Samuel Huntington, Harvard political scientist, dies

Samuel Huntington, a Harvard University professor who argued that cultural and religious differences would replace ideology as a source of international conflict, died at the age of 81 after a long illness.

Huntington died December 24 on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, where he had vacationed for 40 years, said Corydon Ireland, a spokesman for Harvard University. The cause was congestive heart failure and complications from diabetes, Ireland said. The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, once headed by Huntington, said he died in a nursing home.

Huntington was known for his view, first published in the journal Foreign Affairs in 1993, that the post-Cold War world would be divided among seven or eight cultural “civilisations,” including the West, Latin American, Islam and Hinduism.

 

His views were later published in a 1996 book, “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.” It was translated into 39 languages, said Harvard, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

During his lifetime, he was the author, co-author, or editor of 17 books and more than 90 articles, the university said.

Huntington was born April 18, 1927, in New York City. He graduated from Yale College at 18, and taught at Harvard from 1949 until 2007.

He was the Albert J Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard, chaired the Government Department twice and was director of the university’s Weatherhead Center between 1978 and 1989.

He also led the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies from 1996 to 2004. He served as coordinator for security planning between 1977 and 1978 in President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Council.