Discuss this article at First Drafts , Prospect’s blog
The modish idea that social and political life is now driven by the “network” has been given an intriguing new twist by a couple of contemporary Levantines—Turkish Sufi cleric Fethullah Gülen and the Greek impresario Arianna Huffington (née Stassinopoulos), editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post (HuffPost) website. Gülen was last month crowned Prospect’s top global public intellectual thanks to an online mobilisation of his followers. Huffington, meanwhile, is using her personal network not only to transform online publishing but also to redefine public intellectual life in a digital age.
Born in Athens in 1950, Huffington arrived at Cambridge University in the late 1960s as an awkward teenager and went on to use her large social circle to get herself elected president of the union in 1971. Two years later, she published an anti-feminist polemic, The Female Woman: An Argument against Women’s Liberation for Female Emancipation, which was translated into 11 languages and branded her as the blonde, willowy anti-Germaine Greer publishing bombshell. Times columnist and fellow Face the Music panellist Bernard Levin refused to marry the then conservative Huffington in the late 1970s, a snub which led first to her move in 1980 to the US and then to her 1986 marriage to oil millionaire and then Republican congressman Michael Huffington. This very public union formally ended in 1997, and a year later Michael Huffington came out as bisexual.
If you are a subscriber, please log in »
This article is available to subscribers only
Subscribing to Prospect is the most reliable and convenient way to receive the magazine every month, and offers the best value.Subscription Types:
Online
An online subscription offers you complete and unlimited access to the entire website, including our searchable archive of every back issue of Prospect, and a PDF edition of each new issue: all this for just £20 per year. Purchase an online subscription »Renewal
Renew an existing subscription »Institutional access
If you are a library, business organisation or any other large institution that needs a multi-user licence, you can obtain institutional access.
Share
Subscribe to post comments
Print
