The meaning of Huntington
Tom Chatfield
Samuel Huntington: the most ordinary of intellectual rarities
Since his death on Christmas eve, academics and amateurs alike have been debating the significance of Samuel Huntington, whose Clash of Civilizations (1996) has been a shibboleth for public intellectuals and politicians ever since its publication. In our latest edition, Eric Kaufmann, a fellow at the Belfer Centre, Harvard, argues that Huntington was an iconoclast to the core, and one whose estrangement from the elite on both sides of the political debate placed him, in fact, far closer to the “normal” of American opinion than almost any of his critics. Which doesn’t mean he was right about everything: but which can help us understand his legacy as a force for good in “arguing for a less overbearing America.”
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