Inaugural Message
Director, Wayne State University Press
June 2026
“While I enjoy public speaking, what I like even more is getting stuff done.”— Barbara Kline Pope, 2014 Inaugural Address
“We can do a great deal about [the future] by implementing the truth that serious publishing, if it be well and interestingly performed, prepares the key minds of a society for new knowledge and new social action.”—William Sloane, 1970 Valedictory Address
I am deeply honored to serve as President of this esteemed association. The past year of work as President-elect has been an education and a good time. Many thanks to the superbly professional and patient Central Office, the Association’s executive director Peter Berkery, and presidential priors Dennis Lloyd and Anthony Cond for their guidance and support.
Reading back through many presidential letters since 1959, I note the frequent recurrence of three themes: economic fluctuations that revise expectations for monograph sales (often the writer speaks only of those sales to libraries, which once were—believe it—a sufficient contribution to annual revenue); agita about institutional support for presses; and fears raised by the headwinds of new technologies (a 1965 document refers to the nascency of libraries’ photocopying as a threat to the market for academic books, ha ha). Scattered among these are occasional mentions of diversity, of collaboration, and of a longing for innovation within our sphere (including regional and trade books among our systemic innovations.)
We live in a time of economic shifts, changing reading and research habits, relentless technological advances and distraction, and, in the US and many other places, a sharp and alarming political divide alongside threats to the democracy and civil rights that we had come to believe were worth past sacrifices.
As an international organization, the demographic diversity among staffs, who shape not only the books but also what audiences they reach and how they reach them, has historically been and is now a near-monoculture. In the plant world, monocultures rapidly deplete the soil, reduce biodiversity of pollinators, and become vulnerable to disease. While in composite the publishers represented by AUPresses are not yet suffering a lack of bibliodiversity, demonstrably and persistently distressed, or operating on fallow ground, in the US and elsewhere, the cultural, technological, political, and financial shifts away from our most essential values are eroding confidence in our endeavor.
Now is a good time to remember how to be agile, resilient, and versatile, and to share those skills across the lines of work.
In 2004, during the George W. Bush administration, our esteemed (recently retired) colleague Douglas Armato correctly described the perils during his Inaugural Address:
“When we disparage the monograph, determine however regretfully that any area of scholarship is no longer worth publishing, or judge a book solely by its advance sale to the superstores—when, in tough times, our balance shifts from mission to survival—we contribute, however reluctantly, to the American tendency to simplistically equate commercial success with social value—a tendency that is already taking its toll on the vitality of the American music industry, filmmaking, radio broadcasting, newspapers, and electoral politics. In doing so, we contribute to a social ill that threatens not just scholarly publishing but universities themselves and society at large—and here I refer to the erosion of civil society and the rise of the entrepreneurial university.”
If you’re feeling a tension between mission and survival, read Mr. Armato’s remarks and remember that our current moment requires scrupulous attention to our own standards. Like him, I come from a marketing background and lean strongly into the communication part of scholarly communication. I believe that the rich mix of information we publish should be delectably prepared and inescapable. Gaining the visibility we need to truly make the work of scholars and professionals generally known is made more difficult by the hour.
My priority over the next year is to do all I can to help us go forth with confidence, secure in the fulfillment of our essential mission—to advance knowledge and to diffuse it far and wide. The new PBS Books Pilot Project, for example, will feature AUPresses member authors in national programming with tools for public librarians to foster discussion in their communities.
Addressing intractable systems of exclusion and oppression that are historic and multifarious is not something we can do in a few years of intermittent focus. We should always look critically at ourselves and our peers, and address the many ways we marginalize, minimize, and discourage staff from minoritized groups from remaining in this work long enough to effect change. We should always seek to learn from others and create enough safety for people to thrive, to make mistakes, to inhabit this occupation.
We publish compelling books and tell people about them. Let’s allow the work we talk about our books doing in the world help us reimagine and revise our own organizations and the activities of the Association. What I hope to cultivate over the next year is productive discussion with AUPresses participants about the great challenges we face, along with vetting and actioning out deployments against them. What I hope to foster is an environment where we can act on opportunities to truly innovate, to be conversant with one another, and most of all to do the work.