Summary
Last year, a report from Harvard University set off alarm bells, because it showed that the proportion of students in the United States completing bachelor's degrees in the humanities fell from 14 percent to 7 percent.
Perhaps many humanities disciplines are not seen as likely to lead to fulfilling careers, or to any careers at all.
GDI recently released a ranked list of the top 100 Global Thought Leaders for 2013 .
Three of the top five global thinkers are philosophers: Slavoj Zizek, Daniel Dennett and me.
The only Global Thought Leader in the top five not involved in philosophy is Al Gore. There are more economists in the top 100 than thinkers from any other single discipline, but the top-ranking economist, Nicholas Stern, ranks 10th overall.
Can it really be true that four of the world's five most influential thinkers come from the humanities, and three or four of them from the field of philosophy?
There are three eligibility requirements: One has to be working primarily as a thinker; one must be known beyond one's own discipline; and one must be influential.
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