Samuel P. Huntington | Biography

Samuel P. Huntington was born in New York City on April 18, 1927. His mother was Dorothy Sanborn, who wrote short stories. Richard Huntington, his father, was a publisher of trade journals. Huntington earned a bachelor's degree at Yale University by the time he turned 18, and thereafter enlisted in the U.S. Army. After leaving the army, he attended the University of Chicago and Harvard University, ultimately earning a Ph.D. and joining the Harvard faculty as a professor. His successes led him later to accept an associate director position at the Institute for War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. He returned to Harvard, where he became chair of the Academy for International and Area Studies.

Huntington's work delved into American politics, foreign policy, and international relations. He became the Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council during the administration of President Jimmy Carter (1977–81). In 1993 he published an article titled "The Clash of Civilizations?" in the political journal Foreign Affairs. The article's controversial thesis was that the next major war would be fought against Islamic extremism. He expanded the idea in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, published in 1996. It became his best-known work and is credited with shaping American understanding of foreign policy. However, much like his first book The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (1957), many considered Huntington's views and theories provocative.

Huntington passed away at age 81 in Massachusetts on December 24, 2008. Among Huntington's other accomplishments were his founding of the journal Foreign Policy in 1970 and his position as president of the American Political Science Association. His influential works covered far-ranging topics from American political ideology to national security strategy. Over the course of his life, he contributed to or wrote 17 books and over 90 scholarly articles. He was praised for mentoring a generation of new scholars who would go on to become some of the country's top political strategists and thinkers.