Samuel P. Huntington Biography

Samuel Phillips Huntington was an American political scientist and writer who rose to fame with his thesis ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ which he later expanded into a book ‘The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.’ A very prominent political scientist, he specialized in defense and international affairs, though his work covered diverse fields of political science. He played an important role as a political commentator on national debates on US Foreign Policy. After earning his doctorate from the Harvard University, he began teaching there. He specialized in American politics at the beginning of his career, later branching into other areas such as foreign policy, comparative politics, international relations and modernization. Huntington, along with Warren Demian Manshel founded an academic quarterly, ‘Foreign Policy’ in 1970 which was later changed into a bimonthly magazine. Huntington was a prolific writer and had published major works on multiple fields like defense policy, American political ideology, national security strategy, transnational organizations, processes of democratization, etc. He wrote, co-wrote or edited 17 books and numerous scholarly articles. He was an original thinker and many of his works were considered to be highly controversial at the time of their publication. Each one of his books dealt with a central political issue and his writings helped shape the American viewpoints on political development.