Samuel P. Huntington

Samuel P. Huntington was not afraid to launch his ideas onto the center of the intellectual stage, even when they sparked controversy. But friends and family said they will remember the bespectacled political scientist for his gentle, reserved nature and commitment to academia.

The preeminent scholar of national security and civil-military relations died of congestive heart failure and complications related to diabetes on Martha’s Vineyard in December. He was 81.

Huntington, who taught at Harvard for 58 years before retiring in 2007, was a gentle, yet quietly serious, presence in the government department, where he left behind a legacy of academic integrity and devotion to undergraduate education, colleagues said.

“He was so brilliant that you wanted to learn as much as you could from him and try to be as honest and as serious about your work as he was,” said government Professor Stephen P. Rosen ’74, a former student of Huntington’s. “He was an inspiration...He was always there for his students.”

Huntington’s most famous academic treatise posited that cultural and religious differences between the world’s major civilizations—rather than ideological disparities between political states—would be the cause of violent conflicts in a post-Cold War world.

The theory drew controversy for its focus on differences between civilizations when it was first published in 1993. Some at the time criticized the work for reinforcing and oversimplifying cultural divisions.

In 1996, he expounded on his argument in the book “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,” which has since been translated into 39 languages.

“He was a scholar, first and foremost,” said wife Nancy A. Huntington ’55. “He knew that...there would be controversy but felt obliged to do what he thought was right and what was true.”

Kennedy School Professor Graham T. Allison Jr. ’62 called Huntington “an outstanding teacher, a great thinker, and a valued colleague” who had the “rare capacity” for larger insights into overarching themes.

“Not just big insights but grasp of truths that have legs,” Allison added in his e-mailed statement. “Among political scientists, or indeed, all social scientists today, he had no peer competitor.”

Before retiring in 2007, Huntington served twice as chair of the government department and directed Harvard’s Center for International Affairs from 1978 to 1989.

But Huntington’s work also took him beyond academia. In 1968, he advised then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey during his bid for the presidency. In 1977 and 1978, Huntington served as coordinator of security planning for the National Security Council under President Jimmy Carter.

After suffering from a stroke in 2006, Huntington entered a succession of nursing facilities in Boston. He relocated the following summer to a facility on Martha’s Vineyard.

—Staff writer Esther I. Yi can be reached at estheryi@fas.harvard.edu.