The group of students and alumni responsible for this blog, Open Economics ND, has launched a petition seeking to save and strengthn the Department of Economics and Policy Studies at Notre Dame, which has recently been handed a death sentence. Signing this petition will ensure that the administration cannot close the department with impunity. The petition reads:
A Petition to Save and Strengthen a Liberal Arts Economics Education at Notre Dame
Dean John McGreevy and the Administration at the University of Notre Dame have recently announced plans to dissolve the Department of Economics and Policy Studies. This will effectively eliminate pluralism and alternative perspectives from the economics education offered at the University of Notre Dame.
The mission of the Department of Economics and Policy Studies is to teach economics and to conduct research in a distinctive way that is: “Committed to values and socio-economic justice. Open to alternative theories and approaches. Interested in devising effective policies. Providing students with solid training in economics that matters.” (http://econpolicy.nd.edu/about)
We – the undersigned students, alumni, faculty, and supporters of a liberal arts economics education – oppose the decision to close the Department of Economics and Policy Studies and call for a strengthening of the liberal arts approach to economics education at Notre Dame.
Please sign the below petition, spread the word, and if possible send an email to the Dean John.T.McGreevy.5@nd.edu and Provost tburish@nd.edu . Let them know who you are and express your disapproval of “the decision to undermine a liberal arts economics education at Notre Dame.” Please also send a copy of your message to OpenEconomicsND@gmail.com so that we can keep track of the campaign and inform you about the results.
This department’s closing is a local symptom of a global problem. Take action: please sign the petition, tweet it, blog it, and send it to everyone you know who is concerned with the future of the economics discipline.
I would not be an economist today if it weren’t for Notre Dame’s heterodox economics program. I was not interested in just learning economic orthodoxy. I already knew that traditional economics was too divorced from real life and too much of a cheer-leading squad for unregulated markets, and it had been hard for me to sit on my hands during my undergraduate economic education at the U of IL.
I entered the program in 1994 and received both a masters and PhD in economics from the program in 1997 and 2000 respectively. Notre Dame was perfect for me. I cherish every moment of Chuck Craypo’s labor economics classes, David Ruccio’s Marxist economics classes, Mary Wolfson’s post-Keynesian finance class, Phil Mirowski and Ester Miriam Sent’s theory classes, and Patrick Mason’s classes on the economics of racial disparities. They opened up wonderful worlds to me.
Chuck died this year. Patrick moved to FU the same year I moved to Florida. I see that David is still at ND. I’m not sure where others are (do you know where Ester Miriam-Sent is?), but I can’t imagine being happy getting “farmed out” to non-economics departments. These great teachers and researchers have made names for themselves in the heterodox world and they deserve better.
To me, it seems like the end of era. It is another sign of the very commercial times–only programs that make a university a lot of money have the right to exist. Only programs that support the status quo have a right to exist. Even in universities with a social-justice mission like ND. It makes me both sad and frightened that the world has come to this. But I’m glad that I had the opportunity to study in this program before it succumbed to this trend.
I realize that this is more of an epitaph than a call to save the department, but since it is a done deal, an epitaph seems appropriate.