This thesis details the origins of the Committee on Public Policy Studies (the present-day Harris School of Public Policy) at the University of Chicago from 1969 to 1974 as a case study in organizational emergence. Combining historical methods with a processual sociological approach, I interrogate the social processes that led to the organizational decision to move forward with the program despite limited funding and tepid faculty support owing to concerns that it challenged the University’s institutional identity and myths. By examining the intra-organizational dynamics of a university that stood at odds with the inter-organizational market pressures of the time, I offer a counterpoint to the conventional institutionalist explanation for the emergence of policy schools and argue that the Chicago decision reflected a great gamble – symbolically and financially – opened up by the flux of events during a time of great uncertainty in higher education. Filling a critical gap in the University of Chicago’s historiography, I demonstrate how the new policy program ultimately resulted in the replication of the University’s intellectual tradition while at the same time introducing the possibility for organizational transformation by synthesizing the paradoxical logics of its myths with the market. In doing so, this thesis serves as both a cautionary tale about the power of myths and a hopeful tale about the possibilities for new markets for contemporary universities as they face, once again, extraordinary financial challenges and social unrest.