mentioned online?”
Because he’s a big fat idiot. I thought that was obvious?
What about Melbourne’s own Sheikh Mohammed Omran, who must take some responsibility for provoking the passage of the Commonwealth Anti-Terrorism Act (2005).
A cleric hasn’t causd that sort of flurry in Australia since Billy Hughes tried to have Archbishop Mannix kidnapped on the high seas.
Now that’s what I call a public intellectual.
The other thing about Adams is that he has been active in Australian cultural and intellectual life for an extremely long time, and was one of the central figures in the formation of the entire post-1970 phase of the Australian film industry. If ‘influence’ is the criterion, think about how the dissemination ot it works.
This is why some academics have more influence than others. Judith Brett not only has a fairly high public profile but has also been an extremely influential teacher for a long time. Ditto her colleague Robert Manne.
I’d be really interested to see some LPers name the contemporary Australian intellectuals who have influenced them the most. I’ll start: Drusilla Modjeska, Judith Brett, Meaghan Morris, Don Watson, David Marr, Greg Dening and, yes, Germaine Greer.
Would you guys really call the Bolter an intellectual?
A Muslim figure would make sense these days Katz, agreed.
Fixed Pavlov
Phil, thank you — and while I’m here, this is totally off-topic, but there’s been yet another death — I’ve just had an email from the Age that says Peter Brock has been killed in a rally in WA.
Bugger.
Yep it’s online now. Another dinkum Aussie icon gone. Very sad but like Irwin he died as he lived, in the fast lane.
Sorry, but anyone who calls Bolt or Ackerman intellectual obviously don’t know what the word means.
They might be influential, more’s the pity, but their defining feature is lack of intellect.
A reason why Adams is (rather tiresomely) bagged at every opportunity is that many on the ‘left’ seem to take delight at bagging their own, maybe to prove that they are not as one eyed as their right wing counterparts.
Peter Brock and Phillip Adams attended the same High School. (A little-known Kevin Baconesque fact).
It’s WE the PEOPLE who are the most influential in a Democracy…those who continually comment & opine, pass on links & views…& post on blogs & in newspapers…fill in surveys, contribute to polls…the individuals mentioned on the list are generally a fine, wide thinking lot (w/ a few exceptions) who do their research & occasionally gain access to the mainstream media…but they also appropriate, copy, borrow ideas from US.
We the PEOPLE influence them…WE influence politicians…they REPRESENT us…
or should…MUST…if WE become convinced they don’t…then WE must ensure TAXATION WITH REPRESENTATION. Vote the bastards out! Use the power of our vote wisely…vote for those who “keep the bastards honest”…as far as I can see it, after the last couple of days greed-fest in parliament the polies who really give a stuff about US are a few brave Greens, Dems & Independents…w/ the odd Laborite & Liberal who barely get a say.
WE should learn to move beyond addiction to, & salivating over, so called ‘Great Man & Great Women lists…they are merely hooks into the Corporate world…another form of the Cult of Celebrity…certainly WE can learn from the individuals listed…but WE can also be brainwashed, BSed, driven to inaction & depression…these lists tell each & everyone not on them…’you are a failure’, ‘you didn’t make the grade’, ‘these are your Gods, now bow down & listen & read’. Enuff!!!
Time as individuals to awaken!…no longer eyes wide shut…WE stand & take our rightful place in history.
The FUTURE is OURS…WE are the INFLUENTIAL…each & everyone of US.
—————–
Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.
Katherine Mansfield
Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else.
Mark Twain
Comment, opine, sound off, speak up…& YOU will influence…somebody, somewhere, sometime.
Nasking
Phillip Adams
1. excellent to have a cattle farmer in the top five
2. As per Robyn, as a listener of LNL, Counterpoint sounds like they’ve got a right wing Michael Tunn doing it.
3. there’s a strong case to be made, in the absence of any other explanation, that The Australian enforces low standards from columnists.
4. As a young lad, his black skivvy set the template for me what it was to be an intellectual.
“Sorry, but anyone who calls Bolt or Ackerman intellectual obviously don’t know what the word means.
They might be influential, more’s the pity, but their defining feature is lack of intellect.”
As is the case for all right-wingers, right Adrian? Because by definition, if they were smart they wouldn’t lean right in the first place?
No yobbo, I’m sure there are some very intelligent ‘right-wingers’ around, not that I can think of any at the moment.
But the aforementioned are surely not among them.
A few of those scholars could be seen as right-wing on some matters – Noel Pearson, Geoffrey Blainey, Inga Clendinnen. Frank Devine is a fine writer, though perhaps not quite ‘intellectual’; and Peter Ryan, who reviews books for The Australian, writes a regular column for Quadrant, and was active on the book publishing scene, is, imo, more worthy of the title ‘intellectual’ than Craven.
But then, I have a vendetta against Craven …
On the left of debate, Bob Carr perhaps?
But really, politics is a side consideration …
Phillip Adams?! You’re having me on, right? The guy’s a joke! Every Leftist I’ve ever raised the topic with agrees that Adams is an abysmal columnist, and an embarrassment to his nominal allies. Robert Manne has some influence, but I doubt he has actually had the same impact on policy issues as John Quiggin. Elsewhere, this list completely ignores the likes of Greg Lindsay – who demonstrably HAS made a mark on public and intellectual opinion.
Greg Lindsay, that’s who I was thinking of. There are some other CIS types, too – what about Helen Hughes? She’s really impressive, and probably does help to drive some policy decisions.
Phillip Adams is influential.. a thinker…quick another article is due..is all howard’s, bushs fault…YAWN!
There is only one scientist on that list. That’s weird. We have a few Nobel prize winners and recently a Fields medalist but I guess that doesn’t count in the “influence” stakes. Why is that?
Robert Manne? Top intellectual in Australia? And here I was thinking that to most Australians, he is just a green-gilled tree hugger who cringes constantly about the status quo and whom no-one really listens to. Really he is a voice in the wilderness. Most of the time these days the opinion pages of the dailies are infested with the likes of Gerard Henderson, Piers (the Axe) Ackerman, Imre Saluzinsky and Paul Sheehan. Why don’t they get a guernsey? Mind you, I’m not crying about it.
It’s a good question, Pavlov’s Cat.
My answers – and I’ll stick to my views on public policy and politics because if I went down the academic route it wouldn’t contain many Australian names at all – and in fact what now that I think more about it I will do is name social democratic intellectuals who’ve influenced the way I currently think about these things:
Peter Wilenski (remember? hugely influential if you were to take an accounting of policy influence), Nugget Coombs, Hugh Stretton, Henry Albinski (again – remember? massively influential on ALP thinking post-split on foreign policy), and Clare Burton for her pathbreaking work in translating gender equity principles into stuff that’s operationalisable for those of us labouring in the organisational consultancy vineyard (and I’m really happy that there’s a PhD scholarship endowed and named after her tenable at any ATN University for a thesis on work and gender – since her very untimely death in 1998) and look, frankly, John Quiggin is a bit of a current exemplar for social democratic thinking.
Here’s the thing.
There’s not a single initiative taken in terms of something like equal pay for equal work (and I worked on the amendments to the Queensland Industrial Relations legislation in 2000 as a consultant which sought to make this more achievable whether or not unions wanted to push with it) which doesn’t hark back to Clare’s work. And the workplace affects almost every Australian over what – 18? But who would have heard of her? Well – people like Justice Mary Gaudron, and a lot of other people whose names will live in history but might not have that much name recognition right now. The Ann Summers of the world might get the name recognition kudos, but in terms of actually doing the hard analytical and policy work and selling the case to all sorts of businesses, Clare Burton was a pioneer.
Here’s some obituaries:
By Marion Sawer:
http://www.users.bigpond.com/rj_gj/clare/tributes.htm
And:
http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE0140b.htm
It perhaps shouldn’t be surprising that headline “public intellectuals” are mostly men, while those women like Clare who are actually getting down and dirty and doing the work and not seeking to have op/eds in every issue of The Age might in retrospect be judged as more influential.
Speaking of which, I’m a little surprised that I’m the first on this thread to raise the gender imbalance on the list…
Laura raised it before.
Stuart Macintyre, Bob Ellis, Mark Davis, Thomas Shapcott, Amanda Lohrey, Humphrey McQueen…
Keith Windschuttle.
My apologies – yes, she did. Right at the top of the comments thread. Didn’t seem to provoke too much reflection in the subsequent 50 odd comments though…
Twas the same last year. Only the list was ‘most influential Australians’, with the list being topped by non-Australians like Rupert Murdoch.
And very few women, who included Kylie Minogue and Nicole Kidman. How influential are they, except in box-offfice terms?
Which list was that, weathergirl? Was it the same one as this one – ie done via a survey of “senior Australian academics” by Richard Nile? I assumed that this was a new thing – because it’s appearing in the second issue of the fabulously interesting Literary thingo that’s now an insert in the Australian every month…
Dang, haven’t seen the fabulously interesting thingo (never buy Quadrant Lite these days): who’s editing it, again? It’s not Louise Adler is it?
I’m referring to last year’s Australian: ‘Australia’s Most Influential’ list. It was compiled by the Oz editors.
Ah, ok, thanks, weathergirl. I didn’t keep my copy after I read it in a break between tutes on Wed. because it wasn’t terribly interesting. From memory, the editor is someone called something like Stephen Melman? Can’t recall. It has Australia Council money behind it, and also apparently MUP money if one goes by the logo branding…
I’ve been trying to find more info on it, but the Oz website’s search function sucks. So I resorted to Google and found this endorsement by D.D. McNicoll:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20252568-5001986,00.html
It’s called “The Australian Literary Review” (original, hey?)…
Apparently the recycled press release published in the Australian itself couldn’t be bothered naming the editor of the thing…
Louise Adler chairs its editorial board:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20305528-7582,00.html
Still no mention from any of the puff pieces in the Australian about who edits the thing…
I lie. She co-chairs the board with Paul Kelly.
Whatevs.
the noize & the night struck…ones who dominated part of my semi-younger trials & helped stroll beyond the fence, looked to the time enigma, provided a spark of humility & confidence in the heat of the things, the night that was…& will…Spike Lee, DJ. Shadow, Public Enemy, George Clinton, Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, The Byrds, Love, The Church, Genesis w/ Peter Gabriel, Yes w/ Jon Anderson, The Bird, Nico & a bunch of loony friends above & below, Mahler, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Holst, moody blues & a Sympathy for the Devil…peter weir…john cale, eno, delillo, kafka, GYBE…Mogwai…a certain bunch of cats…a certain lady…this is my list…going up?…
I think it’s Stephen Matchett who edits the Literary Review for the Aus. He does columns for ‘Review’ in the Saturday Australian. It’s a shorter version of their review of books that folded a few years ago – four or five long essays on various literary subjects, a little dull. The last four pages were probably the most interesting; they were headed ‘Notes and Ideas’, and had whimsical things like Bill Leak ‘rewriting’ the classics. (In this case, Pygmalion if Eliza Doolittle had tourettes).
The Australian is probably the only mainstream Australian paper with the power to do this sort of thing, and given its focus on things of national significance and Australian history, you’d think it would be up their alley – but it all seemed a little bland.
Nice illustrations, tho.
If Manne is there, so should Windschuttle be.
If Akhendbolterman is there, then so should be Alan Ramsey. I think its appropriate they’re not.
Maybe Phil Adams is an argument for the promotion of certain mediums (radio interviews with soothing music in the middle) and the quick painless death of some others (MSM op-ed columns)
Yes, that’s right as I recall.
If Akhendbolterman is there, then so should be Alan Ramsey. I think its appropriate they’re not.
Maybe Phil Adams is an argument for the promotion of certain mediums (radio interviews with soothing music in the middle) and the quick painless death of some others (MSM op-ed columns)
Agreed on the first point, Michael.
I do admire Phillip Adams for helping to set up the Australian Skeptics society. And was he involved in the second Bazza McKenzie film? Everyone who was involved with that deserves credit.
The Australian (print version) carries an ad for the job of editor of the ALR today. Applications close 6 October.
You might be interested in the email that Nile sent around. I did not respond for a number of reasons including busyness and the fact that it was not a secret ballot, ie in such circumstances people may feel constrained to give the ‘correct’ answer rather than what they actually think. Note also the important/influential distinction which is not made clear in the list as currently published.
I trust my email finds you well and that you might be able to help me.
I am writing an article for The Australian on the depth of intellectual talent in Australia.
In the process I am conducting a survey on the best minds in the country: these might include academics, writers, activists, professionals, religious leaders, politicians, community leaders etc.
I will follow up on the article by publishing the more detailed findings on the Australian Public Intellectual Network http://www.api-network.
I am keen to know who you might rank as the ten most influential and/or important thinkers in Australia?
You may want to make a distinction between importance and influence in compiling your list.
Are there reasons for your selection?
Not to get all C. P. Snow, but like mick said, why do you suppose there aren’t more scientists in the list e.g. Barry Marshall, who’s had a greater impact on the practice of medicine than Robert Manne or Keith Windschuttle will have on anything, ever. Perhaps Nile only polled academics in the humanities who happen to subscribe to the Australian.
Is there a reason my comments keep getting jacked?
I dunno seriously. I just took a quick look and there were no comments of yours either in moderation or in the spam filter. We do check both regularly, so your comments will be fished out if they end up in there for some reason.
Stephen Matchett has put together the first couple of Oz Lit Reviews I think – at any rate he has commissioned my stuff. It would have been nice to be able to link to it, though.
My review was on Factiva at 7 am in the morning, but that’s only good for business types. Apparently you can read the Oz through public libraries on ANZ NewsStand – didn’t know that till one of my friends had a look. Ahh hard copy is seriously hard, innit. And easy to throw away too as Mark has noted.
Mine too, Genevieve. Matchett is quite blog-aware, which must surely find favour in this forum.
Can I just say that as a person whose field and livelihood is literature, I’m always left wondering what general readers mean by a judgement like ‘boring’ about any literary publication. Or, as I used to say to my students: It’s not that it’s boring, Narelle, it’s that you are bored.
I mean, I find the Oz’s regular liftouts on business, finance and IT boring, but could that possibly be because so much of the content is unfamiliar to me and deals with a world I don’t know?
Now that Narelle line is nicely put, PC. My mother and aunt had a much beloved older teacher who used to grumble (in very broad strine, not common in their convent school)
“You may be ignorant, girls, but there is no need to be rude.”
The only criticism I have of the new pub is that the print is a bit weeny.
Has anyone else noticed that this article is online now? and that comments on it are open, a la Times Lit Supplement?
Here.
Just thought someone might like to know.