(RNS) — What began as a faculty leadership appointment at the University of Notre Dame this winter has become a focal point in a broader negotiation between episcopal authority and institutional autonomy in Catholic higher education.

Earlier this year, Susan Ostermann, an associate professor of political science at the flagship Catholic university, was appointed to lead the Keough School of Global Affairs’ Liu Institute of Asia and Asian Studies, beginning July 1. No one doubts Ostermann’s credentials. Trained at University of California-Berkeley and Stanford Law School (she is also an attorney), she has written on regulatory enforcement, particularly in South Asia, and the effects of state power on vulnerable populations.

The controversy instead centers on about a dozen public essays she wrote in recent years with sociologist Tamara Kay, in which the co-authors argue that contemporary abortion politics in the United States cannot be understood apart from longer histories of racial hierarchy, immigration anxiety and demographic change. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in the Dobbs case overturning Roe v. Wade, they published an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune that cited World Health Organization data in estimating that unsafe abortions account for approximately 78,000 maternal deaths globally each year.

The objections to Ostermann’s appointment initially came from Notre Dame’s former president, the Rev. Jack Jenkins, and from the Rev. Wilson D. Miscamble, a historian at the school, who wrote in the conservative Catholic journal First Things that the school’s commitment to its Catholic character was “explicitly repudiated” by Ostermann’s appointment.

But what began as local opposition has evolved into a coordinated response from U.S. Catholic bishops. On Feb. 11, Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, whose diocese Notre Dame occupies, issued a statement urging the school’s leaders to rescind the appointment. Rhoades described Ostermann’s public support for legal abortion and her criticism of the modern pro-life movement as “outrageous” and “ludicrous,” saying her position “need not all be repeated here.” Her “disparaging and inflammatory remarks” about pro-life Catholics, he added, conflict with “a core principle of justice” central to Notre Dame’s mission.

In the days since, Bishops Robert Barron, Salvatore Cordileone, David Ricken, James Conley and others voiced support for Rhoades’ call. Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, issued a Feb. 16 statement offering Rhoades his “full support,” describing Ostermann’s appointment as “a direct slap in the face to the Church’s moral tradition.”

Besides bringing the number of objecting bishops to 10, Paprocki escalated the rhetoric of the opposition, arguing that “academic freedom does not obligate a Catholic university to entrust leadership to those whose public positions contradict essential moral truths.” Paprocki warned that selectively invoking Catholic social teaching, as Ostermann and Kay have in their essays, while rejecting what he described as its “foundational principle” — the dignity of life from conception — is “intellectually incoherent.”

Notre Dame occupies a distinctive place in American Catholic life. A major research university with global academic stature, it also claims a strong Catholic identity. Institutions that operate within this dual framework are accountable both to ecclesial authorities and to academic disciplines that prize contested inquiry and faculty governance.

Tensions between those commitments have become common in the past several decades, particularly over issues such as commencement speakers, honorary degrees and faculty appointments. In 2009, Jenkins withstood criticism for his invitation to President Barack Obama, who supports abortion rights, to address Notre Dame’s undergraduate commencement.

This dispute, however, centers not on a passing event or an outside speaker, but on an internal leadership appointment within a research institute. While they publicly urge the academic institution to reverse itself, they are showing themselves unwilling to engage Ostermann on intellectual terms. In this, the controversy underscores a recurring intellectual question in Catholic higher education: Who ultimately defines the boundaries of acceptable academic discourse within a Catholic institution? Bishops, administrators, faculty governance structures, prominent alumni groups or some combination of these?

The bishops who have spoken out make clear that they believe leadership roles at Catholic universities carry responsibilities distinct from those of faculty members at secular institutions — or even their own, given that Ostermann has taught at Notre Dame since 2017. Paprocki’s assertion that academic freedom does not require Catholic universities to appoint leaders whose views contradict “essential moral truths” reflects a longstanding ecclesial position that mission and governance cannot be separated.

At the same time, Catholic universities have historically defended a model of academic engagement that allows for scholarly inquiry into contested social and political issues, even when those inquiries challenge prevailing interpretations within the church. In our current religious and political landscape, that model is being tested in new ways.

One of her co-authored pieces has been especially galling to her critics because she links the anti-abortion movement to white supremacy. In it, Ostermann pointed to a 19th-century anti-abortion campaign led by physician Horatio Storer, who warned that declining birth rates among native-born white Protestant Americans would allow immigrants, meaning Catholics, as well as newly free Black people, to outnumber them. Reproductive debates at the time often intersected with anxieties about immigration, the end of slavery and religious and national identity. Whether one agrees with Ostermann’s interpretation or not, in other words, her argument situates contemporary abortion politics within broader social contexts — a core responsibility of academia.

The current dispute is not really about abortion policy but about how Catholic institutions respond when scholarly interpretations of history, epidemiology and sociological data collide with episcopal concerns about doctrine and dogma.

Notre Dame has not announced any change to Ostermann’s appointment. But with 10 bishops aligned against it and prominent Catholic leaders joining their call, the episode illustrates how quickly episcopal consensus can form around high-profile decisions at Catholic institutions.

The outcome may shape not only one institute’s leadership but also future negotiations over authority, mission and academic freedom within American Catholic higher education.

(Karen E. Park, a former professor of theology and religious studies at St. Norbert College, is the co-editor of American Patroness: Marian Shrines and the Making of US Catholicism. She writes on Substack at Ex Voto. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)