Some of the latest cuts from the White House have been decimating reductions in funding and staff for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
The three leading philanthropic funders of cultural endeavors in the United States have been National Endowment for the Humanities (~$210 million/year), National Endowment for the Arts (~$210 million/year), and private funder, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (~$300 million/year). Their combined support per year (pre-cuts) is about $720 million, or the cost of a single B-21 airplane.
The National Endowments were proposed in a report from the National Commission on the Humanities, which was a collaborative effort of the American Council of Learned Societies, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Council of Graduate Schools. They were signed into law by President Johnson in 1965.
Over its sixty-year history, the NEH has supported museums, schools, communities, states, and individual scholars to produce exhibits, archives, educational programs, radio and television broadcasts, and research projects in history, literature, archaeology, language, philosophy, comparative religion, ethics, and the law — all for the cost of one postage stamp per U.S. citizen each year.
These efforts have aimed to celebrate who we are as a rich and pluralistic nation and to help us understand and preserve that diverse and complex culture. If we are to thrive as a people and a nation, we need to know who we are, what we stand for, and why. We need to understand our humanity. That is our moral anchor.
Advocating to a Senate Committee for the creation of the NEH, the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, Glenn Seaborg famously said, “We cannot afford to drift physically, morally, or esthetically in a world in which the current moves so rapidly perhaps toward an abyss.”[1]
That abyss is perilously close.