2016 AAUP Constituency Award

This past June, the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) gathered in Philadelphia to discuss trends and innovation in the university press publishing realm. While there, our own editorial director, Mr. Greg Britton, was awarded the AAUP Constituency Award for 2016. Per tradition, the award is presented at The New York Review of Books reception, which was held this year at The Barnes Foundation. Friend and colleague Mr. Paul Murphy, manager of publishing at The RAND Corporation, gave a speech highlighting Britton’s legacy of excellence in publishing. Below you will find the text of Murphy’s speech.

Congratulations, Greg Britton!

The AAUP Constituency Award honors staff at member presses who have demonstrated active leadership and service to the association and the university press community. I have been given the honor and the pleasure to present this prestigious award to this year’s winner.  

Let me tell you a little bit about him.

This year’s winner epitomizes the qualities that define the AAUP Constituency Award—service, energy, inspiration, willingness to take risks, nurturing, collaborativeness, teambuilding, imagination, and innovation. Always giving to the community. Always teaching us, being the moderator and facilitator, firing us up, giving us light.

In so many ways, as one admirer has said, he simply embodies the spirit of the AAUP. His natural mode of being is outreach, networking, and finding ways to connect our organizations and to collectively do better work that makes us INCREASINGLY relevant in the scholarly communication ecosystem.

You know him by the warmth that surrounds him. People who know him say he radiates life and shares himself with amazing generosity.

And he is the guy who introduces us to all the wonderful things in life we may have missed or been too busy to have paid attention to—to the elegance and beauty of fine icy rye manhattans and steamy, out-of-the-way St. Paul polka-piano bars, to bookstores that serve alcohol and California beaches with tide pools filled with red stars and blue anemone, to gala soirées at museums on mountain tops and roll-up-your-sleeves work in urban neighborhoods.

And it’s no wonder because he himself is so passionate about life. He loves fine art, poetry, Eichler design, the humanities, the news, midcentury decorative art and architecture, the precision and beauty of hot metal type, dressing up in a tuxedo for the opera, and wearing Bermuda shorts in the Baltimore summer where he often seems to run into John Waters or John Astin when he’s out for a walk with his brilliant daughter and wife.

He moves easily and seamlessly through diverse groups with an instinctive impulse and gift to facilitate and to serve. Actually, the very first time I met him, he was serving—literally. He walked into frame like a hipster in a John Hughes movie, with a kind of “glow” of top lighting over his head at some bowling alley for an AAUP gathering in St. Louis, carrying several pitchers of beer on a tray. This was absolutely mesmerizing. I thought, “Who IS this dapper, charming, gracious, well-dressed man that is bringing us all beer?” It was then I determined at that moment I should try to get to know this person and emulate his extraordinary service ethos for the rest of my publishing career.

If you don’t know yet who I’m talking about, listen now to all the amazing things this winner has done for the AAUP.

His involvement and leadership with the AAUP community spans over two decades and is woven into its very fabric, serving on or chairing an incredible number of important committees year after year, including Legal Issues chair in 2007, Nominating Committee in 08-09, and the Professional Development committee five years running from 2006 to 2010. As the Annual Meeting chair of the memorable 2010 conference, he created one of the most thought-provoking, creative, lucrative, and beneficial programs in many years—“a real sea-change” to quote one member—building social media into every aspect of the event for the first time in AAUP history, and showing us the power of social media and how it could amplify our conversations. And his active engagement continues, as he currently works with colleagues in AAUP looking at the challenges and opportunities of open access.

He advocates passionately and smartly for excellence and innovation in scholarly publishing and generously devoted his time and effort in sharing his knowledge and vision with both the high and mighty of our industry and with the troops in the trenches. Gracing us with his impressive charisma and charm, he mines our common purposes and ties us together who otherwise might have remained in our efforts disparate and alone. In substantial and important ways, we continually encounter this dynamic person, building up the energy and collaborative power of the AAUP community.

He is a perennial mover-and-shaker at our annual conferences— speaker, session chair, listener, facilitator, tweeter, comedian—sharing his great sense of humor, poise, and wonderful knowledge and insights on crucial issues. To quote another admirer, “Who else would risk social and professional mortification to don spurs and a ten gallon hat in the service of the AAUP? Who else could think of so many actually funny quips and jokes at the intersection of scholarly publishing and the ‘rodeo’ life?”

Who else?

One might add, who else brings as much light as he does on, say, a simple walk through a colonial graveyard in 90% humidity, or on a horseback excursion through the shadow in a primeval rain forest in British Columbia? Or, say, in a bowling alley in St. Louis?

Who else leads from the front the way he does? Setting his quick-paced walk, leading us through the sweltering heat of New Orleans to the hottest jazz and jambalaya in the 9^th ward, or marching us through Baltimore, New York, London, and Frankfort to the most active fronts of scholarly publishing, and inspiring otherwise highly dignified university press staff to actually dance on table tops or swap tee shirts in public with serving staff at BEA.

Who else?

Donning cowboy hat and spurs, he lassos for AAUP more community, more friendship, more inspiration, more sustainability, more innovation, more light.

Perhaps the words of the great American poet, Frank O’Hara, can help to express his value to us. “It may be that he, like poetry, makes life's nebulous events tangible…and restores their detail; or conversely, that he, like poetry, brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time.”

Find him, friend him, walk with him, let him bring you more light. Let him bring you your own, personal, icy, deeply amber-and-ruby rye Manhattan.

And for me, I’m still so happy simply to continue to play Sherman, to his Mr. Peabody.

I give you this year’s AAUP Constituency Award winner,
Editorial Director of Johns Hopkins University Press,
Greg Britton!