The Clash of Civilizations

Huntington was an American academic, political scientist, and presidential advisor. For most of his career, he was associated with Harvard, where he served as the chairman of the Department of Government and a director of the Center for International Affairs. He was appointed as the Albert J Weatherhead III University Professor for a time, a highly prestigious position at Harvard. He also taught at Columbia. His major publications include “The Solider and the State” (1957), “Political Order in Changing Societies,” and The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Centuries (1991). “The Clash of Civilizations?” (1993) is considered his most influential work.

Huntington’s life-long research in geopolitics and international relations and his academic accomplishments established him as a respected figure in his field. He founded the academic journal Foreign Policy, in which this essay was published. He served as the president of the American Political Science Association, as well as the White House coordinator of security planning for the National Security Council during Jimmy Carter’s presidency. He was also an advisor to Vice President Hubert Humphrey during the latter’s 1968 presidential campaign.

His deep study of the geopolitics, combined with his many years of experience in governmental roles, made him especially qualified to write “The Clash of Civilizations?” That said, Huntington has received criticism for his simplified model of civilizations, which paints highly diverse populations as monolithic groups.