humanities

The arts and humanities organizations, led by visionary change agents, do much more than organizing cultural events: they play a crucial role in fostering social bonds, as well as community and local identity and pride.

Some public historians, left reeling from DOGE-spearheaded cuts to federal humanities and arts funding, view the order as an affront to the scholarship and nuance that undergirds the institutions' evidence-based tellings of American history.

On Wednesday night, state humanities councils across the country had begun receiving similar letters stating that their NEH funding had been terminated, one day after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency visited NEH headquarters.

Last summer, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said the U.S. should restrict Chinese students to the humanities and encourage more Americans — and Indian students — to study science and engineering.

She is a professor at the College of the Holy Cross, where she holds a chair in the humanities.