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Originally Posted by no one knows
The whole liberal - leftist distinction is particularly muddy because a 'liberal' in basically everywhere but the US is someone who advocates limited government and laissez-faire economic policy which, in the US, is considered 'conservative'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal
Also, a school's general reputation for being leftist maybe inconsistent with a particular department, or person in that school. For example a prof of mine once mentioned that there was a visiting econ professor from Berkeley who was far to the right of everyone else in my prof's department. |
In the United States, outside of certain academic circles, "liberal" generally means socialist when it comes to the government and the economy. However, outside of economic context, American liberalism still coincides with the original notion of liberalism. As Milton Friedman suggests, what really happened is that the people who were advocating socialist-leaning ideologies in the 60s had to rebrand themselves using a new name following the times of McCarty era witch hunts. Those who are known as liberals elsewhere are known as libertarians in the United States.