Samuel P. Huntington, dead at 81

Most of us know Samuel Huntington for his Summer 1993 article in the journal Foreign Affairs, A Clash of Civilizations? His article, which he later expanded into a book, received enormous attention from both the political and military world, as it did from cultural critics, like the late Edward W. Said. I am not a fan of Huntington, but I certainly appreciate the devotion and commitment he had to studying foreign policy and international relations (albeit a rather fatalistic approach).

But it was Edward Said's response to the "Clash" hypothesis (published in October 4, 2001 issue of The Nation) that most caught my attention: The Clash of Ignorance. Said also gave a talk at the University of Massachusettes at Amherst in which he detailed the problems of Huntington's theory.