Samuel P. Huntington

Short Biography

Samuel Phillips Huntington (April 18, 1927 – December 24, 2008) was an influential American conservative 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 Carter administration, Huntington was the White House Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council. He is most well known by 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 extremism would become the biggest threat to Western world domination. Huntington is credited with helping to shape U.S. views on civilian-military relations, political development, and comparative government.