Here’s What One of Trump’s Grantee Termination Letters Looks Like
In fact, until news of my grant cancellation arrived last Thursday, I had spent most of the week working on a curricular initiative to incorporate Jewish stories into the K-12 teaching of American history and trying (unsuccessfully) to get recourse for persistent and defamatory bullying by an anonymous group of my colleagues for my speaking out against a polarizing anti-Israel resolution at my professional association. I am the first to admit that the humanities in particular and academia in general have significant issues, as I explained on NPR the day before I received notice of my grant’s termination.
Trump’s education policy, the effective shuttering of the National Endowment for the Humanities being only one example, will do little to help women, Jews, or sincere advocates of “viewpoint diversity,” all categories to which I belong. A closer look at the executive orders enumerated as the rationale for this defunding decision makes clear that Trump is escalating long-standing conservative rhetoric about “taking back” universities to a more destructive project better understood as disfiguring academia beyond recognition. Using blanket language about ending diversity, equity, and inclusion, “restoring biological truth,” and “ending radical indoctrination,” these directives are openly ideological and so broad as to encompass any individual or initiative that offends whoever in the Trump administration is calling the shots that day.
“The reduction of the federal bureaucracy” and reducing “wasteful spending” are a little more complicated. While these seem like unspectacular and even admirable goals—who denies the need for cost savings in the massive federal bureaucracy?—they strike at the heart of what the humanities, the closest thing we have to education for citizenship, are all about. Humanities research and pedagogy are by definition not driven by efficiency or instrumentalist skill instruction as their highest values. On the contrary, they are about cultivating habits of mind to assess multiple perspectives and sources to arrive at new ideas, arguments, and frameworks, all of which require time for taking, yes, inefficient, unplanned research detours and contemplating open-ended questions.