The Notre Dame story is quite troubling. Notre Dame had had a few good liberals and even a UMass Marxist. As I understand it, Notre Dame made its attempt to become a first-line economics department by hiring Phil Mirowsky and offering him to right to oversee several hires.
Mirowsky and the people around him were doing first-rate work. It was not political at all -- as I understand it. Mirowsky and Esther Sent were both being published by Cambridge, but not in Econometrica. So the problem does not seem to be one of threatening politics, but merely veering off the course of conventional economics.
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Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901