Notre Dame’s recent announcement that a scholar who advocates for legal abortion will lead the university’s Asian studies institute is drawing criticism from some members of the faculty, but the university is standing by the appointment.

Susan Ostermann, an associate professor of global affairs at Notre Dame who has described laws banning abortion as “violence,” “sexual abuse” and “trauma” and has linked efforts to end abortion to white supremacy, is set to take over as director of the university’s Liu Institute of Asia and Asian Studies on July 1.

Some of the most pointed criticism of the appointment so far has come from Holy Cross Father Wilson Miscamble, a professor emeritus of history at Notre Dame and former chairman of the department, who published a blistering critique in First Things on Wednesday.

“If this sad appointment is allowed to stand, the hollowness of the claim that Catholic character informs all Notre Dame’s endeavors will be painfully exposed,” Father Miscamble wrote.

 “A number of distinguished senior faculty” have called on university administrators to rescind the appointment, wrote Father Miscamble, who also spoke with the Register on Wednesday. He is calling on the six Holy Cross priests and six laypeople who sit on the university’s Board of Fellows to reverse the decision.

At Notre Dame, the 12-member Board of Fellows serves as the “successors and associates in office” of the “original founders of the University,” elects the 40 members of the university’s Board of Trustees, and ensures “that the University maintains its essential character as a Catholic institution of higher learning,” among other things, according to the university’s website.

“My hope is that they will realize that their own responsibility for the Catholic character of the university is such that they have to demand that this unfortunate appointment be rescinded,” Father Miscamble told the Register.

“It will be done only if there is an outpouring of criticism of the Notre Dame administration. I think the disgraceful nature of the appointment is such that there is some possibility of that,” Father Miscamble said in an interview.

He called out the dean of the Keough School for Global Studies, Mary Gallagher, for making the appointment, and the university’s provost, John McGreevy, for approving it.

“They must have known of the pro-abortion advocacy of Professor Ostermann,” Father Miscamble said.

“Frankly, it surprised me,” he said on the appointment. “I can’t believe that either of them made such a disgraceful decision.”

Ostermann, contacted by the Register, provided a written statement through a Notre Dame spokesman.

She said she sees her forthcoming role as director of the Liu Institute as “a facilitator for our world-class faculty” and that she is “fully committed to maintaining an environment of academic freedom where a plurality of voices can flourish.”

“I have long worked with scholars who hold diverse views on a multitude of issues, and I welcome the opportunity to continue doing so. While I hold my own convictions on complex social and legal issues, I want to be clear: my role is to support the diverse research of our scholars and students, not to advance a personal political agenda,” Ostermann said.

“I am inspired by the University’s focus on Integral Human Development, which calls us to promote the dignity and flourishing of every person. I respect Notre Dame’s institutional position on the sanctity of life at every stage,” Ostermann said. “By fostering a collaborative space that values rigorous inquiry, we contribute in important ways to global development and human well-being.”

A spokesman for Notre Dame did not respond to a request for comment on Father Miscamble’s criticism of the two administrators by publication of this story.

Instead, Notre Dame released a written statement to the Register on Wednesday calling Ostermann “a highly regarded political scientist and legal scholar whose insightful research on regulatory compliance — from forestry conservation in India and Nepal to NSF-funded disaster mitigation in the U.S. territories — demonstrates the rigorous, interdisciplinary expertise required to lead the Liu Institute.”

“NSF” refers to the U.S. National Science Foundation.

The statement called Ostermann a “deeply committed educator who has led study abroad programs in Mumbai,” adding that “she is well prepared to expand the Institute’s global partnerships and create impactful research opportunities that advance our dedication to serving as the preeminent global Catholic research institution.”

The statement also alludes to the criticism of Ostermann’s advocacy for abortion without mentioning it directly.

“Those who serve in leadership positions at Notre Dame do so with the clear understanding that their decision-making as leaders must be guided by and consistent with the University's Catholic mission,” the university’s statement says. “Notre Dame’s commitment to upholding the inherent dignity of the human person and the sanctity of life at every stage is unwavering.”

Abortion Advocacy

As the Register reported earlier this month, Ostermann, a professor of global studies at Notre Dame’s Keough School, has co-authored several articles advocating for legal abortion and criticizing pro-lifers.

Ostermann and Tamara Kay, a former professor of global affairs and sociology at Notre Dame who now teaches at the University of Pittsburgh, in July 2022 argued in The Indianapolis Star against proposed legislation in Indiana to ban abortion, saying “Indiana will become an anti-freedom, forced-birth state” if the bill were enacted, which it later was.

Also in July 2022, Ostermann and Kay co-authored a column in Salon linking opposition to abortion with white supremacy, arguing that an abortion opponent in the 1850s who successfully promoted laws outlawing the practice did so because he feared Anglo-Saxon women in America were aborting while immigrants from “inferior races” were having lots of children.

In December 2022, Ostermann and Kay wrote a column for the Chicago Tribune arguing that early-stage embryos aren’t babies and calling pregnancy centers “anti-abortion rights propaganda sites.”

That led Holy Cross Father John Jenkins, who was at the time the president of Notre Dame and still sits on the university’s Board of Fellows, to write a public letter saying that “their essay does not reflect the views and values of the University of Notre Dame in its tone, arguments, or assertions.”

Integral Human Development

Ostermann recently told Notre Dame’s communications team that her interest in law, politics, and government regulations in Asia began during a study-abroad experience, during which she witnessed the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, which lasted from 1996 to 2006.

“I began thinking about how incredibly diverse populations agree, or sometimes fail to agree, on norms to live by. I saw firsthand that while some states can coerce compliance with a set of rules, others either lack the capacity or choose not to govern that way. That tension between cultural heterogeneity and regulatory compliance has fascinated me ever since,” Ostermann said in the interview, published Jan. 15 on the website of Notre Dame’s Keough Institute.

Ostermann also said that Notre Dame’s Catholic identity is part of what drew her to the university.

“I am enthusiastic about Notre Dame’s Catholic mission and how that is manifested in the Keough School’s focus on Integral Human Development,” Ostermann said, referring to a concept in Catholic social teaching that encompasses various forms of well-being, including economic, political, social, family and cultural.

“This mission aligns with how I approach research and teaching and is an important reason I chose to come to Notre Dame,” Ostermann said. “I aim to explore complex political and regulatory challenges while keeping human dignity in mind, considering how policies and laws affect real people, their well-being, and their ability to flourish in diverse settings.”

Ostermann sees abortion as an example of integral human development, according to an article she co-wrote for Salon in May 2022.

“Abortion access is freedom-enhancing, in the truest sense of the word. Consistent with integral human development that emphasizes social justice and human dignity, abortion access respects the inherent dignity of women, their freedom to make choices and to evaluate medical and other risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth,” Ostermann and Kaye wrote.

“Perhaps most important, abortion access also prioritizes and values women’s freedom from experiencing violence, sexual abuse and trauma through forced pregnancy and childbirth,” they continued. “When the state supports forced pregnancy and childbirth, it is complicit in this violence. When we stand by as it does so, we are complicit as well.”

O. Carter Snead, a professor of law and a professor of political science at Notre Dame, criticized the substance and form of Ostermann’s abortion advocacy when contacted by the Register on Wednesday.

“I don’t know Professor Ostermann and have nothing against her personally or as a colleague, but I confess to being quite shocked by the inflammatory rhetoric and uncharitable tone of her eleven op-eds (e.g., associating the pro-life position — Notre Dame’s position — with white supremacy and misogyny, attacking pregnancy resource centers as propaganda organs that intentionally mislead vulnerable women, and asserting that the Catholic social teaching concept of integral human development supports elective abortion), to say nothing of the tendentious and confused substance of the arguments themselves,” Snead told the Register by email, with italics in the original.

Population Control and Asia

Father Miscamble argued in his First Things article that Ostermann’s consultant work for the Population Council, which advocates for abortion and contraception, ought to have kept Notre Dame administrators from appointing her to lead a university-wide institute that studies Asia, where population-control schemes contrary to Catholic moral teaching are common.

“This association alone should have ruled Ostermann out of consideration for any leadership position at Notre Dame given the damage this agency has done in numerous countries. The decimation of the Chinese population stands as but the worst example,” Father Miscamble wrote.

Her abortion advocacy bears directly on her ability to lead Notre Dame’s Asian studies institute, he argued.

“Given the demographic issues that certain Asian countries now confront, the Liu Institute must be led by a scholar who understands well the disastrous course that has been perpetrated by organizations like the Population Council. Susan Ostermann cannot do that,” Father Miscamble wrote.

Bill Dempsey, founding president of Sycamore Institute, an independent organization that advocates for Notre Dame to uphold its Catholic identity, told the Register that the university’s defense of the Ostermann appointment is “transparently infirm” because of the message the appointment sends.

“It ignores the primary concern, namely scandal,” Dempsey said by email.

“Notre Dame would not promote a white supremacist or a Holocaust denier no matter how qualified in their fields, not because people would think the university shared their views, but because people would think the university did not regard the issues as very important. So here the signal is that the current administration, while espousing a pro-life stance, considers it of lesser importance,” Dempsey said.

He likened the appointment of Ostermann to Notre Dame’s honoring of President Barack Obama in May 2009 and of President Joe Biden in May 2016, both of whom supported legal and publicly funded abortion.

He added that even if Ostermann doesn’t take the Liu Institute “in a pro-abortion direction,” it’s clear that she also won’t “analyze with a Catholic eye the permissive abortion policies and the appalling slaughter of the innocents in countries like India and China.”

Dempsey said, “That is, she will not have the institute do what a Catholic institute should do.”