Hey. My name is Mike Nason, Open Scholarship & Publishing Librarian at the University of New Brunswick and the Open Scholarly Infrastructure Advisor with the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). I owe a significant portion of my career to PKP. I’ve worked either in community with the organization – or actively for it – for, very nearly, my entire professional career. Just short of twenty years, which, it turns out, amounts to being just short of half my life. PKP has been supportive and open. And, they pushed for things I really cared about; things like open access to research, global equity in academic publishing, open source, the principles of open scholarly infrastructure, and ethical approaches to fulfilling the goals of movements outlined in the Budapest Open Access Initiative.
I’ve proudly affiliated myself with PKP in publications, service, and at events both national and international. And, although I’m just a contract employee who works part time, I’ve considered myself part of a family of folks committed to doing better. And, though I have a reputation (deserved) for being a bit of a loud mouth (complimentary), I’ve felt broadly supported by PKP in my advocacy. Until yesterday, at least.
On Wednesday, May 14th, 2025, in a PKP Publishing Services (the revenue-generating, hosting and SAAS wing of PKP) call, staff were informed that PKP|PS was entering an agreement with an Israeli university to provide hosting support for Open Journal Systems. There was an acknowledgement – presumably fueled by the abundant evidence that the state of Israel is actively and enthusiastically committing genocide on the people of Palestine – that some may feel strongly about this decision and active encouragement to reach out to PKP Operations Director, Kevin Stranack with concerns or reactions, if we had them.
I did so immediately.
In my own faculty union, AUNBT, I voted for a motion not just for our union to divest from Israeli interests but also a call on the university to do the same. We passed this motion in September, 2024.
AUNBT will divest and will call on UNB to divest from any Israeli companies located in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, any arms manufacturers, and any other companies supporting or benefitting from the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people.
Faculty at SFU have done similar work in calls for divestment. The whole document is excellent, but I would draw particular focus on the language around the relationship between Israeli universities, scholasticide, and state violence.
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SFUFA Motion on Israel/Palestine
Therefore, faculty members of Simon Fraser University urge our administration to commit to the following:
So, unsurprisingly, I emailed Kevin with the following:
As per https://librarianswithpalestine.org/ and the SFU faculty calls for divestment. I don't love PKP revenue including Israeli money.
And, to his credit, he agreed to meet with me about it even though my request for a meeting was as follows:
I'd like to talk about it if you find yourself with the time to be yelled at.
With all of this preamble, you might suspect my issue here is that PKP leadership (either individually or collectively) and the position of the organization is somehow pro-genocide or specifically zionist. Other than this meeting announcement and PKP Founder John Willinsky’s interest in defending the academic freedom of Israeli researchers while seemingly ignoring the academic freedom (and freedom to exist) of the Palestinian scholars those Israeli institutions have played a part in killing, there’s little information to go on. And, it is worth noting that John wrote this specifically external to PKP.
Insofar as dissent exists, it was not represented concretely or specifically. Least of all, to staff. It is definitely the case that not all of PKP leadership, inclusive, are on board with this decision. And, in particular, I think an organizationally positional stance that ignores that dissent and won’t relay the concern publicly or upstream within SFU is deeply concerning. It should matter when there’s disagreement. This kind of transparency is vital.
Regardless, in our chat, Operations Director Kevin Stranack informed me that because of PKP’s move to becoming a Core Facility of Simon Fraser University, it fundamentally cannot have a position or speak in contradiction to the wishes of the office of the Office of the Vice President Research (OVPR). From the perspective of the VPR’s office, PKP is a non-academic unit with no leverage to assert its own position. Furthermore, Kevin informed me that he will not push against the VPR’s office on this. The emphasis on will here is intentional on my part. It’s not that Kevin can’t push against the VPR’s office; it’s that he won’t.
This means that PKP is not permitted to take a position of its own, and that, very specifically, the Operations Director both can and will unilaterally dismiss – from leadership or staff – any position that contradicts that of the OVPR.