On February 11, the National Humanities Foundation announced on its website that it has revised the funding standards for eligible humanities projects under three recent execution orders. According to the announcement, “NEH Awards shall not be used for the following purposes:
- Promote gender ideology;
- Promote discriminatory equality ideology;
- Support diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) or diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) programs or activities; or
- Environmental justice plans or activities. ”
These bans impose the terms of the enforcement order on NEH funds for future applicants in 14151, 14168 and 14190, whether individual scholars, museums, nonprofits or colleges (including historical black colleges and universities). These bans, in the prescribed 60-day window, issued an order to comply with initiatives, grants or contracts to terminate all “with equity” and represent a point-by-point authorization to quickly implement the Trump administration’s “termination of radical indoctrination.”
I can only start here to guess the consequences of NEH’s new standards on the humanities, the field of cultural and intellectual inquiry is to promote the creation of NEH. To cite the National Foundation of the Arts and Humanities Act of 1965, “While no government can call great artists or scholars an existence, it is necessary and appropriate for the federal government to help create and maintain a climate that encourages ideas, imagination and inquiries, and also promotes the material conditions that unleash this creative talent.”
Under the condition of insistence it is defined by prohibition rather than freedom and explicitly targeting queer and trans people’s right to exist (“gender ideology”) to offset educational and cultural access (dei”) and even advocates’ capacity to offset inequality structural inequality, even the right to represent in any way. Anyone Rights (“Discriminatory Rights Ideology”) – Betrayed the term created by NEH. NEH violated its public mission when modifying its funding opportunity notice.
It is speculated that NEH is eager to enforce Trump’s executive order against wholesale elimination as government agencies are permanently threatened by budget cuts. NEH is a federal agency, so as long as these orders are constitutional, it is directly related to executive orders. By following Trump’s ideology, national donations may be watched on another day, thus retaining at least some of the careers of about 185 employees and their abilities – what to do?
NEH has not completely overhauled its website to reflect its compliance. In the list of great projects in the past and present, maybe “George Washington’s paper,” “Journal of Lewis and Clark’s Expedition,” and the “Real Buffalo Act” may have managed to squeeze under new rules, but will squeeze under new rules. Create equality Are you lucky in the documentary film project? Could the biography of co-organizer César Chavez become a funded project or a documentary about “Black Surgeons in the Jim Crow era”? How about the transatlantic slave trade database? NEH uses its institution to survive on future projects.
However, this problem is much deeper. In which universe should a state-sponsored institution creates an institution created to maintain the “material conditions” to realize the “material conditions” of thought, imagination and inquiry, and even the slightest resistance to the inhuman, reactionary and repressive orders issued by the Trump regime? Even today, NEH website supports its past support for projects facing oppression and resistance to totalitarian erasures. However, NEH itself does not have this resistance. Instead, it declared that any such project is not now in line with consideration.
What I can be sure of is that the National Foundation of the Humanities has confiscated its claim on the term “humanities”. The humanities do not specify the scope of excessive domination of the dominant force. The humanities are not further developed by a government agency willing or reluctantly serving as an ideological expansion of the party. The humanities are the field of inquiry, questioning, and investigation, not the unquestionable default field.
As a professor of literature and educator in the humanities for more than a quarter of a century, I assure students that the research and practice of culture, art and intellectual production is constantly being conducted. This means not only that humanistic inquiry involves creativity, creation and commitment to free thinking, but also that humanistic inquiry must retain the same responsibility on issues of morality, value and meaning, and that any other historical action must be estimated. Humanists can’t and won’t be gentle on the side, and the “real” agents of historical changes make major decisions.
I wrote that when I posted a message to the FAQ web form on the NEH website, I was ashamed of claiming to be a humanitarian given the silent surrender of NEH to Trump’s execution of the order. I hereby withdraw this statement. I am not ashamed of calling myself humanism. What should be ashamed of is the national donation of the humanities. Or, better yet, I call on NEH and all 185 employees, including NEH Chairman Shelly C. Lowe, to ward off their compliance with Executive Orders 14151, 14168 and 14190, and to join other national and international institutions, organizations and individuals to resist the example of inhuman and inhuman couples’ governments.
