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Neoliberalism is one of the most pervasive and contested concepts of our contemporary era. Thus, it is essential for students to gain an understanding of its history, meaning, assumptions, and policy prescriptions. In addition to recognizing the importance of neoliberalism in the current political discourse, I argue that the polarized responses to the concept provide opportunities for teaching about critical topics in political science. This article provides suggestions for teaching about six such topics through the lens of neoliberal policies such as free trade, structural adjustment, and privatization.

Political science has, in the past 40 years, developed into a multi-dimensional discipline, training thousands of political scientists who have entered a variety of professions. Its development in Iceland over 40 years has been remarkable, from its small beginnings in 1970 to hosting the largest political science conference in Europe in 2011. However, as the ECPR's founders taught us, political science must always be aware of new challenges and be prepared to innovate and adapt to new realities. The financial crisis that hit Iceland and the world economy in 2008 embodies significant challenges to the discipline, but also opportunities – and notably the opportunity to retrieve the dominance that market economics secured in the past over many political economy analyses. The specific experience of Iceland, as a small state in the north, represents a wake-up call for the discipline, raising key questions relating to the contribution political science can make to understanding the current transformation and to the capacity of the discipline to maintain its relevance.

Like Gary King and Paul Herrnson, we believe that making our data accessible can strengthen and advance scholarly knowledge. King and Herrnson, however, disagree about the measures necessary to ensure that data are widely available to achieve this collective good. Herrnson criticizes King's recommendations as potentially bad for the profession. As scholars who have collected data and relied on others' data for our own research, and—equally important—as relatively new Ph.D.s in political science, we have our own perspective in this debate over replication and data accessibility.