As you argue in your near-obituary of Samuel Huntington, he may well be best remembered for his prophesy of the clash of civilizations in 1993, when nearly everyone was inebriated senseless in the wake of the Cold War (“Huntington’s Clash,” January 3, 2009). Where they saw the spread of peace and prosperity around the world, he saw the emerging conflict that eventually surfaced quite rudely in 2001. But this is what he did with every bit of received wisdom as soon as it turned almost unshakeable. The more unshakeable it got, the fiercer and perhaps more annoying he became in turn, whence in part his taste for the broadest of brushes. For he was a contrarian first and foremost. As one of America’s greatest public intellectuals of the last half a century, he will be missed by both friend and foe precisely for this rare quality. Besides, contrarians with a Harvard chair in political science are pretty rare, indeed.