Samuel P. Huntington

Samuel Phillips Huntington (1927 to 2008) was an American political scientist who spent nearly his entire career at Harvard University, where he held the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professorship and directed the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He briefly taught at Columbia University and served as White House coordinator of security planning for the National Security Council under President Carter. His first major book, The Soldier and the State (1957), set out a theory of objective civilian control of the military. Political Order in Changing Societies (1968) challenged modernization theory by arguing that social change without strong political institutions produces disorder. The Third Wave (1991) described a global wave of democratization after 1974. He is best known for the 1993 article and 1996 book on the clash of civilizations, which argued that post-Cold War conflict would follow cultural and religious lines rather than ideological ones. His work was widely cited and also drew sharp criticism as simplistic, and his last book on American national identity and immigration was contested as polemical.