Dear Colleagues:
On Friday, President M. Roy Wilson removed the Wayne Press from under the Dean of Libraries, Jon Cawthorne, and ordered that it report to him through his Chief of Staff, Michael Wright. He thanked Cawthorne, who was the author of the messy mid-day massacre of the three members of the senior staff of the Press, working through the Interim Director, Tara Reeser. With the remaining senior staff person resigning in protest, the destruction of the Press has been pretty much completed.
The assault on the Wayne Press by Jon Cawthorne was calculated and brutal. One can imagine a small group of senior colleagues working alongside one another for a long period of time, then seeing one of the members of that group advanced to a position of authority over the organization. What is hard to imagine is seeing that boss confront her three long-time colleagues in a meeting, and telling them without warning that they were immediately terminated, and ordering them out of the building under police guard. What was the Administration expecting: that the fired staffers would attack the Interim Director? Or, that they would start turning over tables and trashing the Press offices? No, this pitiless process is now the standard firing procedure in the Wilson Administration.
President Wilson’s solution to the fiasco perpetrated by Dean Cawthorne is to thank him, “for his support of the WSU Press over the past year.” He did not address how he and Chief of Staff, Michael Wright, who have no experience in the book publishing world, are going to rebuild the Press. A successful university press operates in an atmosphere of familiarity and trust between its authors and its editorial, design and production staff. Sixty of those authors have formally condemned the firings and demanded that those dismissed be rehired. Publishers Weekly reported that with the resignation of Senior Production Editor Carrie Downes Teefey the Press was left, “without design, editorial or production staff ---.”
Wilson declined to address the rehiring issue, promising Publishers Weekly that he would “hire contract workers as needed.” (February 14, 2020) His proposition that you could replace senior staff members with decades and decades of publishing experience with “contract workers” would be comical if the situation were not so serious. It seems clear that either President Wilson actually wants the Press to stay dead, or he vastly underestimates what a massive effort is necessary to rebuild the Press. The obvious solution is for him to swallow his pride, remove the Interim Director, and undertake to rehire the fired staffers. Want to take bets on what he does?
In solidarity,
Charles J. Parrish
President, AAUP-AFT, Local 6075, WSU Chapter
Vice President-at-Large, AFT Michigan
President, AAUP Michigan Conference
Member-at-Large, National Council, AAUP
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