What is Liberal Studies?

The NYT (above) identifies Hitchens as，among other things，"a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School University". What is Liberal Studies? The New School University explains,

The Liberal Studies curriculum offers graduate training in intellectual history, cultural studies, and the art of fine writing, bringing together students of social thought, philosophy, the arts, and current affairs who wish to work on the quality of their prose while simultaneously learning to master new modes of serious inquiry, both academic and journalistic. Among the program’s faculty are distinguished writers as well as accomplished scholars. Special attention is paid to the main currents in Western thought—and also to the cutting edge of modern critical and multicultural theorizing.

Not so different from Bartleby.com's definition of liberal arts

Academic disciplines, such as languages, literature, history, philosophy, mathematics, and science, that provide information of general cultural concern

or as m-w.com defines it,

the studies (as language, philosophy, history, literature, abstract science) in a college or university intended to provide chiefly general knowledge and to develop the general intellectual capacities (as reason and judgment) as opposed to professional or vocational skills

I've got to say I'm more and more concerned about the lack of skills involved, not to mention the fact that "the cutting edge of modern critical and multicultural theorizing" does not, in my experience, contribute anything to enhancing developing reason and judgment--rather the opposite. A lot of modern theory seems aimed primarily at either celebrating certain historically oppressed or marginalized groups, mainly limited to the categories of race (anything but white), gender (which usually seems to mean something connected with women or gays), or class (working class), or castigating their oppressors (white heterosexual upper- or middle-class males) while ignoring other avenues of analysis.