Samuel P. Huntington

Samuel Phillips Huntington (April 18, 1927December 24, 2008) was an American political scientist, adviser, and academic. He spent more than half a century at Harvard University, where he was director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs and the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor. During the presidency of Jimmy Carter, Huntington was the White House Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council. During the 1980s Apartheid era in South Africa, he served as an adviser to P. W. Botha's Security Services. Huntington is best known for his 1993 theory, the "Clash of Civilizations", of a post–Cold War new world order. He argued that future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures, and that Islamic civilization would become the biggest threat to Western domination of the world. Huntington is credited with helping to shape American views on civilian-military relations, political development, and comparative government. According to the Open Syllabus Project, Huntington is the second most frequently cited author on college syllabi for political science courses. Early life and education Huntington was born on April 18, 1927, in New York City, the son of Dorothy Sanborn (née Phillips), a short-story writer, and Richard Thomas Huntington, a publisher of hotel trade journals. His grandfather was publisher John Sanborn Phillips. He graduated with distinction from Yale University at age 18, served in the U.S. Army for a brief period, earned his master's degree from the University of Chicago, and completed his PhD at Harvard University, where he began teaching at age 23.