Radio 3 is currently looking for "a new generation of public intellectuals". You can apply here - except that to be eligible, you must be studying or working inside a university.

Now, call me self-interested, but by this criterion, the likes of John Berger or a young Karl Polanyi would fall through their net.

I'm not comparing myself to those remarkable men. But as someone whose work gets cited by academics in a range of disciplines and is, I hope, beginning to make some impression in the public sphere, I'm disappointed to be excluded from consideration.

This isn't just about me, though - there's a whole network of people I'm aware of in the UK and beyond who are doing substantial new thinking from outside of academia - often in close and constructive dialogue with those operating from inside university departments. The way Radio 3 and the AHRC are approaching this project is going to miss out on a huge amount of the emerging intellectual culture of our generation - many of whose brightest minds saw what was happening to academia and chose to do our thinking elsewhere.

I've written to Roger Wright, the controller of Radio 3, telling him this and inviting him to redress the balance. To help him, I'd like you to nominate your own choice of "new public thinkers" from outside of the university walls.

I'll start the ball rolling with three people whose ideas I value highly:

• Vinay Gupta has one of the sharpest minds of anyone I've ever met and is thinking about the big problems.
• Cassie Robinson is asking deep questions about sexuality and relationships.
• Andy Gibson brings his training as a historian to thinking about social technology and the social changes we're living through.

So, who are your nominations? And which other public intellectuals of previous generations would we have missed out on, if we applied the criteria being used by Radio 3?