Maxwell Auditorium overflowed with people waiting to hear Samuel Huntington speak Friday afternoon more than 20 minutes before the talk was set to begin. Not even the threat of the fire marshal kept people away.

The controversial author and professor drew an enormous crowd, with people sitting in the aisles and standing outside waiting to catch of glimpse of him. Huntington arrived with a few members of the political science department and took his place on the auditorium’s small stage. He apologized for not standing during his speech but could not due to a recent heart ailment.

Huntington is best known for his divisive books, especially ‘The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,’ and his most recent, ‘Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity.’

‘I came to his talk because of his strong claims and the controversy surrounding his claims,’ said Joseph Alvarado, a junior international relations and political philosophy major.

‘Who Are We’ has sparked debate over immigration, national identity and citizenship, said Rogan Kersh, a professor of American politics, as he introduced Huntington.

‘I wrote ‘Who Are We,’ because it seemed to me there were major changes going on with how Americans defined themselves,’ Huntington said.

Huntington attributes these changes to globalization and immigration. Coupled with these changes are the advancements in technology and transportation and the ‘deconstruction movements’ in the 1970s and ’80s. This was a time when group rights were demanded and multi-cultural, multi-lingual views were stressed.

Huntington said that Americans basically define themselves based on the settlers of the country. This reference was to people who arrived before the 1790s. He said they basically define themselves as protestant, white, English-speaking, of a tradition of European arts and culture and British law. Huntington said that prior to the new waves of immigrants, previous generations were willing to ‘Americanize,’ adopt American values, culture and the English language, but the new waves are not.

‘Settlers differ fundamentally from immigrations,’ Huntington said. ‘Before the immigrants came here, there had to be a society for them to come to.’

He added that the settler shaped its basic values, culture, way of life and identity. Huntington also posed the question: Would America be the same county it is today if it was settled by other people, such as the French or Spanish? To this question he answered, no, it would be Canada or Mexico.

The controversy over Huntington’s most recent work comes from a chapter that discusses the new wave of Hispanic immigrants. This chapter has sparked many emotional criticisms of the book, he said.

‘I don’t like (his argument), but I don’t not like it,’ Alvarado said. ‘I don’t want to be the dissent that is emotional because I am Hispanic.’

Huntington said that Hispanics are different from every other group that has emigrated because they speak a single, non-English language, their numbers are overwhelming and rapidly growing, the wave is persistent and they come from contiguous countries. This means they can maintain a connection with Mexico while living in the United States.

Another major difference between this wave and previous waves is the overwhelming number of illegal immigrants, Huntington said. He added that the Mexican government actively encourages Mexicans to illegally enter the United States.

Huntington sees this change in immigrants and their unwillingness to ‘Americanize’ as a fundamental problem that may change the American way of life. He described the desire to cling to the Spanish language as a fundamental problem with ‘Americanizing’ this new group.

‘It seems to me that it’s all contingent on language,’ Alvarado said. ‘A lot of what his arguments are is a question of who are we and our identity.’

Published on May 1, 2005 at 12:00 pm