Skip to Main Content
Skidmore College
First-Year Experience

Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description

LiberalisM

Instructor(s): Jennifer Delton, History

Liberals are under attack around the world. Both right wing nationalists and leftist anti-capitalists see liberal internationalism as a destroyer of community and promoter of inequality. Are these charges true? What does liberalism even mean?  Is it a philosophy of individual rights and free markets? Or is it a progressive ideology akin to socialism?  Both? Neither? What is its relationship to socialism?  Capitalism? Empire? What is neoliberalism? Based on the words and writings of prominent liberals and their critics over time, this course will help students understand liberalism’s changing relationship to capitalism, globalism, and U.S. politics. 

Course Offered: