To the editor:
Jonathan Eburne calls the act of the State Humanities Agency’s “action” to promote gender, equity and environmental justice executive orders to promote gender, equity and environmental justice ideology as “propaganda” is the “action” of “extension of party ideology” (“Open Letter to NEH”, February 28, 2025, February 28, 2025). I share his key stance on executive orders and the spirit that drives them. But his allegations against NEH are unfair and misunderstood the scope of dangerous misreading the scope of command that higher education must avoid.
NEH Chairman and Staff are federal employees and must obey government directives. In order to reject compliance, the talented, experienced staff of the agency will be terminated immediately and the future of the agency will be challenged. They will receive important funding and management to maintain the humanities for teachers, students, the state Humanities Council and the public.
It should be clear that these orders apply to the federal government, where there is no NEH specific. They are not suitable for research and teaching; one (EO 14173) includes the engraving of a higher education institution.
By treating the NEH project as a scope that falls under the command, Eburne implicitly agrees with the idea that research and teaching are equivalent to promoting ideology. This is indeed a guiding belief in Florida and is shared by the current government.
In fact, “promoting ideology” is not an accurate definition of academic or scientific inquiry, including important work on gender, equity and environmental research.
It is crucial that we oppose the definition of scholars as promoters of ideology and therefore distrustful knowledge managers, or as the Vice President puts it, committed to “deception and lying, not truth.” It is a malicious abuse of language aimed at undermining people’s confidence in academic and general expertise. The right strategy is not to accept the definition of error – when a court proceeds in court, it is called an error and rejects the label.
