“Humanities: Those branches of knowledge, such as philosophy, literature, and art, that are concerned with human thought and culture; the liberal arts.”
American Heritage Dictionary
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent agency that supports education, preservation, public programs, and research that will contribute to maintaining the humanities as a life-enriching element of the American experience, and is the largest funder of humanities-related activities in the United States.
When Ronald Reagan took over the presidency in 1981, and through much of the 1990s, when the Republicans were in control of Congress for the first time in 40 years, the Christian Coalition and other right-wing conservative groups gained power and targeted the NEH for extensive funding cutbacks because of their objections to government support of cultural programs. A number of budget cuts were implemented, but they were, for the most part, temporary, as the general public was opposed to getting rid of the NEH, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts, which was under similar attack at the time.
A National Commission on the Humanities was created in 1963 by three educational organizations for the purpose of studying the state of the humanities in America. In April 1964, the Commission produced a report recommending that the President and the Congress establish a National Humanities Foundation. Legislation was introduced and on September 29, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965, which officially established the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The 1965 Act declared that “the study of the humanities require constant dedication and devotion,” and that “while no government can call a great artist or scholar into existence, it is necessary and appropriate for the Federal government to help create and sustain not only a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry but also the material conditions facilitating the release of this creative talent.” The Act also noted, “The world leadership which has come to the United States cannot rest solely upon superior power, wealth, and technology, but must be solidly founded upon worldwide respect and admiration for the Nation’s high qualities as a leader in the realm of ideas and of the spirit.”
In the Act, the term humanities includes, but is not limited to, the study and interpretation of: archeology; aspects of the social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; comparative religion; ethics; history; the history, criticism, and theory of the arts; jurisprudence; language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; philosophy; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history, and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life.
A National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities was created by the Act, composed of a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a National Endowment for the Humanities, a Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities, and an Institute of Museum and Library Services.
According to the Act: “The purpose of the Foundation is to develop and promote a national policy of support for humanities and the arts in the United States and for institutions which, pursuant to the Act, preserve the cultural heritage of the United States.”
In 1966, the NEH awarded its first 157 fellowships and 130 summer stipends.
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is directed by a Chairman appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, for a term of four years. The Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities has 26 members appointed who serve staggered six-year terms. The Council is made up of the Chairperson of NEH; Chairperson of NEA; Chairperson of the Commission of Fine Arts; Archivist of the United States; Assistant Secretary for Aging; Commissioner of Public Buildings, General Services Administration; Director of the National Gallery of Art; Director of the Institute of Museum Services; Director of the National Science Foundation; Librarian of Congress; Secretary of Education; Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute; a member designated by the Chairperson of the Senate Commission on Art and Antiquities; a member designated by the Secretary of the Interior; and a member designated by the Speaker of the House.
The Endowment, based in Washington D.C., provides grants for projects that preserve and offer access to cultural resources; strengthen teaching and learning in the humanities in U.S. schools and colleges; and facilitate humanities-related public programs and research. NEH grants are given primarily to cultural institutions such as archives, libraries, public television stations, museums, radio stations, and universities, and at times to scholars on their own, if they qualify for Fellowships, or other programs also open to individuals.
NEH projects include:
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers: A searchable Internet database of U.S. newspapers, as well as information about newspapers from 1690 to the present, which is an ongoing effort that will eventually include 30 million pages that will be permanently maintained at the Library of Congress, a partner with NEH on the venture.
Exhibitions Today: 124 long-term exhibits and 34 traveling exhibitions, on display in various locations around the country, showcasing an assortment of significant U.S. figures and historical experiences.
Among the exhibitions: Lewis & Clark and the Indian Country; Carnival!; Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria; For All The World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights; Gifts of the Sultan: The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts; and Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible.
Film, Television and Radio Programs: NEH has sponsored more than eight hundred media productions, including:
- Behind the Veil, a radio program that explores the struggles and achievements of African Americans during the Jim Crow period in the American SouthDocument5
- The Civil War, a nine-part documentary series examining the history and meaning of the war
- Don't Eat the Pictures, a television show that introduces children to the New York Metropolitan Museum through the adventures of members of the Sesame Street gang, who find themselves accidentally locked up in the museum overnight
- FDR, a four-part documentary series examining the life of the 32nd President
- Little Injustices: Laura Nader Looks at the Law, which presents anthropologist Nader's fieldwork in a small Zapotec village in Mexico and her comparison of Mexican and American systems of settling disputes and consumer complaints
- Wild Women Don't Have the Blues, a documentary that examines the talent and artistic legacy of a generation of women blues performers, recounting the stories of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Alberta Hunter, and Marie Smith
- The Yiddish Radio Project, a series on Yiddish radio and American Jewish immigrant culture.
Jefferson Lectures in the Humanities: A program in which the National Council on the Humanities chooses a lecturer every year. The choice of an individual to give this lecture recognizes a person who has made significant scholarly contributions in the humanities, and who has the ability to communicate the knowledge he has acquired in a broadly appealing way. Among the Jefferson Lecturers since the honor was established in 1972: Saul Bellow, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Arthur Miller, Robert Penn Warren, Walker Percy, John Updike, and Tom Wolfe.
We the People: An initiative that aims to enhance the teaching and understanding of American history through grants to filmmakers, museums, libraries, scholars, teachers, and other individuals and institutions; the annual “Idea of America” essay contest; a compilation of classic literature recommended for young readers and then made available to schools and libraries; summer seminars and institutes where teachers can deepen their knowledge of American history; and Picturing America, a collection of reproductions of forty works of art by American painters, sculptors, photographers, and architects, that NEH distributes, along with a teachers resource book, lesson plans, and materials, to schools and libraries nationwide, to help educate children about the people, places, and moments in American history by using the art and masterpieces that depict them.
Past well-known NEH-funded projects include: The Ken Burns documentaries, Baseball, Brooklyn Bridge, and Huey Long; fifteen books that have won Pulitzer Prizes, including works by Bernard Bailyn, Joan D. Hedrick, James M. McPherson, and Louis Menand; the Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition; and Bridging Cultures, an initiative that encourages projects that explore the way cultures in America and around the world have influenced American society.
From the Web Site of NEH:
NEH’s FY 2013 Budget Request outlines distribution of its proposed $154.255 million budget as follows:
Grant Programs $103,505,000
Salaries & Expenses $27,250,000 Matching Funds & Challenge Grants $11,500,000 Bridging Cultures Initiative $9,000,000
Total Budget $154,255,000
According to USASpending.Gov, this past decade the National Endowment for the Humanities has spent just over $44 million on more than 1,000 transactions for services ranging from office building rentals ($14,395,018) and printing ($9,475,292) to word processing ($2,458,683) and security guards ($2,034,162).
The top five contractor recipients of NEH expenditures are:
1. Government of the United States $30,274,566
2. Oracle Corporation $1,981,417
3. Dell Inc. $958,223
4. Midtown Personnel Inc. $908,361
5. WPP PLC $693,772
Those interested in NEH grants can find all the latest relevant information on both the Alphabetical List of NEH grants, and the Grant Programs and Deadlines page.
NEH Appropriations Request for FY 2013 (pdf)
[D1]All money-related charts should be in order of amount.
History Professor Accuses NEH of WWII Bias
Professor Penelope Blake, a professor at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Illinois, accused the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in 2010 of sponsoring an anti-American workshop on the history of World War II.
Blake was one of 25 community college teachers to attend the NEH-sponsored workshop “History and Commemoration: The Legacies of the Pacific War in WWII.” She came away from the event disheartened by what she called “an overt political bias and a blatant anti-American agenda.” The workshop presented such ideas as looking at the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as a reaction against western oppression and that war memorials such as the Arizona should be reclassified as “peace memorials” so as to be more sensitive to visitors from other countries, especially those from Japan.
“In my thirty years as a professor in upper education, I have never witnessed nor participated in a more extremist, agenda-driven, revisionist conference, nearly devoid of rhetorical balance and historical context for the arguments presented,” Blake wrote in a letter to her congressman, Representative Don Manzullo.
Blake urged Manzullo to implement better oversight over the NEH and to prevent the agency from funding other workshops that don’t provide a balanced viewpoint on important subjects.
Geoffrey White, director of the NEH Landmarks and professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, disagreed with Blake’s assessment of the WWII workshop. He said Blake was in the minority among those who attended, most of whom rated the event favorably.
Professor Exposes Federally Funded ‘Revisionist’ History Conference (by Meredith Jessup, The Blaze)
NEH-Sponsored Workshop Biased Against U.S. Military, Professor Says (by Claire Gillen, Student Free Press Association)
Over the years, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has withstood a variety of attacks, and attempts to curb, or fully eliminate funding of the agency, primarily from conservative Republican politicians and individuals in religious organizations. Some have opposed the NEH because they believe the process determining who receives grants has become too politicized. Others have expressed dissatisfaction that too many of the grants are geared toward the interests of the cultural elite. Some have denounced specific projects on moral grounds, claiming they clash with the values the country was founded on. Still others believe it is wrong to spend tax dollars subsidizing humanity-related projects, and that privatizing the agency is a direction NEH must pursue.
Opposition to the NEH
Two former NEH Chairs, both appointed by President Reagan, Bill Bennett (1981-1985) and Lynne Cheney (1986-1993), disagreed with a great proportion of what NEH was choosing to fund. In 1995, at a House committee public hearing, both Bennett and Cheney called (unsuccessfully) for flat-out abolishing the agency.
Proponents of the NEH
NEH proponents, on the other hand, believe there is a genuine need for the government to support the kinds of cultural projects NEH does, or many would either not be able to exist at all, or would only be funded if the people with the private money to pay for them shared the views of the parties seeking grants; they also feel it is of indisputable value to society as a whole to have so many diverse humanity-related projects underwritten by the agency, to enrich learning opportunities, foster the nation’s culture, protect accessibility, and safeguard freedom of expression.
The Contest for American Culture: A Leadership Case Study on the NEA and NEH Funding Crisis (by Cynthia Koch, Penn National Commission)
Hard to Muzzle: The Return of Lynne Cheney (by Jon Wiener, The Nation)
Pulling the Fuse on Culture (by Robert Hughes, Time)
Republicans Try to Abolish Arts Groups (by Robin Pogregin)
Cornell President Speaks Out Against Proposed Elimination of National Endowment for the Humanities in U.S. (4Humanities)
Governor Palin Viewing the Abyss and the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities (by Raymond J. Learsy, Huffington Post)
De-funding Imagination: A Bad Economic Move (by Gloria Shur Bilchik, Occasional
Planet)
Carole M. Watson
Bruce Cole
William R. Ferris
Sheldon Hackney
Lynne V. Cheney
William J. Bennett
Joseph D. Duffey
Ronald S. Berman
Barnaby C. Keeney
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