On 30th October 2008, Andy Denis and I were invited to address the Committee of Heads of University Departments of Economics (CHUDE) and present the views on the peer review and benchmarking process in economics that had been developed by the Association for Heterodox Economics (AHE) in response to the enquiries initiated by the UK Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) on curriculum [benchmarking], on the [Research Allocation Exercise] (RAE) and the wider issue of peer review. We stressed the centrality of pluralism and the problems created by the ‘monotheoretic’ approach of these two exercises and conventional peer review processes, and raised the need for the Royal Economic Society (RES) to host a proper discussion on pluralism. It was agreed to propose a panel on pluralism to the RES, and CHUDE expressed provisional support for this proposal. We made this proposal, but it was not accepted by the RES.