CHCI Statement in Support of Stanford University Press

Last week the Stanford University Provost Persis Drell announced the elimination of essential, yet comparatively modest support for Stanford University Press (SUP), one of the most important publishers of research in the humanities. This withdrawal of support would have had a devastating effect on SUP and on the production and dissemination of research in the humanities. While the elimination of support for SUP has now been deferred for a year, the future of SUP remains uncertain.

The Board of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), which represents more than 250 humanities centers on six continents, affirms the importance of university presses, in general, and Stanford University Press, in particular. Many of our members are SUP authors and virtually all of our members have benefitted from SUP books, which have fostered new knowledge and pathbreaking research across and between disciplines. The disappearance of SUP, which the elimination of the University’s $1.7 million contribution would have precipitated, would have been a massive loss for scholars and students across the humanities. Given Stanford’s position of leadership, its decision could justify the devaluation of other presses and humanities research at many less well-endowed institutions. We acknowledge Provost Drell’s reconsideration of her position and urge her to affirm the intellectual value of Stanford University Press and reinvest university resources in it beyond 2020.

We invite CHCI members who might wish to sign a petition opposing the defunding of the press to do so here.