1.  Umberto Eco -- I know, I know, the prize-winning author of In The Name Of The Rose and Foucault's Pendulum and an expert in semiotics.  Except, who has read Eco recently and what sort of impact, other than defeating insomnia has he ever had on the great mass of humanity?

2. Thomas Friedman -- If there was ever a time he could be considered one of the world's leading intellectuals.  Let me just append a "ho" onto zyx's subqueue comment about him.

3. Yegor Gaidar -- Great, he's a contributing editor to FP (and writing for and editing the magazine seems to give you a leg up on being considered a leading public intellectual).  But I thought the key criteria was to have some sort of ongoing impact on the world of public policy or thought.  I would say anyone who was all that and a bag of chips during the Yeltsin years is just a bit stale these days.

4. Al Gore -- Well, he invented the internet (except he didn't, which is one reason I say if anyone having anything to do with the internet gets on the list, Tim Berners-Lee does).  Let's see, he produced that stunning Powerpoint presentation on global warming (except it's shot through with inaccuracies as others have pointed out).  Oh yeah, he won a Nobel Prize (but he got that for that inaccurate slideshow and, other than that, it puts him in the company of intellectuals like Henry Kissinger and Yasser Arafat).

5. Vaclav Havel -- Certainly a pivotal character in the history of Eastern Europe, but what's his ongoing impact and, if leading a nation on a difficult path from despotic political control to freedom and democracy, why isn't Nelson Mandela on the list?  

6. Christopher Hitchens -- Give. Me. A. Break.  Perhaps one of the leading public gadflies and entertaining as hell.  But, he's hardly what I'd call a public intellectual (unless writing a book promoting atheism makes him thus).

7. Steven Levitt -- If being the author of a book that made it to the top of the NY Time's best seller list makes you a leading public intellectual, then an entire wing of the Public Intellectual Museum needs to be reserved for Stephen King.

8. David Petraeus -- Definitely a four star military strategist, but doesn't it remain to be seen the longer term effect of his public thought and wisdom?  I mean, if Iraq goes to shit within a year following his departure does that undercut his credos as a public intellectual?

9. Salman Rushdie -- Pissed off the Ayatollah he did and hid out for a decade or so.  But, other than it's not a good idea to place targets on writers' foreheads and marrying hot women, what is his main and continuing contribution to the global marketplace of ideas.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

The fucking pope is on there?  Ok, that inclusion alone simply renders the entire list 100% stupid, I don't care who else they put on it.

Anyone that would actually call a guy whose last job was the head of the Inquisition an intellectual is simply not right in the head.  The guy has done everything in his power to roll back the clock on the RCC's stance on the sciences, which was pretty shaky to begin with.  The only way you can put the word "intellectual" in the same sentence as Pope Benedict is if you prefix it with "anti-".

    Reading through that list again, after a couple days of thought, enforces even more the notion that the role of "public intellectual" is becoming less and less tenable as science and technology (and even the "soft" sciences) get more and more complicated . . or rather, that the amount of things you have to know to be an expert almost preclude having enough time to become a good public speaker, or develop prose capable of informing the general public while remaining theoretically sound. Historians are very familiar with this dilemma (academic vs popular writing), and how that field has handled the conflict demonstrates, IMO, just how hard it is to do both-- and this with something as simple (for readers) as the past. (I'm surprised nobody singled out Jared Diamond for criticism, but I guess the list has so many other juicier targets that he probably looks good in contrast.) Throw in the problems with working across fields (Chomsky, anyone?) and I'm not sure that there's much future in trying to find public intellectual who's much more than a figurehead or a symbol.
    Take, for example, Lawrence Krauss, who is notably absent from this list. If awards are an example of brains, he's clearly a very bright guy-- yet you can find plenty of grousing about his public statements on-line from the scientific community he's trying to speak for. (To borrow a line from a conservative blog, Krauss is "saving your ass from bad science, whether you like it or not.")* And how does his attempt to bridge the gap between science and religion play with either side? Does it raise his credibility for tempting the attempt, or lower it for messing around in areas outside his expertise? Will he ever get as high on the soapbox as some of these other figures? And if not, will it be because he actually tries to treat those on the other side of the debate with a fair amount of respect-- in sharp contrast to, say, Hitchens, or Krugman? If "public intellectual" is converging with "pundit", then I'd say getting rid of the description NOW will save everyone a lot of grief. Although I guess it won't give room to sell a lot of ads . . .
    This may not be the worst thing. The world has gotten along just fine with the decline in stature of the poet laureate~, and not having a "major living writer" of the stature of Hemingway, Faulkner, or even TS Eliot has hardly been mourned. (A shout out to Barthes for mocking the notion in Mythologies.) Not everything that passes out of a culture lowers it in the process. Perhaps "public intellectual" fits this description?

     *Judging by the amount of popular support ID gets, and the existence of Ben Stein's movie, there are lots and lots of folks who don't like what Krauss is doing at all.
    ~Now even individual cities in the US are giving out the position.

Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras

Lists like this are difficult - do you pick people who have actually had influence on the world (in that case, people like Al Gore, David Petraeus, the Pope, etc. should top your list), do you pick the people who have spurred debates (in that case, probably Sam Huntington, Niall Fergeson, Francis Fukuyama, and others in the more "big picture" History/Political Science side of things), or do you pick the people who are developing the policies that other people are implementing (in that case, probably Amartya Sen & other lesser-known economists/political scientists - the people on the list whose names you probably don't recognize as easily).  Personally I probably lean towards the middle group - the people who are coming up with "big picture" ideas that frame public debates.  These are often pretty flawed theses (like Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" essay, which has been torn apart from all sides) that nonetheless set the tone of the debate about the subject for a number of years.  In this line, I'd say my top 5 would be Fukuyama, Sam Huntington, Niall Fergesun, Anthony Giddens, and Jurgen Habermas.  In their respective circles I think those five did a lot to frame the "big picture" debates of their times.  There are some puzzling omissions on the list, though.  I'm surprised Giddens (who pretty much came up with the notion of "third way" politics in the 1990s) wasn't on the list.  Paul Kennedy probably would have been a good addition as well, although Fergesun's ideas are fairly similar and Fergesun is probably a bit more prolific.

Clearly an internet vote is the best way of measuring real-world impact, as evidenced by the deep and pervasive influence of Ron Paul on the American political landscape.

Everything that needs to be said has already been said, but since no one was listening, we must begin again. -Andre Gide

So I wrote in a vote for Tim Berners-Lee.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

It's a pretty interesting list.  The two names that stood out as lightweights were Malcolm Gladwell and Thomas Friedman.  Gladwell is entertaining and changing the way that marketing works...but is that intellectual work?  And Friedman is as one friend put it "such a blowhard."  Really, does the guy ever stop drumming the beat of globalization, even after he's been proven wrong by the actual ways that globalization works?  

Given what the list is attempting to do, and that they are talking about "public" intellectuals, it's hard for each category to have the best.  Instead each category has the best known, so the novelists are represented by internationally famous and prize winners such as Nobel prize winners, and music by Barenboim who is a conductor as well as having written books with Edward Said.  

Yet, that very quality makes the list a little lacking.  As with Gladwell, is it about the best or about the best marketed?  I don't consider Barenboim the best conductor of classical music out there, as well known as he is.  There are much more attentive conductors with more nuanced approaches to interpreting music.  In the same way, I don't know if I consider Coetzee nor Rushdie one of the top writers currently so much as writers whose work has generated controvery.  

While the overall contribution of each of the individuals to society in general is unquestionable, I think that people invested in a particular category (as I am in literature and classical music) will find something to dispute as to whether those representing that category is the best choice.