Prof Susan Ostermann, a pro-abortion academic who had been appointed director of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, has declined to take up the position.
Susan Ostermann, an associate professor of global affairs at Notre Dame’s Keough School, had been due to succeed Michel Hockx, who has led the institute since 2016. She joined the university in 2017 and has served as a faculty fellow of the Liu Institute. Her academic work focuses on South Asian politics and regulatory compliance, including research on forestry conservation in India and Nepal and disaster mitigation in US territories funded by the National Science Foundation.
The controversy centres on articles she co-authored in 2022 in which she argued in favour of legal abortion. In one essay, written with former Notre Dame professor Tamara Kay, the authors contended that “almost 90 per cent of abortions occur during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy when there are no babies or fetuses”, and described abortion as safe, maintaining that it did not have long-term physical or mental health consequences. In another piece, they wrote that “criminalising abortion results in irreparable harm” and characterised abortion access as “freedom-enhancing”, arguing that it respected “the inherent dignity of women”.
The announcement came a day after Bishop Kevin Carl Rhoades led students of Notre Dame University in the rosary amid continuing controversy over the promotion of the pro-abortion professor.
Her appointment had prompted widespread indignation, including multiple professors cutting ties with the Liu Institute. Bishop Rhoades became a particularly vocal critic of the appointment. The 68-year-old prelate, who has served as Bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend in Indiana for more than a decade and a half, the diocese in which the university is located, released a statement on the diocesan website strongly criticising the appointment. He described Professor Ostermann as having attacked the pro-life movement, “using outrageous rhetoric” in nearly a dozen op-eds. He also criticised the professor’s claim that the pro-life position has its roots in “white supremacy and racism” and that misogyny is “embedded” in the movement.
He further pointed to what he described as a contradiction in a university that, as a Catholic institution committed to the life and dignity of the human person, had promoted an academic whose work he said ran contrary to that commitment. The bishop stated that the appointment “creates confusion in the public mind as to Notre Dame’s fidelity to its Catholic mission.”
The bishop prayed the rosary at the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, located within the university grounds. Dozens of the faithful joined him in what organisers described as an act of witness to the pro-life cause, including Luke Woodyard and Gabriel Ortner, two students organising “March on the Dome” on February 27, a demonstration against Ostermann’s appointment and what they say are concerns that Notre Dame’s Catholic identity is being sidelined.
Despite Ostermann declining the promotion, it is understood that the protest will still go ahead, with the Sycamore Trust, one of several groups organising the demonstration, noting that the “concerns of faithful students are not limited to one appointment.”
Ostermann’s decision to decline the post was communicated in an email to students of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs from the school’s dean on February 26. It is understood that Ostermann will remain a faculty member of the Keough School.
