27. Fareed Zakaria
for chronicling the rise of the rest.
Editor at large, Time | New York
Fareed Zakaria's great gift to the U.S. policy debate has been his insistence that Americans need to get over themselves -- that the future world order will be dominated by new emerging powers along with old leaders as China and India take their place at the table. His predictions have proved prescient, and particularly since the publication of his timely 2008 book, The Post-American World, the Indian-born Zakaria has come to symbolize not only the rise of the rest but also a decidedly American determination to deal with it. Along the way, Zakaria has turned himself into a one-man media brand, with a higher profile than perhaps any other pundit who writes about America's role in the world. When he left Newsweek this year to take up a new position at Time, it was the journalistic equivalent of the fat lady singing for the struggling newsweekly; he also hosts CNN's GPS, his steadfastly substantive weekend show.
Zakaria is not always dispassionate about the global trends he has such a knack for identifying. This year, he controversially returned a $10,000 prize to the Anti-Defamation League after the group announced its opposition to a proposed Muslim cultural center near New York's Ground Zero. "Were this mosque being built in a foreign city, chances are that the U.S. government would be funding it," Zakaria wrote.
EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images
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