Joe Deville, writing for the COPIM team on working with academic libraries:

What this means for us as a project, however, is that our answer to the question ‘how can open access books be better integrated into libraries?’ has to perform a tricky balancing act. On the one hand, it has to be mindful of [...] the uncomfortable practices of instrumentalism which many of our stakeholders find themselves having to engage in. On the other hand, it is vital for us that we avoid ourselves succumbing to instrumentalism

Deville is reporting from COPIM's three remote workshops with librarians. By "instrumentalism," he means a transactional approach to OA support, whereby libraries only pony up for projects and services that directly benefit their institution. He attributes the instrumentalist stance to the broader marketization of the university—in Britain, especially. It is, alas, a fact on the ground, and hence the "tricky balancing act."

The update is well worth reading. The UK-based team captures, among other things, how stratified the US library system is, with a narrow band of rich institutions open to funding OA projects and the rest—poorer and smaller—more instrumentalist by budgetary necessity. New to this reader, too, was that Cast Iron Coding (of Manifold fame) is on tap to produce a COPIM-sponsored "platform."

Lucy Barnes, Tom Mosterd, and Agata Morka, on the recently established Open Access Books Network (OABN):

We have come a long way from what started as a post-conference conversation in a bar in Marseille back in the summer of 2019, where the idea of creating a network for the OA books community was first discussed. The Open Access Books Network was formally launched in September and, as this strange year comes to a close, we wanted to have a look back at some of the OABN 2020 highlights. 

OABN was one of the only good things to come out of 2020.

Timnit Gebru, in a VentureBeat interview:

A lot of people have been talking about that. All of these research conferences are heavily funded by industry, so right now what is computer science research? It’s like you’ve got the military and you’ve got corporations. What are our other options? Like sometimes there’s NIH, but there just needs to be stuff that’s not associated with the military or corporate interests that funds research because inherently there is a conflict of interest. I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be research at corporations. I think there should be, but when you have the kind of things like what you’re seeing with me, and especially with the [research] censorship, and then you see the types of influence they have in these conferences, I think it’s something that people really need to think about.

The problem is that when you do research that requires a lot of resources, this becomes even more of a problem. That’s a little bit of what we talked about in the paper too.

This is the crux of the issue—the deep entanglement of big tech in the AI ethics world. It's a problem across the digital research landscape.

Another Catholic shoe to drop:

As part of a multi-year financial plan for the College’s long-term financial sustainability, the Saint Rose Board of Trustees has approved a plan to reduce academic expenses by $5.97 million, including the closure of 16 unique bachelor’s degrees, six unique master’s degrees, and three certificate programs

The Saint Rose press release doth protest too much:

These changes will not impact the Saint Rose mission of graduating students with critical thinking and writing skills and a deep understanding of how to look at the challenges of our world through the lens and construct of social justice.

The evidence:

In recent years, Saint Rose has relaunched its Bachelor of Science in Nursing, and launched undergraduate degrees in sales management and cybersecurity, a Master of Science in Social Work, a new delivery model for its MBA called the Flex MBA, and 2-in-4 programs, which allow students to earn both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in four years, saving them time and money.

University of Vermont Dean of Arts and Sciences, quoted in Inside Higher Ed to justify the elimination of 12 "low-enrollment" majors:

“This decision has been extremely difficult [...] It has been informed by data and guided by a strategy to focus on the future success of our college by consolidating our structure and terminating programs that can no longer be supported without jeopardizing programs with more robust enrollment.”

Seeing (and talking) like a GE middle manager.

Speaking of "program prioritization," this piece on rough college finances in today's Chronicle features University of Scranton president Edward Steinmetz:

“If it’s a $12-million hit, that’s huge,” he says. “We’ve had negative variances in the past, but never to that extreme.” In late March, the university got a sense that the pandemic could be long and damaging. “We started to alter our plans, because our fiscal year begins June 1. It allowed us to say, The world has changed. What can we impact right away?” The university eliminated salary increases, reduced pension contributions, and eliminated some positions.

Now the university is going through a longer and more difficult process of examining the enrollment, revenues, and costs of various academic programs, and analyzing which could be cut.

“It forced us to have conversations,” Steinmetz says, “which I think was a sea change for campuses like ours and a lot of academic leadership. They’re not used to those conversations.”

Steinmetz sounds suspiciously giddy that this crisis won't go to waste.