A brief biography of Samuel Huntington

Huntington showed his talent in the social sciences early on. At the age of 16, he was admitted to Yale University. At the age of 18, he graduated with honors and joined the U.S. Army. He then received a master's degree from the University of Chicago and completed his doctoral thesis and degree from Harvard when he was 23 years old.

He then began teaching at Harvard, where he has been a senior member of the Harvard School of Government since 1950. Huntington taught at Harvard University for 58 years.

In 1951, President Truman fired General MacArthur for his disobedience. Huntington wrote and published his first book on this basis - The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil Military Relations. This book has caused a stir since its publication in 1957, and is still regarded as the most influential book on domestic military relations in the United States. In the first review of the book, critics accused it of being militaristic and reminiscent of Mussolini's slogan "Faith, Obedience, Fight." In the 1960s, after learning that Huntington had served in the Johnson administration, some radical students at Harvard University occupied and burned the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University where he worked. Some even painted this on the door of his apartment. The slogan: "War criminals live here." The author himself had to temporarily escape Harvard to escape the limelight. In the 1960s, he gained fame with Political Order in Changing Societies. The book challenged the dogma of the then most popular modernization theory: that economic and social progress would bring political stability to newly independent countries emerging from colonial rule.

The Vietnam War broke Huntington's peaceful campus life. As a counselor for the U.S. State Department, he wrote a hundred-page report on the Vietnam War in 1968, proposing the "Strategic Village Plan" to merge villages into villages in South Vietnam and criticizing the U.S. government's strategy at the time. These opinions are naturally unpopular, so it is no wonder that his office was burned down and he was called a "war criminal"!

Between 1977 and 1978, he participated in the White House's decision-making process on national security strategy and coordinated various related policies.

He published an article in 1993 about violent conflicts in the post-Cold War era. Huntington later compiled the relevant theories into the far-reaching book "The Clash of Civilizations and the Reconstruction of World Order." The book was translated into 39 languages ??and aroused ever-increasing repercussions around the world. However, the "9·11" incident forced people to return to Huntington again. Although people could not willingly accept his views and conclusions, they could not help but secretly admire the old man's sharp eyesight and thinking. Fresh.

After the "9·11" incident, he wrote and published "Who Are We?" "(Who are we?), which made a big discussion about the immigration issue in the United States, also caused a controversy.

To a certain extent, this represents the fate of Huntington’s books and articles: they were controversial as soon as they were published, and were not eligible for various awards. Only as time goes by will they be widely recognized. But reluctantly accepted it.