What we do here for the past 20 plus years. Have the havely featured in orientses programming, our plays and weekly and yearly best seller liveses so shows our Customer Base loves them as well. A couple of housekeeping things before i move over to the lovely panel. We have a lot of book for sale up here. We do not have a register up here so feel free to take a bunch, get them signed and pay for them on the way out so you can be here from years to come. You may have noticed the cameras. Cspan is here so when we get to the q a portion, if you have a question, make sure you wait for the mic to get to you so that we can hear the question as well as see you. So ill turn it over to our panel. Great. Thank you, kyle. Hello and welcome to our University Press week celebration. Im fred and im the director or fordham University Press. This is our eighth annual up week. Have been a member of the task force since 2014 and chair person for two of those years. This year the theme is read, think, act. To help us prepare for the 2020 election and deal with the tumultuous political and cultural environment we find ourselves in now. How do University Presses contribute to the conversation and create a sense of community and collaboration as we impact the difficult and often controversial topics such as immigration, race, artificial intelligence, climate change, and so much more. Why do we do what we do and why do authors choose to publish with University Presses . Thats why we are here. Well hear from editors and authors from the major new york city presses, columbia, forwardham and nyu. Were Mission Driven and will willing to take chances. Au presses executive director, said University Presses champion authors whose works can make a real difference and how owl of us think but politics, religion, economic, science, technology, human rights and the natural world, among other important topics. Without University Presses many of these ideas would never make it into broader conversation. We are proud to make this aspect of our communes work and the impact it can have, our theme for University Press week 2019, read, think, act. There is a reading list including an online gallery of covers highlighting books from 75 University Presses that best represent the theme of read, think, act go to au presses. Org. I recommend you check it out. A verbal and intellectual feast. Also more than 40 presses have signed up to participate in never week, 2019 blog tour, organized around these themes. How to be a better global citizen, how to speak up and speak out. How to be environmentally steward. How to build community. How to practice compassion. Last week i was entered viewed by a journalist from fox media and she asked me how to do readers engage with University Press books and i said that choo shoo go into book stores and look around so many University Press books here its fantastic and we need to do more to support our local independent book stores. Thanks to poock culture for supporting the University Presses and hosting this event testimony. I want to wednesday we created great bags for University Press week. Read, think, act, and fordham University Press. If you buy a book youll get the back and a readup bookmark. So, id like the editors and authors from the University Presses to introduce themselves and give a brief overview of their book and how i ties into this years theme of read, think, act and then ask questions and turn it over to the audience to ask their own questions and so will reported start with columbia. Great. Really happy to about here. That was a great introduction the value of the University Presses. My name is hannah, and im a professor at nyus gal lat tan school of individualized study, and we have the books im here to talk about today specifically is a book that is being published by columbia University Press, its called whistleblowerring nation, the history of National Security disclosures and the cult of state secrecy. And so everyone knows theres a lot of talk about hissing blowing in the news today and in contemporary politics but outside of a few major figures, the history of that phenomenon is really underexamined. This is an edited volume that examines that history from the era of world war i to the present, and it really attempts to apply interdisciplinary approaches so we have historians, we have political theorists, literary scholars, trying to move beyond cliches that tend to dominate the way we talk and fight over whistleblowers so generally speaking whistleblowers are heroes or traitors. How can we break past that binary and examine some more structural develops over the last century with respect to thisphone. Phenomenon so its trying to get more systemic and think but the whistleblower, the phenomenon, the states response it to, the historical conscious of that phenomenon, the popular cultural of that phenomenon, and needless to say, it would be really difficult to publish that kind of book with a commercial press. There are loads of booked but hissing blowing whistle blowing but they tend to reinforce the clear shares were trying to get past, whistleblower are heroes, theyre traitor, always had whistleblowers. Its american as apple pie. Or that the state only clamps down on whistleblowers. Theres nothing in between. So its really the place of University Presses, i think, that value a more nuanced a progression, a more indepth approach and also multiauthorred book. The idea of an edited involve is becoming increasingly difficult to publish, wind the University Presses and certainly in a commercial environment. Impossible. So, briefly, read to dig deeper, into the phenomenon of whistle blowing, think beyond the tired binaries that too often constrain the way we think and talk and act about in relation whistle blowing and then act supporting whistleblowers, certainly, but not just in partisan ways, not just thinking about the current moment and people who are speaking out against trump, though thats great. But how do we think in a more antisystemic fashion about the whistleblowers that dont get attention. That historically both democrats and republicans have persecuted and jailed and also protecting journalists who are increasingly being then threatened in the same ways that whistleblowers have historically, so read, think, act. Great. So im will. I work in editorial at fordham University Press and the book im their discuss, along with lauren, a contributor to book, asia another edited collection whose middle ages, teachable moments for an illused past. This is also a very interdisciplinary book of the kind that really could only happen at a University Press. A lot of our historians talking with literary people, with historians, all across the spectrum of people who study the premodern field. This book is growing out of a longstanding need within that field, which is the field that attracts a great number of reactionaries among its fans. Adolph hitler was a huge fan know middle ages as are lot of spree shooter, the shooters in norway and new zealand, about considered themselves crusaders and were not only using the language of civilizational warfare but were citing crusade scholarship in their manifestos and their construction of what they were trying to do. So, in many ways the need for work like this has existed since the 30s and its been happening but happening within the confines of the academy. Occasionally people will speak out but more so the middle ages have existed as a space for imagination and play and religious, putting whatever you want to communicate on to them. Theyre a canvas. So, in the wake of the charlottesville protest. The unite the right rally, there was this moment when a lot of mid evillists said we need to do something about this, and this book came out of that. That was not the only such effort. I should mention, jonathan shoe and julies park short bib logograph of race in the middle ages. They have been active trying bring about to structural change in the academy and how we deal with the power structures especially in the field of studies and outside of them. What the book looks at in 25 essays is stuff thats broken through into the popular consciousness, Something Like sharia law, which is used as a punching bag but actually means something much dryer and more benign that what sean hannity talking about it for. Trade routes. So much ivory in Midevil Europe and all coming from africa so obviously there was contact with africa. A basic thing that is left out of most history, most popular history. I hate it when people say historians dont know about this because historian does know and they tell University Presses. So, among those various responses to charlottesville and just all of the heated and heightened rhetoric around the past, i like to think of this as the distinctly up response, written for general audiences but in that writing the authors are all constrained by the rigor of the academy. Its not like its a bit like a textbook but it is its maintains the thing that make scholarship different from other writing. Its original scholarships, it is careful writing that makes special point to be rigorous and Peer Reviewed and all that stuff that makes it a University Press book. I would be remiss not to mention that as a product of the University Press system, this book contains replicates many of the power structures that grouped live the midevillists of color speak out against and continue to speak out against, questions about what kind of work counts and what kind of work is cvable which may not be the right crowd to discuss this with but we need to discuss ourselves, read, think and act about, as we build our publication programs. Butve all, University Press publishing is an ecosystem. Not every book that we push, many books we pressure do not directory address the present social need and every book that addresses a pressing social need is necessarily going to leave a whole lot out but as long as we listen generously and work together, we are contributing to the better world that is knowledge and thoughtfulness can create. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. Im lauren and one of the authors in this edited collection and ill tell you but my essay so you get a sons the, we and also an assistant professor of history at brooklyn college. This editor of of this will volume asked me to respond to the book the benedict option pushed in 2017. And rod dreher is a Christian Conservative who is actually one of the favorite goto darlings of the liberal media, so the liberal media enjoys rod dreher and quote him often and interview him often. A new new yorker piece about hid david brooks called his book the most important religious book of our decade. And this book spends time sort of speaking to Christian Conservatives and saying that the republican establishment has betrayed Christian Conservatives, that it has not protected them from the ideals of the enlightenment, from capitalism, the lgbtq agent which is what he callsle and they should make like st. Benedict who is a sixth century monk and and they should police in little arcs in the bar barrett of the how people should live and his experience living with benedictine commune in italy. One of the first things i do to critique drehers argument is to note that medieval months did not monks did not call what theyre were doing living in arcs. They called what they were doing living in tabernacles which is different, dwelling pace among the people. And monks in establishing monasteries war not interested in homogenous voters and reconciling a diversity of experiences that people came into the monastery with, instead of streamlining them and making them all one they had to reconcile with that very complicated diversity. And the point of this is say and one reason why it does way in a University Press book is its trying to notice the gray in history instead of the black and white. Very similar to what hannah was saying but people look at the middle ages and say barbarian arizona dark age or arcs in he mid of a bare bare rick age and we need to understand that people were elsewhering with a diverse and complicated sew it. The same way we and are in order to understand or diverse and complicated society we can loot at societies that have elsewhered he with something sim lawyer and understand though they grappled with the gray area instead of just a black and white understanding to the historical past. Fabulous. I am coauthor with kenneth smith. Our book is stay woke, peoples guide to making all black lives matter, and the process for us working with nyu press has been fabulous and very mump the idea for the book started in house at the press, and came to i feel like you so be the one telling the story, but since were going in order i guess ill tell part of that. So, because candace has pressured previously with nyu press and they knew this was part of her wheelhouse is looking at black politics in the United States, and seeing what is happening what was unfolding with black lives matter she we were starting to collect data in a nationwide survey about peoples opinions about black lives matter, and so she asked if i wanted to do part of this. As we started to craft the book it started to become a different book than what we had originally thought it would be. It wasnt going to be so much a book about what people thought about black lives matter or precisely what were the politics involved in black lives matter so much as why did this even happen at all . What was setting the stage for this and why was it necessary . And we like to sea to point out, in second term of americas first black and biracial president and we started writing this book to fill what we felt like was a bit of a void in our own to talk to our students and to get them engaged and make this information that she and i have been reading other University Press books, learning about the United States and race and racism and trying to distill is in a way that was accessible to students but also to readerships beyond the classroom and so we ended up writing this book, which has now like something that really digs deep into uncomfortable questions but is providing some guidance and some questions to mull over in Group Settings together. So, i feel like shy kind of spread this around a little bit. Hi. Theres a small emergency in the background that other people cant see. My name is candace smith. Im associate professor of Political Science and africanamerican studies a penn state and the coauthor. This miss second book with nyu press. Its my third University Press book. And i wanted to highlight two things, i think really just kind of mimicking and mirroring what folks have contribute it already is i think people who are really interested in who follow the news, we tend to interact with the news as if every is an anecdotes or happening for the first time and we know that many scholars spend their lives digging into one particular set of patterns and so turns out there are an array of scholars who know a lot of stuff about sometimes one thing but the thing were talking about at the moment, like whistle blowing, people that study patterns and we know that the plural of anecdote is not data. Data is data. Thats for me one of the Important Reasons to shift ahead and give attention to University Presses. I think the book at University Presses that form is really important, too, because in academia, one of the kind of current sis currencies of deem ya is the article and the article is often published in a place where very few people can access that thing. Or its very expensive. And eileen and the folk at nyu press have been i dont know how they do it. You can explain. But our work becomes more accessible just by the sheer being in a book store and being affordable and n a way that the kind of highly technical, hard to read, Journal Articles arent. And so those are two reasons i would say that makes University Presses important to me and my work and my career, that just to dovetail that the University Press process produces credibility because our peers are reviewing it, our peers are critiqueing it, our peers are helping to make what we do better and that allows to us produce a work that people can read, think about and can better understand the way that our world works. We can and can act. We can call our legislators, we can rant on twitter. We can write and inform our neighbors on particular issues of the day. Hi. Im eileen, and i am executive editor of social sciences at nyu press. And so i get to work on all manner of book in the social sciences. A lot of books on politics, current events, books on womens steweds lgbtq studies and booked that are important, cutting edge, that have something to say, and i think one thing to think about is that the University Presses do really well, which is to go out like to think about what are the ideas in sort of the atmosphere out there, that are important and how can we distill them, and n a serious, thoughtful, deep way, to a broader audience, and so i think that this book is a great example of