The Work of the NEH and the Importance of a Well-Informed Citizenry
Have you ever heard of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)? Do you know the sorts of things it funds? I’m asking because every American citizen needs to know and be aware of the good work done by the NEH. Every citizen also needs to know that the NEH is currently being ransacked by DOGE (the members of which nearly certainly don’t know about NEH).
On several occasions in my career, I’ve been part of projects funded by the NEH. As a graduate student, I was fortunate enough to spend several weeks in the summer of 2005 with other historians, literary scholars, anthropologists, and geographers reading and studying about early encounters between Europeans and indigenous peoples in the Americas. I continue to use the lessons learned and the sources I was introduced to in those weeks in my classes some two decades later. Plus, I made friends that remain valuable mentors and colleagues.
On a few occasions, I’ve worked as an instructor in summer workshops for K-12 teachers from around the country, introducing them to sources and scholarship they then work into their classrooms and curriculum. The workshop I have helped with focuses on the lives of African Americans in early rural New England. I’ve always learned so much from those teachers. And I feel certain they’ve benefited, as well.
Over the last few years, I’ve been part of another team that has taken that scholarship and content and started working toward building a website looking at the lives of African Americans in early rural New England with a special concentration on Lucy Terry Prince—America’s first African American poet. The NEH funded that digital project for two years. Early this year we received word that we had received the final grant that will allow the team of scholars to work with web developers and artists to build the interactive website over the next three years and make it available for the public.
The NEH also supports libraries and museums, helps people do oral histories to record family stories and preserve the experiences of veterans. They fund documentary films, support cultural preservation and language learning. They regularly fund projects in every state. The dollar amounts are small but essential to maintaining our historical, cultural, and community memories.
Over the last few days, I’ve had several friends who have had grants where the funds had already been awarded and allocated have their grants cancelled. You can find more information about what I see as a travesty of withdrawing grants that were already awarded using funds already appropriated by Congress on a bipartisan basis in this story. As you ready it, please know I am waiting to hear similar news about our Lucy Terry Prince project grant.
It’s really important to point out (as other friends have, like Brett Rushforth) that these are not radical, politically-driven research programs—as they're often caricatured. Rather, these projects are community-focused. They offer real-world benefits. Recipients come from red states and blue states, cities and smaller towns and communities, and they take a variety of approaches to making humanities research useful to a wide range of people.
If you and I disagree on other things, I hope you'll see the value of this kind of investment in our society and use the link here to ask your congressional representatives to save the NEH.
If you can’t yet see the value of such, I’d be happy to talk with you about the NEH and my experience with it and its value for us all.
If you simply refuse to see the value of such work, well, maybe consider making this post the last one from me you see.
A well-educated and informed citizenry matters for our future. And the NEH regularly makes meaningful strides to help create such a body.