I wanna reinforce just how minute $143 million is. I work in procurement for the DOD. The portfolio for my office alone dwarfs that. And I have nothing to do with the big, sexy buys like the F-35. I'm talking about minor construction, maintenance supplies, and janitorial services. Our 4th quarter purchasing alone (when units dump money to ensure their budget isn't hit next year) likely eclipsed $143 million.

If you want to see where your money goes you can.

Edit: For a single installation.

It literally took me only 2 and a half minutes to speak to a real person and voice my opinion when I called my local congressman. Please do so everyone; it takes almost no time out of your day!

I'm a journalist, so I don't receive any money from the NEH or anything like that, but it's still important to me. The Alaska State Library, Archives and Museum just received a grant from the Discovering America program to digitize 100,000 pages of Alaska newspapers. I sit on the committee that's picking which newspapers and which issues get digitized, and I can tell you that there's no way this project would happen without the NEH.

I've spent almost three years trying to get my newspaper to digitize its archives and make them available ─ without success. It's a huge capital cost to get that type of program off the ground, and while there are some companies that will digitize the papers for free, you have to give up a lot of your rights to the content.

Discovering America is doing something that a private company couldn't afford to do, and it'll make my job easier as a result. I'm really happy with that.

Just last week, I went to the Governor's Awards for the Arts and Humanities here in Juneau, and writer Heather Lende said something that stuck with me. She said that the NEH and NEA funding is important because, "one thousand years from now, we want people to know that we were more than our headlines and our tweets."

It took me six minutes to make four phone calls (one of my Senator's Washington offices didn't answer, so I called their local office).

Good job Mods. I probably wouldn't have bothered to make these calls had this not shown up here this morning.

In case people are wondering, "why do we have such a thing?," here's the introduction from the 1965 act that established it:

The Congress hereby finds and declares—

(1) that the encouragement and support of national progress and scholarship in the humanities and the arts, while primarily a matter for private and local initiative, is also an appropriate matter of concern to the Federal Government;

(2) that a high civilization must not limit its efforts to science and technology alone but must give full value and support to the other great branches of man's scholarly and cultural activity;

(3) that democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens and that it must therefore foster and support a form of education designed to make men masters of their technology and not its unthinking servant;

(4) that it is necessary and appropriate for the Federal Government to complement, assist, and add to programs for the advancement of the humanities and the arts by local. State, regional, and private agencies and their organizations;

(5) that the practice of art and the study of the humanities requires constant dedication and devotion and that, while no government can call a great artist or scholar into existence, it is necessary and appropriate for the Federal Government to help create and sustain not only a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry but also the material conditions facilitatmg the release of this creative talent;

(6) that the world leadership which has come to the United States cannot rest solely upon superior power, wealth, and technology, but must be solidly founded upon worldwide respect and admiration for the Nation's high qualities as a leader in the realm of ideas and of the spirit; and

(7) that, in order to implement these findings, it is desirable to establish a National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities and to strengthen the responsibilities of the Office of Education with respect to education in the arts and the humanities.

It is a very mid-1960s sort of thing, before our politics went quite as topsy-turvy with the "Culture Wars," before people started to read "art and humanities" as "liberal propaganda," at a moment when high science and high technology were valued for more than their mere mercantile outputs, but it was recognized that they were plunging us into a world that might require new moral, ethical, and even aesthetic sensibilities. It is also a world in which it was recognized that America's "soft power" in the world was based more than just military might — that culture mattered. It is an interesting slice of time.

It is interesting to note, perhaps, that the Reagan administration considered defunding them as well, but rolled back its position.

You guys should probably sticky this until the budget is voted upon.

America, you have a fascinating and nuanced history. One of my favourite things to do while travelling through the States is to stop in at small local museums, to learn about the cares and challenges of your people. I'm sure many of those museums, and as a result the respect and affection I've learnt for your people, are directly funded by these programs. Please don't stop telling the stories of those who came before you, as they are worthy of being remembered.

It's not partisan to let your representatives know your opinions on things, it's just democracy.

Conservative here, just weighing in to say that this doesn't have to be a partisan issue. There's a good reason this funding exists, and it contributes a tiny amount to the total budget. Call your rep.

My congressman and one of my Senators are members of the opposing party to which I'm registered. I understand they still technically represent me but will my call mean anything when they can see I'm not a part of their voting base?

General question on the NEA and NEH. Does their status as endowments mean something different than in the financial sense where an investment's principal is preserved and the dividend are used for funding? I thought the government established some sort of fund that allowed for that. But is it actually just a yearly bequeathing to various programs?

I interned at a Senator's office and yes, your calls matter. I was at a regional office and we compiled the number of calls of a certain issue and sent it to DC. We do not record if you are not a constituent of the Senator so keep that in mind as well. The more calls the better, it will allow the staff and Senator to know that it is an important issue that many constituents are concerned about. I know many people have some sort of predisposed notion of politicians, but please realize that they are first and foremost public servants that try to serve their constituents the best they can. Echoing what the original post said, call don't do anything else but call because they're not going to see it. At our office we only accepted calls and faxes, no emails from constituents unless they were trying to schedule something. I wish you all the best of luck and please, believe in your voices more. People nowadays don't do that enough. Any questions, I will try my best to answer them...after all I was only an intern.

Anything us non-Americans can do to spread the word or help out? :)

This is the kind of political action that should be taken. Thank you guys for being reasonable in your opinions and not imposing them onto your readers. Another great post in /r/askhistorians. Good job.

Thanks for posting this! In addition to calling, you can also sign the We the People petition at https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/do-not-defund-nea-or-neh-0. If the petition crosses the 100,000 signature threshold by 20 February, the White House will respond.

To make it easier, the American Alliance of Museums has a portal on their website to send your congressman a message about this very topic:

http://www.congressweb.com/AAM/48

I have a few issues with this post. I feel it is an overly political post considering the nature of this sub.

I come from a philosophy background but have worked with historians and littérature scholars. We are all funded by the same federal organisation (over here anyway) And frankly, there is a wider discussion to be had about academia and its funding model. I personally have no issues with shutting the NEH as the academic model for funding is currently profounding broken. More widely, academia is such in bad shape that a lot of money is wasted, doing pointless research and publishing garbage due to pressure from the various administrations and others.

I understand that a broken system is not a reason to abolish the whole thing. Dont throw out the baby with the bathwater or whatever the saying.

But the extreme focus on metrics and the importance of overall federal funding has concentrated funding in increasingly less people and contributed to this culture of publish or perish.

I am sure you have thousands of anecdotes of positive effects of State funding of the humanities. But the issue I am pointing out is a structural one that ended up hurting the overall practice of humanities, liberal arts etc. In academic settings.

I'd add that the natural sciences have similar issues, in which we see a class of super-scientists with armies of shittily paid grad students and making it harder for new scholar to have anything close to their mentors in term of work conditions. Add to that that the State of academic research in the sciences is also riddled with issues compounded by public funding.

I believe abolishing it (even for the wrong reasons) could lead to positive restructurations of the ways funding work in academia and benefit research.

Once again, I understand that the current system is better than nothing but my point is that I am not convinced by that as the problems of academia are made worst by it and would benefit of its abolition.

Now, my point is that this issue is not as black and white as it might seem and show a bias in what the role of the State is but also a conception of academia that I'd consider toxic. As such, given the nature of the topic, it belongs in other subreddits.

Art can be political and that is why it should not be taxpayer supported. It should be returned to a patronage system that is strictly volutary

As a huge fan of this subreddit, contributor here for a long time, and big believer in the importance of the study of history and art, I would like to offer a contravening opinion to OP's. NB: This is in no way a support of Donald Trump.

Support for public funding of art, artists, writers, historians, etc., is fundamentally wrong. The reason is because these public funds are supported through involuntary taxation. That means the artists, writers, historians, etc., are also funded by involuntary taxation. In other words, the citizenry is being compelled, against its will, to fund art and humanities projects with which it may not agree, may not value, and may, indeed, actively oppose.

We would all, I think, agree that it would be wrong to haul a man in from the street into a university library and compel him to pay from his own pocket for the wages of several history graduate students because we all agree their work is important, even if he disagrees with their thesis or is uninterested in their area of study. However, this is exactly what the NEA and NEH do, by proxy.

And, in doing so, they skew the work that should be done - they empower and enrich an ivory tower scholar class at the expense of what people might instead voluntarily fund in the way of art and history (and science). They also make the artists and historians themselves complicit in this involuntary compulsion, weakening the value of their work and lowering their importance in society.

Public funding for humanities and art is important, but it must come entirely from voluntary charitable donation to be morally acceptable and truly valuable. Under compulsion, art and humanities can never achieve their full potential, and will continue to languish in Ivory tower obscurity in the eyes of the common man. The NEA and NEH should be privatized or defunded.

Thank you.

This is clearly soapboxing, modern politics, and violates the 20 year rule.