Paradigmatic warfare: the struggle for the soul of economics at the University of Notre Dame

Between 2003 and 2010, the College of Arts and Letters of the University of Notre Dame had two rival economics departments, one that was resolutely mainstream and the other that was just as resolutely heterodox. This unusual organizational arrangement was an effort to accommodate a paradigmatic conflict about the kind of economic scholarship needed to lift the university in national rankings while, at the same time, maintaining its Catholic identity, a conflict that unfolded over three decades and that resulted, ultimately, in the closure of the heterodox department in July 2010 and a full embrace of mainstream economics. This article traces the history of this conflict and documents the kind of organizational, political, and personal issues that together influenced this extended, intense, and highly divisive case of paradigmatic warfare. Our analysis shows how the goal of becoming a major research university and the use of rankings to measure the performance of academic departments created contested terrain, where existing interests and commitments struggled to maintain legitimacy in the face of the emergence of new strategic priorities and set off a variety of conflicting moves and counter moves that engaged identity and power and that required forceful leadership to resolve.