Lists

The FP Global Thinkers Twitterati

A who's who of the foreign-policy Twitterverse in 2012.

By
Oli Scarff/Getty Images
Oli Scarff/Getty Images
Oli Scarff/Getty Images

From Saudi activist Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani to controversial author Charles Murray to cutting-edge social media scholar danah boyd (yes, her name is lower-case), this year's Global Thinkers haven taken the Twittersphere by storm. There are still refuseniks-like political scientist Eliot Cohen ("Why make ourselves even more vapid than we already are?")-but more than 60 of this year's FP 100 are tweeters. Follow them here:

From Saudi activist Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani to controversial author Charles Murray to cutting-edge social media scholar danah boyd (yes, her name is lower-case), this year’s Global Thinkers haven taken the Twittersphere by storm. There are still refuseniks-like political scientist Eliot Cohen ("Why make ourselves even more vapid than we already are?")-but more than 60 of this year’s FP 100 are tweeters. Follow them here:

1. Moncef Marzouki, for keeping the ideas of the Arab Spring alive: @Moncef_Marzouki

2. Sebastian Thrun, for revving up the robot-car revolution: @SebastianThrun

3. Bill Gates, for daring to imagine a better everything: @BillGates

4. Melinda Gates, for insisting on women’s power to choose: @melindagates

5. Barack Obama, for redrawing America’s global footprint: @BarackObama

 

6. Paul Ryan, for doubling down on the debt crisis: @PaulRyanVP

7. Benjamin Netanyahu, for forcing the world to confront Iran’s nuclear program: @netanyahu

8. Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, for shattering their glass cage with a love letter to freedom: @pussy_riot

9. Rima Dali, for insisting, against all odds, on a peaceful Syrian revolution: @rimadali

10. George Soros, for telling Europe the ugly truth: @georgesoros

11. Ai Weiwei, for turning his confinement into art-and protest: @aiww

12. Christine Lagarde, for investing in the Middle East when others would not: @Lagarde

13. Recep Tayyip Erdogan: @RT_Erdogan

14. Ahmet Davutoglu, for leading from the front: @Ahmet_Davutoglu

15. Willem Buiter, for warning of the Grexit: @whb1002

16. Elon Musk, for putting his money where his mind is: @elonmusk

17. Marissa Mayer, for having it all: @marissamayer

18. Sheryl Sandberg, for having it all: @sherylsandberg

19. Anne-Marie Slaughter, for arguing that women can’t have it all-and explaining why we’d be better off admitting it: @SlaughterAM

20. Salman Rushdie, for defending free speech as if his life, and ours, depended on it: @SalmanRushdie

21. Paul Krugman, for wielding his acid pen against austerity: @NYTimeskrugman

22. Nouriel Roubini, for being not just gloomy, but right: @Nouriel

23. Shai Reshef, for giving the world a shot at the Ivy League: @ShaiReshef

24. Daphne Koller, for working to make education a human right: @DaphneKoller

25. Elizabeth Cheney, for keeping the neocon flame alive: @Liz_Cheney

26. Condoleezza Rice, for updating Rockefeller realism for the Tea Party era: @CondoleezzaRice

27. Eugene Kaspersky, for decoding the secrets of cyberwar: @e_kaspersky

28. Charles Murray, for showing that conservatives have no monopoly on family values: @charlesmurray

29. Alexey Navalny, for finding the Kremlin’s weak spot: @navalny

30. Mohammad Al-Qahtani, for putting Saudi Arabia on trial: @MFQahtani

31. Maryam Al-Khawaja, Zainab Al-Khawaja, and Nabeel Rajab, for insisting that free speech is a right, no matter where you live: @MARYAMALKHAWAJA, @angryarabiya, @NABEELRAJAB

 

32. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, for showing Africa how to break the resource curse: @NOIweala

33. Jameel Jaffer, for insisting that assassination is not an American value: @JameelJaffer

34. Bjorn Lomborg, for taking the black and white out of climate politics: @BjornLomborg

35. Husain Haqqani and Farahnaz Ispahani, for pushing tough love for their troubled country: @husainhaqqani, @fisphani

36. Kiyoshi Kurokawa, for daring to tell a complacent country that groupthink can kill: @kiyoshikurokawa

37. Alexander Macgillivray, for defending free speech in the Twitter era: @amac

38. Yevgenia Chirikova, for outsmarting Vladimir Putin, one tree at a time: @4irikova

39. Rand Paul, for telling America to come home: @SenRandPaul

40. Nitish Kumar, for turning around India’s poorest state: @NitishKumar51

41. Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson, for making the web safe for whistleblowers: @RogerDingledine, @nickm_tor

42. Patrice Martin and Jocely Wyatt, for redesigning the war on poverty: @patricemrtn, @jocelynw

43. Robert D. Kaplan, for putting geography back on the map: @RobertDKaplan

44. Kai-Fu Lee, for building the new Chinese Internet: @kaifulee

 

45. Beth Noveck, for demanding open government, then creating it: @bethnoveck

46. Radoslaw Sikorski, for telling the truth, even when it’s not diplomatic: @sikorskiradek

47. Tariq Ramadan, for telling us that Islam and democracy can go together-just when it matters: @tariqramadan

48. Ricken Patel, for proving web activism doesn’t have to begin and end with a click: @Ricken_Patel

49. Vivek Wadhwa, for a fresh idea in the U.S. immigration debate: @wadhwa

50. Danah Boyd, for showing us that Big Data isn’t necessarily better data: @zephoria

51. Jonathan Zittrain, for starting down the Internet’s enemies: @zittrain

52. Luigi Zingales, for remdining us what conservative economics used to look like: @zingales

53. Viviane Reding, for demanding that Europe’s women have a seat at the table: @VivianeRedingEU

54. Jonathan Haidt, for revealing the psychology of partisanship: @JonHaidt

55. Peter Beinart, for diagnosing the "crisis of Zionism": @PeterBeinart

56. Sana Saleem, for insisting that free speech is not blasphemy: @sanasaleem

Sulome Anderson is a journalist based between Beirut and New York City. Follow her on Twitter: @SulomeAnderson.

Tags: Economics, Science and Technology

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