Crewe and Henry mentioned actively participating in the Women’s March. Crewe specified there was an urgency to act “after Trump’s inauguration.” Henry described the event: “One of the most profound experiences for me was marching with my daughter this year—for the Women’s march and also for the March for Science—the latter of which the UC Press marched in as a group, after an incredibly creative sign-making festival. I think living by doing, and modeling by doing, are essential. My daughter shares my pride in being the first female director at PUP, but her first question on hearing that news was, ‘why did it take them so long?’”
“Henry was a Peace Corps baby, born in Cote d’Ivoire. My parents were both educators. I met my husband at Dartmouth, and followed him to Chicago, where he pursued a PhD in anthropology.” She started working for the University of Chicago Press. Their kids, Ellie (13) and Jack (11), attended the University of Chicago Lab schools.
Recently we have seen the closing of a few small university presses, including Rice University Press, Iowa State University Press, and most recently, Duquesne University Press. Ivy League presses have not suffered a loss yet. As Scott Sherman wrote in his The Nation article: “Most presses receive annual subsidies that tend to range from $150,000 to $500,000, while a handful of presses, such as Yale, Princeton and Harvard, enjoy the feathery cushion of an endowment”. Since 1999 at CUP, Crewe: “Managed my own $2.6 million list with front-list sales of $1.2 million.” In an article about Crewe in Self Awareness, Columbia’s Provost, John H. Coatsworth commented that one of the reasons she was chosen was because she “negotiated an agreement for the Press to distribute Woodrow Wilson Center books” during her interim appointment. The interim post was a frustrating spot for Crewe as the university delayed the hire, despite Crewe having taken “the position knowing that I was going to be a candidate for the permanent job.”
Crewe explained the philosophy that has kept her and CUP at the top amidst devastation at some other presses: “American university presses are not-for-profit organizations. But we are also not-for-loss. The University gives us a subsidy equivalent to 8.5% of our operating budget. The rest must come from sales. The University also covers a portion of our rent.” The Nation article did not specify that CUP was among the cushioned Ivy Leaguers. And indeed, Crewe clarified that: “CUP does not have an endowment.” This lack has meant that CUP is “the smallest of the Ivy presses,” which has “managed to succeed even without the help of an endowment.” The main job of the director is to juggle the balance between the need for sales revenue and the need to publish high quality scholarship. As Henry puts it, university presses are, “trying to make the world a smarter place.” Crewe elaborated on this juggling act: “The most stressful thing is worrying about whether we can make our sales budget every year. As with other businesses we are at the mercy of market forces and it’s difficult to sell enough copies of many books to earn back our costs. So, we are beginning a fund-raising program and we are publishing more course adoption books and general interest books that do better than break-even.”
One of the distinctions between CUP and the other Ivy League presses is that, according to Crewe, up until January 2016, it was “a separately incorporated not-for-profit company. I was very pleased about our move into the University—indeed, I requested it—as it brought us closer intellectually to the university and it was beneficial to our staff in myriad practical ways. When we were integrated and became a unit of Columbia University, under the office of the Provost, I was given the title change to Associate Provost and Director. This title clearly signaled to the community how integrated we had become.”
As a non-profit, CUP actively courted distribution, fundraising and other opportunities that other Ivy League presses did not need to pursue. The need for a strong director that made a positive difference probably made CUP the type of environment where the first female Ivy League director could flourish.
Upon reviewing the statistics from the Publishers Weekly story above, Christie Henry commented: “These numbers are really discouraging, and I aspire to be a disrupter to these statistics. And at this salary differential, those women who opt to engage in family life and parenting, the decision has to be made about whether to spend an entire paycheck on daycare. We, as a community, face the same sort of responsibilities that most industries face in terms of retention through the parenting years, but I have also long appreciated the flexibility and adaptive nature of the publishing world, particularly the university press world. And I am hopeful we can see more growth in the ranks of female managers.”
The mere survival of scholarly publishing in the anti-intellectual climate in America today is heroic. Surviving and thriving in Ivy League presses is harder to attain than an Olympic medal. There have been nearly 30,000 Olympic medals awarded and only 2 female Ivy League press directors across world history. With odds like this, somebody should be singing something about the great work women like Jennifer Crewe are doing for the rest of womankind
Anna Faktorovich, Ph.D., is the Founder, Director, Designer and Editor-in-Chief of the Anaphora Literary Press, which has published over 200 titles in non-fiction, fiction and poetry.