By Shannon Davis
In the Fall of 2022, I was a relatively new editor at Harvard Education Press. Coming from the glamorous world of legal textbooks, and before that, general interest trade publishing, meant there was a great deal to learn about education. One of the easiest ways for an editor to learn a field is to speak directly with the people who work in it. It was in this spirit that I set up a series of 20-minute Zoom meetings with HEP authors to learn more about the field and what they saw as important, necessary publishing for the years ahead. During one such meeting, I remember jotting down “Josh Cowen—school vouchers” on a notepad brimming with book ideas for all areas of the K-12 world. I had of course heard of school vouchers as the parent of a public school fifth grader at the time. However, it was not until I began reading Josh’s writing in The Hechinger Report that I came to realize the voucher story was so much more than an issue of school choice.
My first meeting with Josh was over Zoom. He was a kind yet to-the-point man; as a policy expert, he was more like the law professors I was used to working with in my prior position. After our meeting, Josh quickly submitted a proposal for a book that chronicled the history of the school voucher movement. One that went back, not to the 1990s when the first voucher system debuted in Milwaukee, but instead to the 1950s when white parents’ fears over desegregation served as the seedbed for the modern school choice movement. It was written in stark, matter-of-fact narrative prose, the sentences building on one another, coiling. When read in the aggregate the book is a spider’s web of data, each line connecting disparate people and organizations back to the research at hand—a style I would come to recognize as uniquely Cowen’s. The proposal clearly and powerfully laid bare the truth of school vouchers: that they are the faulty product of years of policymaking, legislation, and litigation spearheaded by billionaire-backed conservative groups to advance an initiative that siphons public money for private, political gain. Vouchers, then, became a vehicle for culture wars. There could be no school choice without distrust in public institutions. It is, as the title suggests, a silent war on education and democracy waged by private interest groups. What first appears as a banal school choice scheme soon connects directly to the rightward slide into authoritarianism. As I read the proposal, I thought Could this possibly be true? And if it was, how could this be the first book to meticulously document the voucher scam?
Harvard Education Press is overseen by an editorial advisory board made up of faculty members of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Their role is to advise the Press; to ensure the peer review process was conducted properly, and comment on the academic quality, merit, and impact of proposals. It was not without much anxiety that I presented this title. As a newcomer to Harvard and to the Press, I knew the book I held was incendiary, controversial, and did not paint the institution who now employed me in the most favorable light. Still, for a university that bears the insignia Veritas on every mug and sweatshirt in Cambridge, it was my opinion that it could withstand having the crosshairs of truth turned on itself every now and then.
I’m not an Ivy Leaguer by any means. I come from the tundra of northern Minnesota, a lifelong public-school kid of Ojibwe and Shoshone descent. My grandmother and most of my mother’s relatives were Indian boarding school survivors and I have seen firsthand how “education” in the hands of those who do not hold the interests of children (particularly Black and Brown children) first and foremost can damage families for generations. So, it is with this background that I approach educational publishing and institutions. I hold myself accountable not to organizations, employers, or globally recognizable brands. I hold myself accountable to my family and their legacy. Having my name attached to a book like this carries real, professional risks. However, if my career sinks because I stepped up for something that unsettled the work of a deeply entrenched, well-monied network of conservative billionaires, then I will be okay. I hear dental hygienists make a decent living.
After my pitch, the room was silent. The first to speak was the board’s chair who simply asked if the Press should expect blowback for publishing this. That is how you know you’re publishing books that matter. The second board member to speak, an expert on educational policy and evidence, followed up: “I know Josh and he is the person to write this book.” With that, the contract was signed. Josh wrote quickly and his chapters arrived almost in what publishers call “camera ready copy.” It was as though he had been writing this book all his life, and maybe, of course, he had. As the chapters landed in my inbox, I soon realized that with an author like Josh the best thing you can do is get out of his way.
It was not without great personal cost for Josh that The Privateers debuted in September 2024. The foundations named in the book are tight, insular networks whose operations are not always transparent to say the least. Josh and his family were subjected to personnel file requests as unknown parties dug for information on them, a campaign to discredit him that is still ongoing. I began to wonder how The Heritage Foundation mailings started arriving at my home address. I took this as a tacit warning—we’ve found you. In stepping up to write this book, Josh knowingly donned a personal and professional target. I risked my new job and reputation at a prestigious university. No one does this without great consideration of what is at stake. If we don’t step up, if we remain complacent as our public institutions crumble and our country veers into authoritarianism, then we will have made the worst school choice of all. We will have chosen our comfort over the rights of LGBTQ+ students and families. We will have chosen peace over the hard work of disrupting systems that continue to harm Black and Brown communities. We will have chosen ourselves over our children.
I leave you with this—as book publishing professionals, it is no secret that we are working in a declining industry. Anyone who has been around for the last ten to fifteen years has seen their friends and colleagues laid off at an alarming clip, has witnessed the ouroboros of endless consolidation amongst publishing houses, has seen firsthand how a lack of diversity in the industry will have ripple effects for years to come. Publishing has been a house on fire for decades now, and yet we remain, for all the burns, ambassadors of the first amendment. The freedom of the press, for as long as it lasts, is in our hands. When we are gone, the books we have published will, somewhere in the floating city of New Washington, D.C., retain their records. What you choose to print matters. The voices you elevate in the written records of history matters. We may be scraping together a living in a dying industry, but it is one that lasts. As a former acquisitions editor I worked with once said, “Life is short, books are forever.” So, step up and stand by what you publish.
About the Author
Shannon Davis is HEP’s Senior Acquisitions Editor. She joined HEP in 2021. With over ten years of editorial experience before coming to HEP, she worked primarily in trade (general interest) book publishing. She began her career as an intern with Beacon Press and the literary journal Ploughshares. She has worked for Simon & Schuster as well as the nonprofit, mission-driven Appalachian Mountain Club Books, and legal textbook publisher Aspen. She holds a master’s degree in Publishing & Writing from Emerson College (2013).