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The original was posted on /r/professors by /u/DrSpacecasePhD on 2023-10-05 18:31:02.

Hi everyone! I do my teaching in the natural sciences, but also follow some goings on in the literary world and thought you all would empathize with this. Mods, let me know if this is inappropriate and I’ll take it down. If you want to skip to the ‘drama,’ it’s after the line break down below.

Anyway, as you all likely know, publishing in literary magazines is difficult to say the least, and the publishing world at large has been struggling. Unlike publications in many of our fields which have a very niche audience, the goal in literature is to get exposure from broad audiences. As a result, submitting (and being published in) older, well-known lit magazines is ‘prestigious’ and good for careers in a similar fashion to getting a manuscript in Nature, Science, or Cell.

If you search for prestigious literary reviews, you’ll see a list including The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and yes - The Gettysburg Review. It’s one of those journals that creative writing faculty would love to have listed in their publication lists. As wikipedia explains, it is a frequent source of material for anthologies like The Best American Essays, The Best American Poetry, and The Best American Short Stories series and has included writing from the likes of E. L. Doctorow, Rita Dove, and Joyce Carol Oates.

Enter yesterday’s drama. Gettysburg Review was informed by the college’s administration that they’re shutting down the publication, essentially without having consulted the editors at all. The administration cited budgetary concerns and declining college enrollments, and that they have to focus "on the programs and activities that directly and significantly enhance student demand and the overall student experience.” English and literature is relatively one of their bigger departments (4% of students) along with history for obvious reasons (8%), and they’d even recently gotten a donation from a former English major to the tune of $10 million.

As you can imagine, this stirred up quite a bit of drama in the literary world, along with emails to the university president and provost. It has come out that apparently neither of them had heard of the journal, and neither had the admissions department. An email soon went out from the admin to students and faculty declaring that yes, the cut was official, and leadership have been citing budgetary concerns and potential layoffs to turn it into a sort of Hunger Games competitive scenario. To no one’s surprise, they also began blocking emails.

In some ways, I’m not shocked. Perhaps the magazine was a victim of its own success, being too high tier for student writers to publish in. Puzzlingly, no efforts were made to reach out to the editors, strategize on grant funding, seek a buyer for the publication, or find a donor to keep it going. Admin also seemed unaware of the journal’s student internship program, and did not seek to bargain over who gets published e.g. to create opportunities for outstanding student authors from GC to get exposure in the journal.

The university student newspaper has a great overview of the story that’s worth a read. We all deal with admin headaches sometimes, but this one seems to be next level.