This short course introduces (or reintroduces) alumni to an important chapter in contemporary intellectual history by looking at several writers and scholars whose work in the early Cold War was decisive for casting the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States as a struggle between democracy (and pluralism) and totalitarianism. These writers were politically committed to the cause of the West. In Session 3, Mark Gilbert – a professor of history at SAIS Europe – provides context for historian Arthur Schlesinger and his book THE VITAL CENTER, which insisted that liberals had to fight against the myth of Soviet progressivism. Visit www.jhu.edu/hopkinsathome for more lectures and mini-courses.