policy and advocacy

Issue Brief: National Endowment for the Humanities

Enriching America's Cultural and Intellectual Life

ACTION NEEDED
We urge Congress to provide an increase of $15 million for the National Endowment for the Humanities in the FY07 Interior Appropriations bill, for a total funding level of $156 million.

Table: NEH Annual Appropriations, FY92 to present (in millions of dollars)

Note:  Figures above are not adjusted for inflation.  Source: NEH

BACKGROUND
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), an independent federal agency, is the largest single funder of humanities programs in the United States, providing grants for high-quality humanities projects in four primary funding areas: preservation, education, research, and public programs. Grants typically go to cultural institutions such as museums, archives, libraries, colleges, universities, state humanities councils, public television and radio stations, film producers, and to individual scholars. The NEH extends its reach through annual grants to its partner institutions, the state humanities councils, located in every state and U.S. territory. NEH Chairman Dr. Bruce Cole is a Distinguished Professor of Art History, specializing in the Renaissance. 

The NEH is funded at $140.95 million in FY06. For FY07, the President has requested level funding of $140.96 million for the agency, roughly the same amount appropriated in FY06. The President’s budget would cut funding for competitive grant programs by $1.32 million to help pay for administrative salary and overhead cost increases.

What are the humanities?
According to the NEH’s founding legislation, “The term ‘humanities’ includes, but is not limited to, the study of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism, and theory of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods.”

We the People
Numerous polls and surveys over the past decade indicate that many Americans lack even a basic knowledge about their nation’s history. President Bush launched the NEH We the People initiative in 2002 to advance understanding of American history, culture, and civics.  Underlying this program is the belief that “the study of history and citizenship should be at the core of every American’s education. "We the People furthers the NEH’s core functions: advancing scholarship, education, preservation, and access to intellectual and cultural resources, and public understanding of the humanities. The administration has continued support for this program at a level of $15.24 million in its FY07 budget.

NEH and the Arts
The National Endowment for the Humanities plays an important role in promoting knowledge of and appreciation for the arts in America. The NEH provides critical support for scholarly research in the history, theory, and criticism of the arts. NEH professional development seminars for K–12 and college teachers help improve the teaching and learning of art history in classrooms across the United States. NEH-supported film and radio programs reach millions of viewers, helping to advance the public understanding of and appreciation for the arts. The NEH provides critical resources to the nation's art museums in the form of grants to support exhibitions, exhibition catalogs, facilities improvements, collections enhancement, and preservation training. NEH-supported preservation projects have helped save literally millions of culturally and historically significant objects at risk due to their composition or storage conditions.

The NEH makes grants to promote the documentation, understanding, and preservation of the arts in a broad range of areas, such as visual art, art history, theater, literature, dance, music, and world cultures. To demonstrate the depth of NEH support for the arts, here are just a few examples of grants made within the last 10 years, dealing with the theme "jazz":

Film Production−a $700,000 grant to the Educational Broadcasting Corporation for production of a 90-minute documentary film about a community of African American jazz musicians in Paris from 1918–49 called Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story (2005)

Traveling Exhibits−a $260,000 grant to the American Library Association in Chicago, IL, to support the creation of an exhibition that would travel to 30 libraries across the United States, adapted from an existing Smithsonian exhibition on Europe's early jazz movement (1997)

Endowment Building−a $600,000 challenge grant to Jazz at Lincoln Center, Inc. in New York for establishment of the Jazz Humanities Education Endowment Fund (2004)

Preservation and Access−a $276,000 grant to Rutgers University in New Jersey for the preservation of 120 oral histories of jazz musicians recorded from 1972 to 1983 as part of the federally supported Jazz Oral History Project and held by the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies (2003)

Scholarly Research−a $35,000 fellowship to a scholar at Kent State University in Ohio to research “Jazz on the River: A Cultural History, 1900–1945” (1999)

Teacher Training−a $220,000 grant to Washington University in St. Louis to support  the Teaching Jazz as American Culture summer institute for public high school teachers (2004)

Curriculum Development−a $100,000 grant to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in Washington, DC, to continue development, on a national basis, of an Internet-based jazz curriculum for grades 5, 8, and 11 (2002)

TALKING POINTS

• The humanities are essential to democracy. A government that supports and funds the humanities fosters a better understanding of our history, culture, and the world we live in. This enables a well-prepared citizenry to make informed decisions when faced with social, political, and technological issues.
• A small investment through NEH goes a long way. The NEH provides seed money for high-quality projects and programs that reach millions of Americans each year. This money, and NEH's reputation, leverage millions of dollars in private support for humanities projects.
• The endowment’s competitive peer review process encourages excellence. NEH-supported works have earned nearly 600 awards, including nine Pulitzer Prizes, eight Bancroft Prizes, and six National Book Awards.
• The NEH is critical to addressing the nation's future needs in education. More than two-thirds of our nation's K–12 curriculum is dedicated to the humanities; two million new teachers will be needed in our classrooms over the next decade, and four out of five teachers feel inadequately prepared in their subject area.
• The NEH provides critical leadership in preserving our historical and cultural heritage, from a 20-year effort to film crumbling books ("brittle books") to programs that assist museums with the stabilization of material culture collections. At-risk objects include books, journals, newspapers, manuscripts, archival collections, maps, photographs, films, sound recordings, oral histories, archaeological and ethnographic objects, decorative and fine art, and textiles.
• The NEH provides critical support for humanities scholarship and facilitates the flow of scholarly research to the public through books, articles, educational television and radio programs, and other media.
• The NEH engages Americans at all levels of learning through public programs in the humanities, including exhibits in museums, libraries, and historical organizations; through the programs of the state humanities councils; and a variety of other activities, such as radio, film, and television productions.