Some members of the 104th Congress began their terms in 1995 resolved to eliminate federal funding for the arts and humanities. Despite the fervor of the attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, however, these agencies survived, but they were dealt unprecedented reductions, and some parts were more heavily damaged than others. For example, NEH's budget suffered disproportionately in the area of academic enterprises: while the agency as a whole sustained a 36% cut, funding for education and research programs was cut by 60%.
The most vocal foes of the endowments--especially of the NEA--usually express their opposition by attacking one or two examples of sensationally unconventional work supported by federal dollars. These examples are most important as occasions for political opportunism: their significance dwindles when they are set in the context of all of the programs, exhibits, and books that have offered enjoyment and instruction to millions of Americans over the endowments' thirty-year histories.
Other opponents see a more practical justification for abolishing the agencies. Even those who believe in the value of NEH and NEA are concerned with containing the growth of the deficit by cutting spending, and the endowments receive their funding from the discretionary portion of the budget, which politicians find it safest to reduce. In either absolute or relative terms, however, the amount saved is minuscule: NEH's budget last year was $110 million and NEA's was $99.5 million. And the loss to the institutions housing endowment projects is great: millions of dollars in matching support from the private sector drawn by these grants will disappear.
As these reductions continue during the 105th Congress, what are we losing? Both nationwide and here in Santa Barbara, cuts in funding for the Arts Endowment mean that museum exhibits and dance, theater, and other performances will either cost more or be more limited in scope, or both. Cuts in funding for the Humanities Endowment threaten the quality and quantity of popular programs like Ken Burns' The Civil War and national resources like The Dictionary of American Regional English, as well as projects to restore works of art, and to make microfilm copies of damaged and crumbling newspapers, books, and film.
I have a special reason for following the fortunes of the NEH: for thirty years, it has been the primary source of extramural support for a project to edit the works of the quintessential American author, Henry David Thoreau. When Thoreau died, he left much of his work in manuscript; earlier published versions, though widely used, are inaccurate and incomplete. As editors from around the country have worked to transcribe manuscripts and produce texts that represent Thoreau's intention, a body of new information about Thoreau has been building, and this new information has changed the face of Thoreau scholarship.
The Thoreau Edition has been headquartered at UCSB since 1983; I've been the Editor-in-Chief since 1980. As is the case with most endowment-supported projects, the NEH dollars we have received have drawn significant support in cash or services from other sources; without the NEH grant as an anchor and the NEH review as a validation, access to other funding sources, would be in peril.
How bad is the situation for the Thoreau Edition and other similar scholarly projects? At a session I chaired at the Modern Language Association convention held last month, James Herbert, the director of NEH's Division of Research and Education, characterized the current competition for funding for collaborative research, which includes scholarly editions, as "brutal and destabilizing." Two hundred and twenty-one projects are requesting $33 million; he has $3 million to distribute. John Hammer, director of the National Humanities Alliance, called attention to Nina Cobb's Rockefeller Foundation report for the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, released in 1996, which concludes that the NEH is the largest single source of funds for the humanities, and that the private sector alone would not be able to sustain humanities research.
Traditional humanities projects like the Thoreau Edition, which take a long time and produce volumes of meticulous scholarship rather than entertaining television programs, are in great danger. These projects represent an enormous investment of time, money, and expertise in the preservation and presentation of the roots of American culture; all involved are hoping to find some combination of public and private support that will allow them to continue to completion.
A shorter version of this piece appeared in the January 21, 1997, issue of 93106, a publication of the Public Affairs Department of the University of California, Santa Barbara.