Huntington, Samuel

Samuel Phillips Huntington (1927–2008), distinguished professor, political scientist, foreign policy analyst, and advisor, spent his career examining the relationship between the informal and formal structures of political institutions and developing theories for understanding issues confronting U.S. national interests. Periodically active in politics, Huntington was a speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and an advisor for Hubert Humphrey’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1968. From 1977 to 1978, he was a consultant for the National Security Council during the Carter administration and served as a strategic advisor to President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Huntington is best known for the controversial arguments put forth in an article titled “The Clash of Civilizations?” wherein he suggested that post–Cold War conflicts would predictably escalate along specific “cultural fault lines.” ...