Nick Bostrom's involvement is one of my greatest causes for hope for the department. If someone like him isn't involved, I expect the department to do almost no genuinely useful work, because it will be another standard department whose output can be predicted by, as Eliezer puts it, the simple model of a dumb amoeba attracted toward status and funding and no other considerations.
It seems a little ironic that you cite the support of a very high status person (who, being high status, likely has status-seeking tendencies to some degree or another) as evidence that an organization will not be corrupted by status-seeking. If you're a supporter of Bostrom's work, it seems worth noting that he's managed to become pretty high-status in the process of doing it.
Also, what evidence is there for Eliezer's "dumb amoeba" model of academia? My impression is also that many people go in to academia precisely because they are interested...
CSER at Cambridge University joins the others.
Good people involved so far, but the expected output depends hugely on who they pick to run the thing.