By Glenn Yoder
Citing “financial strain” as a key factor, Provost Ahmed Abdelal announced this week that the university will stop subsidizing the Northeastern University Press at the end of 2004.
In the past two years, the publishing community has seen a downward trend in book sales, primarily due to the economy’s slump after September 11, Abdelal said.
In defense of his position, Abdelal said “smaller presses such as ours are particularly vulnerable.” How-ever, former Dean, Director and Editor-in-Chief of the Northeastern University Press William Frohlich said he sees this as a rash decision.
“The University Press world has been suffering for the past few years, but there’s two and a half million more unemployed Americans because we’re not fully out of the recession we were in,” Frohlich said. “It is understandable that in bad economic times, people don’t buy as many books. But there is no way of predicting when times will get better for university presses.”
Over the past two years, the Northeastern University Press’ losses climbed from about $100,000 to what President Richard Freeland suggested in a letter was nearly $600,000 this year, College of Arts and Sciences Dean James Stellar said.
“I’ve heard numbers,” Frohlich said. “They never frightened the administration in the years I was here, I don’t understand why suddenly that general sum of money becomes unacceptable. If it becomes unacceptable, you sit down and figure out how to cut it back a bit to what is acceptable to you because scholarly book publishing is important to academic enterprise.”
Frohlich founded the Press in 1977 and headed it until June 2003. During this time, he said he dealt with understanding administration and never faced severe economic crisis or strain.
“University presses, like academic departments, have to be subsidized,” he said. “There’s no way a small university press can break even or make profit. The amount of losses depend on the quality of the year, and because there is no consistent loss level, it was all over the place. Some years were much better than other years.”
One of the university’s main plans is to expand the library collection, Abdelal said. However, Frohlich said he believes there isn’t a shortage of money and there should be enough to go around.
“I’m puzzled because these aren’t hard economic times for the university — they’re proud that they have better applicants, the quality of the student body is increasing and now, one of the positive elements they have had for a long time, they have thrown out with the bathwater,” he said. “It’s not based on need that they made this decision, they simply decided in their wisdom that it wasn’t worth the subsidy.”
The decision to close the Press after 27 years of service was made through the Provost’s Office without input from faculty, causing a flourish of e-mails and debate over two sides of the subject: whether the decision-making process should have been public and whether the decision was right.
“At a purely procedural level, it seems an affront to the university community that this decision be made unilaterally and without any prior discussion or consultation,” Stephen Nathanson, the professor and acting chair of the department of philosophy and religion, wrote to the provost in an e-mail.
A Faculty Senate meeting scheduled today in the Egan Research Center will discuss the decision and the possibility of reversing it.
“I would hope that the campus and community reaction to this decision would be so widespread and persistent that finding a way to keep the press alive becomes not only the prudent but the pragmatic choice,” said Associate Professor of Journalism Charles Fountain, a member of the Northeastern Press Board.
However, even those greatly opposed to the closing said the possibility of a decision reversal is distant.
“If they had involved the faculty early on and still made the decision then I could see the possibility there might be a reversal, but this decision was made behind closed doors by two or three people,” Frohlich said. “If the process had been different then I could be more optimistic. That doesn’t mean I don’t hope the university will reverse itself, but the process they followed in reaching this conclusion makes me very pessimistic about a willingness to rethink their decision.”
One of the main reasons for Frohlich’s belief that the decision won’t be reversed is Press staff members have already been told to look for new jobs. Vice Provost for Faculty and Budget Patricia Maguire Meservey said those most affected by the closing will be the staff members of the Press.
“Their position will be ending over the next six months,” Meservey said. “We are working with them to see if there are positions within Northeastern for which they would be qualified and have provided outplacement services to assist them in finding new positions.”
The Press has stopped accepting new titles and Meservey said they are searching for other companies and universities to print current titles, although no outlets have been named at this time. While Meservey said she feels the decision will not affect the university’s push for top 100 status since many high-ranking schools don’t have presses, the end of the local and national acclaim that the Press brought to the school may play a role in lowering the university’s reputation.
“It seems to me that we make a lot of noise about getting into the top 100 and, if I understand correctly, general reputation figures into that,” Associate Professor of Journalism William Kirtz said. “The Press really enhances our reputation nationally, like the New York Times Book Review and the New York Review of Books. When we’re reviewed, we see that in there and I think that’s very helpful … The Press is really an ornament to us and it brought us a lot of reputation.”
Frohlich said Meservey was the only member of the group that made the decision that spoke to him prior to its announcement.
“I feel it is a loss to the university,” Meservey said. “The work of the Press has been of the highest caliber. Regretfully, though, we cannot sustain the subsidy and achieve our primary goals.”
While there is significant resistance to the decision, some members of the university community have come forward to support the Provost.
“I support the Provost,” said Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences James Stellar. “He has to make very hard decisions, including hiring other professors and faculty. I have made some of these very hard decisions myself, and on a generic basis, I support him.”
During the Press’ life span, it published between 34 to 36 books per year and had over 200 titles in print. Two years ago, it scored a New York Times Best Seller with Simon Reeve’s “The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden, and the Future of Terrorism,” which sold over 70,000 copies.
“After I retired on June 30, 2003, the university decided not to find a replacement for me but to in fact close the Press,” Frohlich said. “I think it was a tragic decision. They claim it was simply based on priorities and money issues, but the university for 27 years invested in building a reputable university press, and without any discussion with people in the press or with faculty members on the editorial board, they made a decision not to try to cut its expenses but to try to eliminate it. It’s very, very sad. [The Press] was a jewel in the university’s crown, and I think it’s very short-sided to throw away 27 years of building and prestige. It just can’t be justified on the grounds that the budget is so bad at the university.”