The U.S. Secretary of Defense Bans Books

Posted on April 5, 2025 by briansandberg

The Trump administration’s war on knowledge and education continues to widen, as attacks on academic freedom extend to libraries, museums, and universities across the nation.

Trump administration members are attempting to control library and museum content and dictate what types of research can be carried out by researchers and professors in the fields of science, medicine, social sciences, education, arts, and humanities.

As part of this broad assault on knowledge and academic freedom, book bans are being implemented at research and university libraries.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered the U.S. Naval Academy to remove 381 books from Nimitz Library, the main library for this institution of higher education.

The list reveals a clear far-right ideological agenda at work by Secretary Hegseth. Of course, this is not surprising if you have heard Hegseth’s previous news media appearances that promote racist and sexist policies. There is nothing “conservative” about this far-right agenda.

In removing book titles discussing systemic racism from the Nimitz Library, Hegseth’s book ban demonstrates (once again) precisely how systemic racism works.

The book ban has already been carried out, with Navy officials removing the books prior to the secretary’s visit to the U.S. Naval Academy.

“The Navy released the titles of 381 books on Friday evening that were removed from the U.S. Naval Academy’s Nimitz Library on the Annapolis, Md., campus this week because their subject matter was seen as being related to so-called diversity, equity and inclusion topics,” according to The New York Times.

“President Trump issued an executive order in January that banned D.E.I. materials in kindergarten through 12th grade education, but the office of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth informed the Naval Academy on March 28 that he intended the order to apply to the school as well, even though it is a college.“

The New York Times reports: “First on the list is ‘How to Be Anti-Racist”’ by Ibram X. Kendi. Also listed are ‘The Making of Black Lives Matter,’ by Christopher J. Lebron; ‘How Racism Takes Place,’ by George Lipsitz; ‘The Fire This Time,’ edited by Jesmyn Ward; ‘The Myth of Equality,’ by Ken Wytsma; studies of the Ku Klux Klan, and the history of lynching in America.”

I have been thinking about book bans and censorship in comparative contexts. I was recently in Paris and visited the exhibition on « L’art « dégénéré » : Le procès de l’art moderne sous le nazisme » (“‘Degenerate’ art. Modern art on trial under the Nazis”) at the Musée Picasso.

Viewing banned artworks and books that the Nazis deemed “degenerate” is always depressing, and I have seen several previous special exhibitions on this theme in Berlin and elsewhere.

But viewing these so-called “degenerate” artworks and books once again during Trump administration’s far-right assault on research, education, art, and history in the United States is truly shocking.

Ismay, John. “These Are the 381 Books Removed From the Naval Academy Library.” The New York Times (4 April 2025).

Posted in Academic Freedom, Authoritarianism, Civil Rights Issues, Education Policy, Higher Education, History of Race and Racism, Human Rights, Humanities Education | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Wilson Center is Dismantled by Musk and Trump

Posted on April 4, 2025 by briansandberg

Elon Musk and his so-called DOGE team are attacking another federal institution, this time it is the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., that is being illegally dismantled.

The Wilson Center explains its mission on its website: “The Wilson Center occupies a unique place in US foreign policy—we are congressionally chartered, scholarship driven, and fiercely nonpartisan. It is our mission to help policymakers and stakeholders make sense of global developments. We are driven to offer the insights and analysis that can inform decision-making and forge a stronger America and more secure world.”

The Wilson Center researchers have long provide expert analyses of foreign policy and international relations issues via workshops, conferences, and publications. They have provided expert briefings to members of the U.S. Congress and to officials in federal institutions and the military.

The Wilson Center has also provided fellowships to researchers who work on foreign policy, international relations, and security issues.

However, President Trump apparently does not want any foreign policy advice. Nor does Trump want the United States to have any independent researchers on international relations issues who might be capable of critiquing his foreign policies.

So, Elon Musk and his DOGE team are unlawfully shutting the Wilson Center down.

“Almost all the employees of the Wilson Center, a prominent nonpartisan foreign policy think tank in Washington, were placed on leave on Thursday and blocked from their work email accounts as Elon Musk’s task force quickly shut down most of the center,” according to The New York Times.

The DOGE team followed its now familiar playbook of occupying a federal institution and taking over its computers, then ordering federal employees out of their offices.

“About 130 employees received orders telling them not to return to the office after the end of the day, according to an email reviewed by The New York Times and people with direct knowledge of the actions.”

“The Wilson Center employees are to be paid while on leave but will be fired soon, in line with what has happened at other institutions that Mr. Musk’s workers have dismantled in recent weeks.”

“Only five employees will remain — a president, two federal employees and two researchers on fellowships. Those positions are mandated in the center’s congressional charter. The cuts align with an executive order President Trump signed in March.”

“Private donations to the center will be returned to the donors, according to a person familiar with the center who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. It was not clear what would be done with the center’s endowment.”

“On Thursday afternoon, dozens of employees carried boxes and bags filled with papers, plants and posters out of the center’s offices in the Ronald Reagan Building, which houses several government agency offices.”

All of these actions seem illegal and unconstitutional, since the Wilson Center is chartered by the United States Congress.

Shockingly, the U.S. Congress has apparently taken no actions to defend the Wilson Center.

Kavi, Aishvarya and Edward Wong. “Workers Forced to Leave Foreign Policy Center as Trump Presses Shutdown.” The New York Times (3 April 2025).

Posted in Academic Freedom, Civil Rights Issues, Globalization, Human Rights, Peacemaking Processes, Political Culture, Political History of the United States, Political Theory, Public History, State Development Theory, Strategy and International Politics, United States Foreign Policy, United States History and Society, War, Culture, and Society, World History | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

16 States Sue to Restore Biomedical Research Funding

Posted on April 4, 2025 by briansandberg

Sixteen states have sued the Trump administration to restore research funding in biomedicine and public health that has been suspended or blocked by officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The New York Times reports that “California, Massachusetts and 14 other states sued the Trump administration on Friday for withholding grant funding from public health and medical research institutions, cuts that have forced universities to curtail research and to delay the hiring of new staff.”

“The National Institutes of Health is the world’s leading public funder of biomedical research, supporting studies on aging, substance abuse and other major issues. More than 80 percent of the agency’s $47 billion budget goes to outside researchers — grant funding that in recent weeks has been eliminated, paused or delayed by the Trump administration in a ‘concerted, and multi-pronged effort to disrupt NIH’s grants,’ according to the lawsuit.”

The New York Times emphasizes that “Cuts and delays to N.I.H. funding have crippled research teams in universities across the country and halted studies midstream, setting back work on diseases like cancer and diabetes and plunging American medical research into crisis. The attorneys general are asking the courts to restore pulled grant funding and to allow pending grant applications to be evaluated and approved fairly.”

The state attorneys general bringing this lawsuit argue that the Trump administration’s actions are illegal.

“‘In their unlawful withholding and terminating of medical and public health research grants, the Trump Administration is upending not only the critical work being done today, but the promise of progress for future generations,’ Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California, said in a statement,” according to The New York Times.

Attorney General Laetitia James (State of New York) indicates that the other states joining the lawsuit are: Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawai’i, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin.

I wonder why the attorney general of the State of Illinois has apparently not yet joined this lawsuit?

In a separate lawsuit, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing the Trump administration over the its ideological blocking of federal research grants in biomedical and public health research.

NBC News reports that “The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging that the National Institutes of Health has conducted an ‘ongoing ideological purge of critical research projects’ that violates federal law and is unconstitutional.”

“The lawsuit, filed in Massachusetts district court on behalf of four researchers and three unions with members who rely on NIH funding, says that the federal science agency ‘abruptly cancelled’ hundreds of research projects ‘without scientifically-valid explanation or cause.'”

According to NBC News, “The lawsuit says NIH has justified its cancellations with ‘ideological purity directives’ about research related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), vaccine hesitancy and gender identity, among other topics.”

“‘The new arbitrary regime is not codified in any law or policy,’ the lawsuit says, adding that NIH has ‘failed to develop any guidelines, definitions or explanations’ that explain ‘the parameters of the agency’s prohibitions against research with some connection to DEI, gender, and other topics that fail Defendants’ ideological conformity screen.'”

“The new lawsuit lists the NIH; its director, Jay Bhattacharya; the U.S. Department of Human and Health Services; and its director, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as defendants. Both federal agencies said they would not comment on pending litigation.”

Karlamangla, Soumya and Benjamin Mueller. “16 States Sue to Restore N.I.H. Funding.” The New York Times (4 April 2025).

Bush, Evan. “ACLU Sues National Institutes of Health for ‘Ideological Purge’ of Research Projects.” NBC News (2 April 2025).

Attorney General Laetitia James (State of New York) has issued a statement on the attorneys general lawsuit.

Posted in Academic Freedom, Civil Rights Issues, Current Research, Grants and Fellowships, Higher Education, History of Medicine, History of Science, Human Rights, Legal history, Political History of the United States, United States History and Society | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

On the Technocratic and Fascist Ideology of Elon Musk

Posted on April 4, 2025 by briansandberg

Elon Musk may exhibit highly erratic and volatile behavior, but he espouses a coherent Technocratic and Fascist ideology that was articulated in the 1930s.

Jill Lepore, Professor of History and Law (Harvard University), traces the history of Elon Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, and his role in the development of the Technocracy and Fascist movements of the 1930s.

Lepore writes that “I was again struck at how little of what Mr. Musk proposes is new and by how many of his ideas about politics, governance and economics resemble those championed by his grandfather Joshua Haldeman, a cowboy, chiropractor, conspiracy theorist and amateur aviator known as the Flying Haldeman. Mr. Musk’s grandfather was also a flamboyant leader of the political movement known as technocracy.”

According to Jill Lepore, “Leading technocrats proposed replacing democratically elected officials and civil servants — indeed, all of government — with an army of scientists and engineers under what they called a technate. Some also wanted to annex Canada and Mexico. At technocracy’s height, one branch of the movement had more than a quarter of a million members.”

“Under the technate,” she explains, “humans would no longer have names; they would have numbers. One technocrat went by 1x1809x56. (Mr. Musk has a son named X Æ A-12.) Mr. Haldeman, who had lost his Saskatchewan farm during the Depression, became the movement’s leader in Canada. He was technocrat No. 10450-1.”

After the Technocratic movement splintered and Haldeman’s political career in Canada failed, he moved to South Africa in 1950, excited to join the fledgling Apartheid state just being constructed there.

“Much that Mr. Musk has attempted to do at DOGE can be found in the technocracy manuals of the early 1930s,” according to Jill Lepore.

Lepore documents Musk’s fascination with his grandfather Joshua Haldeman’s Technocratic ideology and his application of its ideas and principles.

“Mr. Musk’s possible departure from Washington will not diminish the influence of Muskism in the United States. His superannuated futurism is Silicon Valley’s reigning ideology. In 2023 the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who helped staff DOGE, wrote ‘The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,’ predicting the emergence of ‘technological supermen.’ It consists of a list of statements:

We can advance to a far superior way of living and of being.
We have the tools, the systems, the ideas.
We have the will. …
We believe this is why our descendants will live in the stars. …
We believe in greatness. …
We believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness — strength.

“Mr. Andreessen cited, among his inspirations, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who in 1909 wrote ‘The Futurist Manifesto,’ which glorified violence and masculine virility and opposed liberalism and democracy. It, too, is a list of statements:

We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist. …
We want to sing the man at the wheel. …
We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism. …
Standing on the world’s summit, we launch once again our insolent challenge to the stars!

“Ten years after Mr. Marinetti wrote ‘The Futurist Manifesto,’ fists raised to the stars, he co-wrote the founding document of the movement led by Mussolini: ‘The Fascist Manifesto.'”

Marinetti’s influence on Mussolini’s Fascist ideology has long been analyzed by Italian historians studying Fascist Italy.

One of my personal favorites in this line of historical work is Claudio Segrè’s Italo Balbo: A Fascist Life (1990). I studied with Claudio Segrè as an undergraduate History major at the University of Texas at Austin.

The book description reads: “Pioneering aviator, blackshirt leader, colonial governor, confidante and heir-apparent to Benito Mussolini, the dashing and charismatic Italo Balbo exemplified the ideals of Fascist Italy during the 1920s and 30s. He earned national notoriety after World War I as a ruthless squadrista whose blackshirt forces crushed socialist and trade union organizations. As Minister of Aviation from 1926 to 1933, he led two internationally heralded mass trans-Atlantic flights. When his aerial armada reached the U. S., Chicago honored him with a Balbo Avenue, New York staged a ticker-tape parade, and President Roosevelt invited him to lunch. As colonial governor from 1933 to 1940, Balbo transformed Libya from backward colony to model Italian province. To many, Italo Balbo seemed to embody a noble vision of Fascism and the New Italy. Pioneering aviator, blackshirt leader, colonial governor, confidante and heir-apparent to Benito Mussolini, the dashing and charismatic Italo Balbo exemplified the ideals of Fascist Italy during the 1920s and 30s. He earned national notoriety after World.”

Claudio Segrè’s fascinating portrait of Italo Balbo reveals the melding of Futurism and Fascism in the aviation culture in Fascist Italy in the 1920s and 1930s.

“Muskism isn’t the beginning of the future,” Jill Leporte insists. “It’s the end of a story that started more than a century ago, in the conflict between capital and labor and between autocracy and democracy. The Gilded Age of robber barons and wage-labor strikes gave rise to the Bolshevik Revolution, Communism, the first Red Scare, World War I and Fascism. That battle of ideas produced the technocracy movement, and far more lastingly, it also produced the New Deal and modern American liberalism. Technocracy lost because technocracy is incompatible with freedom.”

Lepore concludes that “That is still true, but unlike his forefathers, Mr. Musk does have a theory for the assumption of power. That theory is to seize power with the dead robotic hand of the past. It remains for the living to wrest free of that grip.”

Lepore, Jill. “The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk.” The New York Times (4 April 2025).

Segrè, Claudio. Italo Balbo: A Fascist Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990).

Posted in Authoritarianism, Civil Rights Issues, Cultural History, Higher Education, Historiography and Social Theory, History in the Media, History of Race and Racism, History of the Western World, History of Violence, Human Rights, Humanities Education, Information Management, Information Revolutions, Intellectual History, Italian History, Museums and Historical Memory, Political Culture, Political History of the United States, Political Theory, United States History and Society, World History | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

American Historical Association Acts to Save the NEH!

Posted on April 4, 2025 by briansandberg

The American Historical Association (AHA) is organizing actions to defend the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and historical researchers affected by the Trump administration’s and so-called DOGE’s teams attacks on the NEH.

Trump administration members illegally halted payments on many active NEH grants yesterday (see my previous post on this issue) and seems to have suspended current and future grant competitions.

The National Endowment for the Humanities has a regular annual cycle of grant competitions, subject to peer review and evaluation. The latest NEH grants were announced in January 2025.

Trump administration officials have now improperly and illegally blocked the grant payments on those legitimately issued grants.

State Humanities Councils, local museums, libraries, universities, and researchers are all affected by the suspensions of active grants. I personally know of many institutions and researchers who have already received improper notifications that their current grants are cancelled.

The entire research infrastructure in the United States has been disrupted by the illegal and anti-constitutional actions of the Trump administration. The so-called DOGE team’s actions also violate principles of academic freedom, scientific integrity, research ethics, civil rights, and human rights.

National Endowment for the Humanities banner announcing its new grants in January 2025. Image: NEH.

I am a member of the American Historical Association and actively support its efforts to save the National Endowment for the Humanities.

“The American Historical Association has released a statement condemning the evisceration of the National Endowment for the Humanities, as the current administration’s Department of Government Efficiency has terminated hundreds of grants and put 75% of staff on leave. ‘The NEH and the grants it administers nourish our democracy through research, education, preservation, institutional capacity building, and public programming in the humanities for the benefit of the American people,’ the statement reads. ‘This frontal attack on the nation’s public culture is unpatriotic, anti-American, and unjustified.’

“We encourage our members to contact your congressional representatives today through the National Humanities Alliance’s action alert, and urge them to save the NEH. The NHA is also collecting information about current grants that have been canceled since March 31, 2025.”

For the full text of the American Historical Association’s statement, see the AHA website.

Please take action to Save the NEH!

The National Humanities Alliance is organizing a political action campaign to Save the NEH!

Posted in Academic Freedom, Civil Rights Issues, Education Policy, Grants and Fellowships, Higher Education, Human Rights, Humanities Education, Museums and Historical Memory, Political History of the United States, United States History and Society | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NEH Ceases to Function

Posted on April 4, 2025 by briansandberg

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is being dismantled.

The Trump administration members at the agency and the so-called DOGE team have illegally halted grant payments to current NEH grant recipients (see my previous post on this issue).

NPR reports that “Millions of dollars in previously awarded federal grants intended for arts and cultural groups across the country are being canceled by the Trump administration, according to a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak publicly.”

The details of Trump administration officials are murky, since the NEH has not made public statements to clarify the policy changes or defend their legality.

The Trump administration’s actions at the NEH violate the principles of academic freedom. They also ignore well-established academic research procedures and peer-review processes that are the basis of international scientific research and knowledge production.

“The funds had been awarded by the agency through a competitive application process and, according to the official, covered grants from fiscal years 2021-2025. The official said that “no upcoming awards” will be made in fiscal year 2025,” according NPR.

This last statement indicates that the Trump administration is halting the NEH’s current grant competitions in order to block the consideration of new grant proposal process for next year.

The Trump administration has indicated its aim to fire 80 percent of NEH staff and ultimately to dismantle the the NEH entirely.

Painter at the Annual Songwriter Keynote in Alabama. Photo: NPR.

Historical and humanities research will be severely curtailed by these devastating cuts. Humanities and public history programming in every state across the nation will also be undermined.

“The humanities are about helping ‘preserve community history and identity,’ said Stephen Kidd, executive director of the National Humanities Alliance, a national umbrella organization supporting the humanities. Kidd said he’s heard from multiple recipients of Humanities grants who told him they received the letter late last night,” according to NPR.

“‘We don’t know the full scope of the impact of last night’s actions,’ Kidd said. ‘We do know that it is affecting the state humanities councils which are crucial to the vitality of humanities across the country. This is funding that was appropriated by Congress to the state affiliates of the NEH. This is funding that has been promised to the states that is now being withdrawn.'”

Act now to save the National Endowment for the Humanities!

The National Humanities Alliance is organizing a campaign to save the NEH.

Blair, Elizabeth. “Cultural Groups Across U.S. Told that Federal Humanities Grants are Terminated.” NPR (3 April 2025).

Posted in Academic Freedom, Civil Rights Issues, Grants and Fellowships, Higher Education, Humanities Education, Museums and Historical Memory, Political History of the United States, United States History and Society | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NEH Grants Terminated in Illegal Maneuver

Posted on April 4, 2025 by briansandberg

The Trump administration and the so-called DOGE team is now attacking the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and cancelling existing grants unlawfully. They are also illegally halting payments to the grant recipients.

The New York Times reports that “Cultural groups across the country have received letters informing them that their grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities were canceled, stirring fears of great harm to museums, historical sites and community projects of many kinds.”

Archaeological excavations and historical research at Jamestown, Virginia, have received funding from NEH grants. This is just one of the thousands of historical projects that has been awarded an NEH grant.

“Since the agency’s creation in 1965, it has provided more than $6.4 billion to support more than 70,000 projects in all 50 states and U.S. jurisdictions, according to its website. Supported projects have included more than 9,000 books (including 20 that went on to win Pulitzer Prizes) and more than 500 film and radio programs, including Ken Burns’s landmark 1990 documentary ‘The Civil War,’ which received about a third of its budget from the agency,” according to The New York Times.

Despite this impressive record of achievement in promoting historical and humanities research and programming, the NEH is now being dismantled.

“Starting late Wednesday night, state humanities councils and other grant recipients began receiving emails telling them their funding was ended immediately. Instead, they were told, the agency would be ‘repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the president’s agenda.'”

I personally know historians and humanities researchers who have received cancellations of their ongoing grants and suspensions of the payments. These NEH research grants have already been awarded via a legal process that involved rigorous peer review of proposals. I have previously served as a NEH Fellowship reviewer and I am familiar with the peer review process.

The NEH grant recipients have won their grants through intense competitions and have been named grant awardees. So, the ongoing payment of the grants is required by federal law.

The United States Congress must act to stop the unlawful suspensions of authorized grant payments and the illegal diversion of those appropriated funds to sources unknown.

The New York Times has reviewed several of the letters that were sent to NEH grant recipients: “‘Your grant’s immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities,’ the letters said. ‘The termination of your grant represents an urgent priority for the administration, and due to exceptional circumstances, adherence to the traditional notification process is not possible.'”

“The letters, more than a half dozen of which were viewed by The New York Times, were on agency letterhead and bore the signature of Michael McDonald, a longtime N.E.H. official who became acting director of the agency last month, after the previous leader, a Biden appointee, was pressed to resign.”

Some lawmakers are emphasizing the illegality of the NEH grant cancellations.

“Representative Chellie Pingree, Democrat of Maine and the ranking minority member on the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the endowment, said in a statement that the termination of the grants was ‘devastating and outrageous,'” according to The New York Times.

“‘Let’s be clear: These grants were already awarded and use funds already appropriated by Congress on a bipartisan basis,’ she said. ‘The notion that these terminations are justified by a sudden shift in ‘federal priorities’ is nonsense. This is ideological targeting — pure and simple. And it is happening with no input from Congress or the public.'”

Schuessler, Jennifer. “Groups Are Told That Federal Humanities Grants Are Canceled.” The New York Times (3 April 2025).

Posted in Academic Freedom, Grants and Fellowships, Higher Education, Human Rights, Humanities Education, Museums and Historical Memory, Political History of the United States, Public History, United States History and Society | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Celebrating National Library Week

Posted on April 3, 2025 by briansandberg

Next week (April 6-12) is National Library Week, so plan to support one of your local, municipal, or university libraries!

Because the Institute of Museums and Library Services is currently being dismantled by the so-called DOGE team, it is vital to support libraries and librarians across the nation.

In Chicago, where I live, the Newberry Library is hosting a series of events for National Library Week.

The Newberry Library currently has an exhibition on Native Pop! in their gallery space. The Newberry Library also has public programs available to celebrate National Library Week.

See the Newberry Library website for more information on its programming for National Library Week.

The American Library Association website has information on celebrations of National Library Week across the nation.

To take action in support of the Institute of Museum and Library Services and libraries, consult the American Library Association advocacy page.

Posted in Academic Freedom, Higher Education, Human Rights, Humanities Education, Information Management, Museums and Historical Memory, United States History and Society | Leave a comment

National Endowment for the Humanities Under Attack

Posted on April 2, 2025 by briansandberg

Elon Musk’s so-called DOGE team is now targeting the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for dismantling. DOGE is reportedly seeking to cut 80 percent of the NEH staff and curtail its grant programs.

The New York Times reports that “the N.E.H. was founded in 1965, under the same legislation as the National Endowment for the Arts. Since then, it has awarded more than $6 billion in grants to museums, historical sites, universities, libraries and other organizations, according to its website. Last year, its budget was $211 million.”

“The endowment supports a variety of projects through direct grants. The most recent round, announced in January and totaling $26.6 million, included $175,000 for oral history projects connected to the Lahaina wildfire in Hawaii; $300,000 for digitization efforts at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens; and $150,000 for a study of online language learning at the Yiddish Book Center in Massachusetts,” according to The New York Times.

The NEH also provides financial support for state humanities councils across the nation. Those state councils then provide funding for humanities activities in local municipalities and counties.

The most important agency for History and the Humanities research and educational programming in the United States is being summarily dismantled.

“Leaders at the National Endowment for the Humanities have informed employees that the Trump administration is demanding deep cuts to staff and programs at the agency, in the latest move against federal agencies that support scholarship and culture.

“The move comes about three weeks after the agency’s leader, Shelly Lowe, who was appointed by President Biden, was pressed to resign, several months before her four-year term was over. Since then, a team including staff members from the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk’s government restructuring effort, have made several visits to the N.E.H. office.”

“On Tuesday morning, managers told staff members that DOGE had recommended reductions in staff of as much as 70 to 80 percent (of approximately 180 people), as well as what could amount to a cancellation of all grants made under the Biden administration that have not been fully paid out, according to three staff members. Senior leadership, employees were told, would develop more detailed plans for what the cuts would look like in practice.”

The National Humanities Alliance and other humanities organizations are organizing to defend the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The National Humanities Alliance website has information on how to take action to defend the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Schuessler, Jennifer. “DOGE Demands Deep Cuts at Humanities Endowment.” The New York Times (1 April 2025).

Posted in Academic Freedom, Education Policy, Grants and Fellowships, Higher Education, Humanities Education, Museums and Historical Memory, Political History of the United States, Public History, United States History and Society | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

On Trump’s War on History

Posted on March 31, 2025 by briansandberg

President Trump has declared war on History.

David W. Blight, Professor of History (Yale University), has written an op-ed published in The New York Times, responding to the Trump administration’s attack on the Smithsonian Institution.

He writes that “On Thursday President Trump issued an executive order, ‘Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.’ In Mr. Trump’s customary bluster, the order bursts with accusations against unnamed persons who are presumably my fellow historians and museum curators for our ‘concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our nation’s history.'”

Blight observes that “The order’s repeated invocation of the Smithsonian Institution echoes now-familiar right-wing goals outlined in Project 2025 and elsewhere: ending the alleged ‘woke’ agendas on race and gender, creating ‘parents’ rights’ and school choices and promoting history aligned with founders’ ‘values.’

“According to the president, ‘objective facts’ have been replaced with a ‘distorted narrative driven by ideology.’ And then comes that penetrating epithet, the order’s organizing logic: the desire to end the ‘revisionist movement’ carried out by unnamed historians.”

Blight is a specialist in the history of the American Civil War and the author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Harvard University Press, 2001), Frederick Douglass’s Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (LSU Press, 1989), and many other historical books and articles. He currently serves as President of the Organization of American Historians, the leading organization of professional historians who work on the History of the United States. Blight is well positioned to analyze President Trump’s executive order and assess its arguments.

Blight rightly argues that “The order is nothing less than a declaration of political war on the historians’ profession, our training and integrity, as well as on the freedom — in the form of curious minds — of anyone who seeks to understand our country by visiting museums or historic sites.”

The Trump administration at its so-called DOGE team may destroy many historical institutions, but their attempts to control historical research, writing, and education simply cannot win, Blight argues.

“In this naïve effort to control how the past is recorded and interpreted, the Trump administration has stepped into a minefield. While it remains unclear how much will change as a result of the executive order, it is already evident that the administration has started a war it cannot win in the long run.”

Ultimately, no single person or organization can control historical representations of the past.

Blight, David W. “Trump Cannot Win His War on History.” The New York Times (31 March 2025).

Posted in Academic Freedom, Education Policy, Higher Education, Historiography and Social Theory, History of Race and Racism, Human Rights, Humanities Education, Museums and Historical Memory, Political Culture, Political History of the United States, United States History and Society | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment