Six past recipients of a pro-life award at the University of Notre Dame and the widow of this year’s honoree are calling on the university’s president to rescind the appointment of an abortion supporter as head of Notre Dame’s Asian studies institute, expressing “profound sadness” and saying they feel betrayed.

“Nothing stings more than betrayal by one’s community — especially by an institution with such an admirable and urgently needed mission,” states the letter, published Monday by The Observer, a student newspaper. 

In January, Notre Dame announced the appointment of Susan Ostermann, a professor of global affairs and political science at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, as the next director of the university’s Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies. Ostermann, a consultant for the Population Council, which supports contraception and abortion worldwide, co-authored 11 columns between May 2022 and May 2024 for newspapers and opinion websites arguing for legal abortion and against attempts to prohibit it.

In the articles, Ostermann links opposition to abortion to white supremacy; describes laws banning abortion as “forced pregnancy and childbirth,” “trauma” and “violence”; calls crisis-pregnancy centers “anti-abortion rights propaganda sites,” and calls for Congress to cut off Medicaid funds to any state that doesn’t legalize abortion.

The appointment of Ostermann, which is scheduled to take effect July 1, has drawn opposition from pro-lifers since the Register first reported on it Jan. 13.

“Numerous justified reactions to the tragic appointment of Professor Susan Ostermann have already reached your desk: shock, scandal, disbelief and outrage among them. We would like to add one more: profound sadness,” write the signers of the open letter to Holy Cross Father Robert Dowd, president of Notre Dame. 

Most of the other signers of the letter are past recipients of the Evangelium Vitae award, which the university describes as “the nation’s most important award for heroes of the pro-life movement.”

They are Helen Alvaré, professor of law at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and a member of the Holy See’s Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life (2012); Richard Doerflinger, adjunct fellow at the National Catholic Bioethics Center and retired associate director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities (2011); Mother Agnes Mary Donovan, founding superior general of the Sisters of Life (2013); Mary Ann Glendon, professor emerita of law at Harvard Law School and a former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican (2018); and Anthony Lauinger, vice president of the National Right to Life Committee, and his wife, Phyllis Lauinger, a physician — the Lauingers are parents of eight Notre Dame alumni (2025).

Among the signers is Mary Louise Solomon, whose husband, W. David Solomon, is scheduled to receive Notre Dame’s Evangelium Vitae Medal posthumously on May 1. 

Professor Solomon, a longtime philosophy professor at Notre Dame and founding director of the university’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, died in February 2025 at age 81, less than a year after he and his wife became Catholics. He founded the award, which the de Nicola Center has been giving out since 2011.

Also among the signers is William Thorn, associate professor emeritus of journalism and media studies at Marquette University, whose wife, Vicki Thorn, founder of the post-abortion healing ministry Project Rachel, received the Evangelium medal in 2021, the year before she died. 

Another award winner, prominent Princeton University scholar Robert George, is not listed among the signers but told the Register in an interview Monday that Ostermann’s appointment raises questions. 

George, who received the Evangelium Vitae Medal in 2023, said that while it’s appropriate for a secular university to ignore a person’s personal views on matters such as abortion for hiring purposes, that’s not the case for a university that presents itself as Catholic, such as Notre Dame, particularly if the person is “actively hostile to the Catholic faith and its fundamental commitment to profound, inherent, and equal human dignity.”

“Why such a person would want to be at a Catholic university puzzles me, I must admit,” said George, professor of jurisprudence at Princeton and director of the university’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, by email. “But it makes no sense to me that such a person would be given a post, especially a leadership position, at such a university.”

The name of the medal, Evangelium Vitae, which is Latin for “Gospel of Life,” is the title of a 1995 papal encyclical by St. John Paul II. The encyclical mentions the word “abortion” 77 times, lamenting what it describes as a “pro-abortion culture” and contrasting what it calls a “culture of life” with a “culture of death.”

The letter says that recipients of Notre Dame’s Evangelium Vitae Medal have “suffered the ‘slings and arrows’ of the powers that be due to our countercultural insistence upon the value of every human life at every stage,” but have done so “gladly” or have “even hardly noticed them” because the Catholic faith and Catholic community “accompanied us, shielded us and wielded with intellectual vigor and even joy its 2,000 years of faith and reason in defense of life.”

A spokesman for Notre Dame contacted Monday morning by the Register said the university is standing by its past statements on the appointment of Ostermann. 

“Notre Dame’s commitment to upholding the inherent dignity of the human person and the sanctity of life at every stage is unwavering,” Notre Dame said in a written statement last week. “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 statement calls Ostermann a “deeply committed educator” and praises her as “a highly regarded political scientist and legal scholar” whose work studying India and Nepal “demonstrates the rigorous, interdisciplinary expertise required to lead the Liu Institute.” It also says that Ostermann “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.”

Notre Dame’s statement last week came after Bishop Kevin Rhoades, who leads the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, which includes Notre Dame, released an 1,150-word statement calling on Notre Dame to rescind the appointment of Ostermann, saying that it “understandably creates confusion in the public mind as to Notre Dame’s fidelity to its Catholic mission.”

Over the weekend, a spokesman for Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who leads the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, and who served as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2022 to 2025, told the Register that the archbishop supports Bishop Rhoades’ call for Notre Dame to rescind the appointment.

He joins at least nine other bishops who have expressed support for Bishop Rhoades, including Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; Winona-Rochester (Minnesota) Bishop Robert Barron; San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone; Denver Archbishop Emeritus Samuel Aquila; Green Bay Bishop David Ricken; Madison (Wisconsin) Bishop Donald Hying; Fort Worth Bishop Michael Olson; Gallup (New Mexico) Bishop James Wall; Lincoln (Nebraska) Bishop James Conley; and Springfield (Illinois) Bishop Thomas Paprocki.