Editors’ Note: Today’s post is by Dean Smith. Dean is the Director of Duke University Press, an adjunct professor of publishing at George Washington University, and a published poet.

As we celebrate 100 years of Duke University Press (DUP), it’s perhaps worth thinking about the history of university presses. During my time with Project MUSE, we had to reinvent ourselves for the oncoming age of eBooks. We engaged a public relations firm to refresh the brand. They came back with research that showed university presses often foregrounded that they were old and that they disseminated peer-reviewed knowledge. Our advancing years continue to be in vogue, with 10 university presses celebrating anniversaries in 2026.

I’ve leaned into the idea of staying power and have had the good fortune to work for both the oldest (Johns Hopkins University) and the oldest non-continuous university press (Cornell). How many distinctions are there? There are firsts for every region in the US, but those pale in comparison to the premiership in the UK. Cambridge University Press rolled up in 1534, not long after Gutenberg’s creation.

We, as a community at the onset of AI, are suddenly honored to be the institutional embodiments of provenance and the custodians of ideas dating back to the 1860s, when Daniel Coit Gilman and Andrew Dickson White returned to the States with a blueprint for university presses (gleaned from their tour of European universities).

At Duke University Press, we are celebrating 100 years of publishing field-defining works. We are commemorating a name change, really, from Trinity College Press to Duke University Press in January of 1926. It was Trinity College Press that made the claim, “First in the South.” Apologies to UNC Press.

As a university press, we are known for rigorous peer review. Our lineage is traceable, auditable, verifiable. Our books are slow-cooked, not raw. Peer review can take years. At this moment, we are pleased to be old and deliberate. It’s a good thing. We are the custodians of ideas, the long tail, and provenance.

Defending Intellectual Freedom Defines Our Foundation

One of the earliest lessons in the DUP’s history is the notion inherent to the university press that scholarly publishing must be willing to challenge prevailing assumptions and defend intellectual freedom, even when doing so is controversial.

This principle predates DUP itself. At the turn of the twentieth century, Trinity College professor John Spencer Bassett and local printer Henry Seemans launched South Atlantic Quarterly (SAQ), a journal committed to rigorous public debate. When Bassett praised Booker T. Washington as one of the most important Southerners of the previous century, the resulting backlash became known as the Bassett Affair. Rather than retreating from controversy, Trinity College’s leadership defended the principles of academic freedom and free expression. The incident helped establish Durham and the future Duke community as places where independent thought could flourish.

That commitment became the foundation upon which Duke University Press was built. Early journals including South Atlantic Quarterly, Duke Mathematical Journal, Hispanic American Historical Review, and American Literature provided both the intellectual direction and financial stability that enabled the Press to grow. They demonstrated that journals are not simply publications; they are platforms that create scholarly communities and sustain long-term institutional impact.

Another lesson is that institutions are shaped by visionary leadership. In our case, former director Dick Rowson, by way of Pergamon Press, and longtime journal publisher Steve Cohn transformed a strong journals program. This began over a disagreement involving an exhibit’s charge and led to Cohn being hired as journals manager. During nearly four decades at the Press, Cohn expanded the journals’ portfolio and helped establish Duke University Press as a respected publisher in humanities and the interpretive social sciences. Their work illustrates how sustained investment in people, relationships, and strategic growth creates lasting success.

Finally, the long-lived nature of the university press reminds us that every generation tends to rediscover its influence. While the interdisciplinary scholarship associated with Duke’s rise in the late twentieth century remains central to our identity, deeper exploration of our archives reveals a far richer story. From medicine and economics to Renaissance studies, Duke University Press published influential works across disciplines long before its contemporary prominence. The lesson is clear: innovation is strongest when it builds on a deep and often overlooked history.

The values reflected in the Bassett Affair continue to guide the Press today. Our publications challenge systems of power, expand scholarly conversations, and defend the importance of humanities research in public life. The lesson that emerged in 1902 remains relevant: courageous scholarship matters most when it addresses the questions society is reluctant to confront. This is the role of the university press.

What Is the Secret?

One of the most surprising lessons from our Centennial was how incomplete our own understanding of the Press’s history had become, and what a central role a university press can play in the growth and development of its host institution.

For many years, we told a familiar story: Duke University’s rise to national prominence in the 1980s and 1990s was accompanied by a renaissance in interdisciplinary humanities scholarship, and the Press grew alongside that transformation. That story is true, but it is not the whole story.

Looking more deeply into the archives revealed that the Press had been contributing to the University’s intellectual life from the beginning. Long before it became associated with contemporary theory and interdisciplinary scholarship, the Press published works in medicine, economics, literature, history, and classical studies. What appeared at first to be a relatively quiet early period was, in fact, decades of steady scholarly achievement.

Institutions often survive and prosper because of practical decisions that are easy to overlook in hindsight. In its earliest years, Press Manager Ernest Seeman helped build Duke’s library collections by exchanging Press publications with other colleges and universities. Such efforts may seem modest compared with landmark books or prominent authors, but they helped establish the Press as an integral part of the University’s scholarly infrastructure. The Centennial reminded us that enduring institutions are built through countless operational and strategic decisions, not just headline moments.

Renewal often comes from investment at critical moments. The Press faced significant uncertainty in the early 1980s, including discussions about closure. Its continued success was not inevitable. Support from faculty, administrators, and scholars who recognized the Press’s value created the opportunity for future growth. Institutions thrive when leaders are willing to invest in them before their importance is universally recognized.

But the influence of a university press extends beyond its home institution, and it can be just as essential in the development of entire fields of research.  From examining the books and authors that have found a home at Duke University Press, it becomes clear that we have developed systems, relationships, and editorial practices that help identify emerging scholars and new areas of inquiry. The recognition received by both first-time authors and established scholars suggests that scholarly publishing is not simply about selecting individual manuscripts. It is equally about cultivating communities, mentoring authors, and recognizing important intellectual developments before they become widely accepted.

Perhaps the most recurring theme concerns the people who do the work. Scholarly publishing depends on expertise that is often invisible to readers and even to many within universities. Acquisitions editors, project editors, designers, copy editors, marketers, managing editors, and production specialists all shape how scholarship is communicated and received. Great books rarely emerge from the efforts of authors alone. The Centennial reinforced a simple truth: publishing is a collaborative enterprise, and the quality of scholarly communication depends on the expertise of those who help bring ideas into the world.

In the end, the “secret” is not a single strategy or formula. It is the cumulative effect of sustained institutional commitment, thoughtful editorial judgment, talented staff, and a willingness to invest in scholarship over the long term. Those lessons are inherent in the nature of the university press, and have been present throughout our own history, even when we failed to recognize them ourselves.

Duke University Press Books Expand the Boundaries of Scholarship

The university press is of the academy, and does not serve the same role as a commercial press. We are a different sort of creature, and we often spend a lot of time discussing what makes a “Duke book”. A defining lesson from our publishing history is that the most influential scholarship often emerges when authors move beyond conventional disciplinary boundaries. These works address urgent issues such as race, climate change, disability, gender, and inequality, while offering new ways to think about them.

Often scholarly impact does not depend on adherence to traditional forms of academic argument. Many of the Press’s most influential books combine personal narrative, historical analysis, cultural criticism, and theoretical insight in ways that challenge conventional expectations. Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake, for example, explores how slavery’s history continues to shape black life. It doesn’t present a straightforward academic argument but creates a theoretical framework for understanding how historical systems continue to shape contemporary life . The lesson is that scholarship is most powerful when it not only generates knowledge but also expands the ways knowledge can be created, shared, and understood. This is the role of the university press.

The Biggest Challenges Ahead

Sustainability is one. All university presses are cultural treasures, and yet we still face enormous financial pressures moving forward. The windmills we are jousting against have sharper and sharper blades. It’s like Dick Rowson used to say. “It’s easy to turn a profit, but a real [bear] to break even.”

The private equitization of higher education is beginning to take effect. We must not only break even, but also generate a surplus to address increasing costs. In the future, our decisions will increasingly resemble those made by commercial publishers. Presses are doing all of this great work, but still must cut every year to make budgets. What’s really ironic is that Rowson’s approach of growing our journals program is the same strategy that enabled the STM companies to rise in the 1980s and 90s. If we didn’t have those journals, we’d be having a very different conversation with our administration.

The Next 100 Years

The global AUPresses community is strong. We share knowledge and are poised for an innovative future. We are more connected at this moment with our technology partners to ensure discovery and maximize opportunities to open our content to the world. We are working with AI companies where a trust factor has been established. We will embrace the pieces of technology that will allow us to remain a trusted steward of ideas in disseminating knowledge.

At Duke University Press, we have digital platforms, a robust technology team, and a world-class library that we now report to and are increasingly connected to the researchers and faculty on our campus. We’ve branched out recently to the Research Triangle Park (RTP) community and to the Library of Congress. Our publishing agenda remains as ambitious and aggressive as it’s always been, if not more so. I’ve been energized by the prospect of telling Duke stories in new and exciting ways to bigger audiences.

We continue to dream about the future of the monograph. I talked to an AI engineer about what it would take to enliven our Grateful Dead scholarly monographs with music, interviews and primary texts. She said, “Give us a year.”

Our publications will continue to be vital to the survival of our culture, but there is a machine that has already replicated them. It would also be great if that machine would recognize our copyright beyond the equivalent of dog-track money, and the prestige we bring to their sophisticated trash compactors. We can work with those entities to ensure that attribution is achieved. It’s essential for humanity.

Like Bassett, Cohn, and Rowson, and the entire university press community, we’ve always been up for a good fight.