On Aug. 14, 2025, Bucknell announced to faculty and staff that the Bucknell University Press (BUP) will be shuttered at the end of the fiscal year, July 1, 2026. The Press, which is a not-for-profit entity that facilitates the publication of internationally sourced scholarly works, has been in operation since 1968.
Bucknell cited two primary reasons for the Press’s closure, which came amongst a flurry of budgetary cinching across the University: austerity measures, and that the Press is not sufficiently student-facing. Provost Wendy Sternberg elaborated on the thinking behind the decision, further clarifying that it was “strategic” and “mission-aligned” to ensure that “Bucknell’s resources, which are not unlimited, prioritize student-facing programs and initiatives.” The allocation of Bucknell’s resources is a complex budgeting process that, in the Provost’s words, is “prioritized with respect to [the] overall impact on the delivery of the undergraduate educational experience— our primary mission.” Her ultimate “recommendation to wind down the Press’ operations and cease operations as a scholarly publisher was approved by President Bravman and communicated to the Board of Trustees.”
While the effort to budget more deliberately and in a student-centric manner is legitimate, some members of the Press’s Editorial Board question the long-term, big-picture implications of the closure. By citing a lack of student involvement as a reason for shuttering the Press, the university is insinuating “that BUP does nothing for students,” which, to Associate Director of the Humanities Center and Affiliated Faculty in Critical Black Studies Paul Barba, “is also a gross misunderstanding of the purpose of scholarship— not to mention a failure to recognize the contributions of the Press’s student interns.” Indeed, BUP’s student intern program, which invites students of any major to participate in the processes of the Press, is the sole student-facing offering on Bucknell’s campus to supply real opportunities to those with a publishing interest.
The idea that the Press is “not sufficiently student facing” is, in a word, “inaccurate,” says Associate Professor of English and Board member Jeremy Chow. In his view, the reasons given “are not based on the real life impact of the Press on students and alumni,” an impact which will now be completely eliminated, with potentially bleak consequences. “[Closing BUP] isn’t a solution. It’s a haphazard slash and burn tactic that is as reckless as it is myopic.”
Dean of Library Services and fellow member of the Editorial Board Katherine Furlong, “always focus[es] on the people involved.” The BUP team, lead by Suzanne Guiod, “are consummate professionals” who had been working closely with the Library to digitize or unearth decades of scholarship—some published exclusively or “for the first time” by BUP—and make that work accessible worldwide. Their loss is personal, and extinguishes the “excitement” Furlong was feeling at the prospect of continuing to collaborate to “integrate more undergraduate research” and engagement into the Press. Though she understands the decision to close the Press, undoubtedly “a cost center,” was “a hard choice,” she feels it as “a great sorrow.”
Barba reiterates the value of the BUP team themselves. In his eyes, “BUP is evidence that a handful of extremely dedicated and talented people can run a very successful boutique scholarly publishing operation.”
Assistant Professor of Comparative & Digital Humanities and Affiliated Faculty in Latin American Studies D. Bret Leraul, feels similarly “demoralized.” Because of the way in which the Board was involved in the closure decision—they weren’t—Leraul no longer feels as propelled to “donate [his] time” above and beyond his service duties to the University. “The faculty [of the] editorial board was included in no conversations about the fate of the press,” he explains. “All that [extra] work” on the part of Leraul and the Board members was “far in excess,” but Leraul no longer feels compelled to put forth any additional time to his many volunteer efforts across the University, with which he now feels to be in a purely “transactional relationship.”
Chow was also “notified of the closure with the rest of the University community in August 2025,” a “shocking” means of learning the news that left him feeling “blindsided,” to put it mildly. Assistant Professor of Sociology and Affiliated Faculty in Critical Black Studies Emmanuel Cannady “can’t remember” a distinction between his learning of the closure and the announcement to the rest of the University community, as it was all happening “right around the same time.”
In the short term, the loss of the Press to the larger Bucknell population may not be overtly evident, but when considering the big-picture, Leraul feels the closure and how it was executed are evidence towards Bucknell “failing to care about [faculty] research” and ultimately offering “fewer benefits” for students to reap. “Everyone who gets a degree from [Bucknell], everyone who passes through here,” benefits from the active operations of the Press, which acts as “an anchor of the prestige of Bucknell University in amongst students, families and scholarly communities locally, nationally and internationally.” By summarily eliminating one of the University’s most publicly-facing “spaces for the production of knowledge,” Leraul is concerned that Bucknell’s official Carnegie Classification as a “research-intensive baccalaureate institution” is in danger. “Reputationally,” that research identifier is “very important” for the overall “prestige” of the University, as well as the degree to which Bucknell faculty are able to “bring [their] students along with [them] at the forefront of […] that process of producing knowledge.”
Barba agrees that “the closure is going to hit Bucknell’s global reputation hard.” Bucknell has name-brand recognition “in the mid-Atlantic region […] and in some other parts of the U.S.” as “a formidable liberal arts school,” but “much of Bucknell’s reputation worldwide comes from the Press’s cutting-edge, award-winning scholarship,” which enables academics to learn about the University and pursue connections with it, reinforcing Bucknell’s status as a monumental institution. “Killing BUP is a clear signal” to Barba that “the University is more concerned about pandering to ‘customers’ than fostering high-quality, low-cost scholarly production” that contributes to “a significant part of our identity as serious scholars.”
Leraul concurs. Presses represent “what a University does,” which is not, “as much as we like to believe these days,” about “a return on investment that we can see in students’ salaries and alumni donations”—though those elements have their place—but about “making human beings, […] civil society, [and] mission. It’s about values other than fiscal and pecuniary values,” and “goes so far beyond this reduction to exchange value.” The Press, to Leraul and others in the academic space, is more comprehensive than just the “$300,000 per year” in salaries; its loss will result in less significant “brand name recognition” for Bucknell families, because “Bucknell’s name will not circulate as far,” and it “will not have as good of a reputation” as it has enjoyed.
Sternberg, in her August announcement, noted that “the door remains open to alternative paths forward for the Bucknell Press at this time,” with “great potential for the Press to be reimagined in a way that supports undergraduate education” more overtly. Those conversations have yet to produce material results.
Barba, for one, sees the close of the Press as “a ‘fire bell in the night’ moment (to borrow a famous phrase from Thomas Jefferson).” Universities across the United States are facing “the delegitimizing of scholarly production,” and “publishing is only going to become harder for academics, especially if high-reputation presses are falling victim to cherry-picked ‘return-on-investment’ models.”
“Let us be clear: the losses are immeasurable,” Chow emphasizes, “and the durational effects of this short-sighted decision cannot yet be fully calculated.” This “current political moment in which anti-intellectualism has become commonplace, even cheered” is rife with “threats to intellectual and critical inquiry,” and closing “an intellectual enterprise” like the Press under such circumstances is, to Chow, “[an] assault against the university as an institution”— one that “is as embarrassing as it is galling.”
