Master’s Degree in Liberty Studies a Goal For All Universities

Students For Liberty published a brief note on Friday about the new Master’s Degree in Liberty Studies offered by the University of Illinois at Springfield. The new degree will include courses on radical capitalism, philosophy of business, liberty studies, revolutions and liberty and social philosophy.

This is, as far as I and the other student groups commenting on this development can tell, the first program of its kind.  Looking through the website of the Center for Liberty Studies, it’s clear that there are a number of University-based centers and institutes that offer some classes in different facets of the pro-liberty movement.

In our region specifically, Grove City College’s Center for Vision and Values and St. Vincent’s Center for Political and Economic Thought illustrate the good work being done by University-based centers on expanding our understanding of liberty. Indeed, these two colleges stand out in our region as institutions that, through their individual centers and coursework, offer students the opportunity to gain an education that includes the economics and philosophy of liberty.

Certainly, these centers and institutes constitute bright points in an otherwise dark academic landscape for students interested in the study of liberty but their scattered courses – although useful – fail to do what an actual graduate degree does: advance the legitimacy and understanding of liberty as an academic discipline. This master’s degree – also offered fully online – represents a promising new route through which to accomplish this goal and it should serve as an example to other colleges and universities.

After all, the liberty philosophy played a vital role in the creation of our nation and the shaping of our national character. For this reason, it is impossible to understand subjects from political science to history without understanding the liberty philosophy but too few colleges and universities offer any instruction in core aspects of this philosophy.

Recognizing this, the new Master’s Degree in Liberty Studies should be understood as an example to higher education and a call for colleges and universities to seriously engage the liberty philosophy as an academic subject. It would be encouraging to see schools in the Pittsburgh area follow this example by offering a similar degree but, because of a lack of infrastructure at the undergraduate level and a lack of faculty to engineer such a degree, we should work to accomplish smaller goals at area colleges and universities first.

These goals for area colleges and universities could include but should not be limited to

• Hiring an Austrian economist and offering courses on Austrian economics
• Creating a “Liberty Studies” concentration for history, philosophy, political science and economics majors at the undergraduate level
• Incorporating the study of liberty into survey courses in history, economics, philosophy and political science

These goals and others can serve as building blocks for Pittsburgh area schools that currently lack the resources to develop graduate programs in Liberty Studies. Furthering the study of liberty as an academic concept not only promises to create rich scholarship in its own right but should also improve our understanding of other fields and lead to a greater understanding of our nation and the principles on which it is founded.