Samuel Huntington, R.I.P. (1927-2008)

Needless to say, none of his students or admirers capture the essence of Huntington, or what he tried so hard to communicate. The world that created him and so many other great men no longer exists. Most of those who have been brought up in this newer, much diminished intellectual environment, will never comprehend.

It's strange - in my experience his ideas seemed to have been embraced most by those who he seemed to be arguing against. (I didn't know him, maybe he'd be happy with that.) This is completely within the realm of my own experience, but students from the Middle East just seem to love Clash - believing that it explains everything - and this is a huge problem. I do not believe that this was a great work to put out in the world. It is brilliant and incredibly dangerous in its simplicity.

Don't even start me on the "Jose can you see"/"Who are we?" article.

The great tragedy of Huntington's thesis is how self-fulfilling it has turned out to be -- because, as the commentor above noted about his Middle Eastern students' embrace of it, it "explains everything" and does so without requiring anybody on either side to reassess their own identity. It's terribly comforting, as apocalyptic ideas so often are. Perhaps, though, we can now have a reassessment of it that points this out? Dan, is the conservative side of the house ready for that?

SJC, why do you characterize students from the Middle East as an example of "those who he seemed to be arguing against"?

After all, Huntington predicted clashes between civilizations. His theory wasn't inherently pro-Western or anti-Muslim, at least not as Huntington himself saw matters:

“The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”

“The problem for Islam is ... the West, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture throughout the world.”

“These are the basic ingredients that fuel conflict between Islam and the West.”

(from Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order")

Heather, I believe that Huntington would have been the first to agree with you that it would be a tragedy if his thesis turned out to be self-fulfilling. He was, after all, not at all pleased that neo-conservatives seized on his ideas as justification for their views on foreign policy. Huntington was a Democrat who strongly opposed, for instance, the Iraq War in 2003, and did not wish to see conflict between the West and Islam.

It was a surprise to see that he was older than I. It shouldn't have been since he became a tutor in Kirkland House when I was an undergraduate. But though he must then have been in his early twenties, he appeared an unimpressive thirteen-year old. Until you heard him argue. And that remained the pattern in each of the contacts we had over the years. A wholly false appearance of inexperienced youth, and a fierce intellect.

Peter: actually, according to his bio, Huntington got his B.A. from Yale when he was 18 and earned his Ph.D. from Harvard and was a professor by the time he was 23 (he also served in the Army during these years). Which is just depressing for the rest of us.

SJC and Heather: let me mull this over -- but I'd stress at the outset that Huntington himself was hardly an enthusiast for violent clashes between civilizations. Rather, the lesson he took from his own work was that the U.S. should quit trying to Westernize the rest of the world. This is a big reason his book was so popular in Russia, China and the Middle East.

[...] there has been a more influential political scientist in the postwar era, his name escapes me. Dan Drezner, who studied under Huntington, observes, He might have been the most socially awkward political [...]

I shall let others fight over the marrow of Sam's work.

I remember him as a gentleman in the Harvard yard whom I first encountered in the fall of 1952. We never became close but he was always cordial and I remember him as a gently learned man whose presence made me feel I was in the right place.

fbenjul, '56
Madison, WI.

[...] more from Daniel Drezner, who remembers him fondly as “a geek with a backbone of steel,” and “a [...]

A sad loss... I never met him but his influence on my own work was undeniable.

Its curious to watch how everybody points out Clash of Civilizations as his most influential work, while forgetting that Huntington wrote the "The Soldier and the State." Don't get me wrong, The Clash is certainly the more widely read a work, but it really just captured a moment in history. Its lasting permeance on framing thinking is debatable or at very least latent. Other books have offered contesting frameworks, which has diluted its influence over the years.

By comparison, The Soldier and the State launched a whole area of study: civil military relations or at least defined the field in a way that had far greater implications for subsequent scholars. Hundreds if not thousands of books and articles have been written about his "normal model" of relationship, and a whole generation of military and civilian officials were taught it. The Soldier and the State defined thinking about the proper role of the military profession vs Politics, which has guided policy making for over a generation.

Its arguable whether any book has had this influence, fifty years after the fact... its up there with E.H. Carr's the Twenty Years Crisis, Hans Morganthau's Politics Among nations and possibly Allison's Essence of Decision.... yet he wrote The Soldier, when he was barely thirty and then had a productive career after that.

The enormous influence of 'Clash of Civilizations' came in a sense as response to Francis Fukuyama's 'The End of History'. Instead of Liberal Democracy eternally triumphant, the world that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union turned out to be one of turmoil and conflict. Into this breach came Huntington. Borrowing a phrase from Bernard Lewis, he provided a more realistic sense of historical present and future. He too understood the special place in violent conflict which was being played by Islamic Civilization. And this though he was by no means jingoistic in regards to the future place of Western Civilization. He was however deeply concerned about its continued vitality and unique contribution.
Not many write a work which promises to remain part of the Classic Literature of their field. It seems to me that with 'The Clash of Civilizations' Samuel Huntington did just that.

A great man. "Who are we?" will turn out to have the most lasting impact, it is even more prescient than Clash.

[...] here. Political scientist and sometime Huntington-critic Daniel Drezner has a post on his passing here. Both remind me that I should check out The Soldier and The State. Possibly related posts: [...]