This paper examines attempts at four prototypical undergraduate liberal arts colleges to build community based on liberal educational principles and values, and investigates liberal education's ability to meet the challenges of multiculturalism. Data for the study was derived from a content analysis of archival materials from the four colleges, including mission statements, college catalogues, admissions viewbooks and videos, capital campaign videos, admissions CD-ROMS, and institution Web sites. Data were prepared for qualitative analysis through a process of scanning and conversion to HyperRESEARCH formats, creating categories and codes that reflected Deweyan multiculturalism. Six major themes emerged from the content analysis: representation and cultural pluralism; communication; others' experience as subject matter; students' engagement with or interest in subject matter; and learning relationships. The study found that all four institutions publicly adhere, in varying degrees, to traditional definitions of liberal learning; all remain fundamentally tied to liberal ideas about community and difference and generally understand multiculturalism as primarily enumerative, developmental for students, and peripheral to the liberal curriculum and the institutional mission. Effective communication of difference was inadequate at three of the four institutions. (Contains 15 references.) (SM)