This week’s edition of Slow Digest was written by C21 Graduate Fellow Jamee N. Pritchard. It is the first essay in a three-part series discussing the essential nature of the humanities.
Part 1: Reshaping the Humanities Through Executive Orders
In his first 100 days in office, President Trump, through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), cut federal support to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), effectively shutting down essential support for libraries, museums, community-centered cultural work, and research from colleges and universities.
While the Trump administration frames these moves as a broad push to reduce government spending, we can connect them to the Administration’s effort to “restore sanity to American history,” as stated in Executive Order 14253. The order mandates the removal of so-called “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from federally funded exhibits and programs. In a press release, the NEH states that the cancellation of awards was facilitated by an evaluation of funding based on the priorities within the policy framework established by Congress, the Administration, and the head of NEH. The agency describes those cancelled awards as not inspiring public confidence in the use of taxpayer funds and “at variance with agency priorities, including but not limited to those on diversity, equity, and inclusion (or DEI) and environmental justice” (NEH, 2025).
Going forward, all future NEH awards, according to the agency, “will be merit-based [and] awarded to projects that do not promote extreme ideologies based upon race or gender, and that help to instill an understanding of the founding principles and ideals that make America an exceptional country” (NEH, 2025). While language like “merit” and “exceptionalism” may appear neutral or even patriotic, these directives function as political instruments aimed at reshaping the intellectual and cultural landscape of the humanities. In practice, these recent executive orders and NEH’s new priorities both target and exclude cultural institutions, like the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, that center critical approaches to history and the lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC).
These new priorities have led to reallocating those cancelled awards to projects that align more directly with the Administration’s agenda (NEH, 2025). Nation-first narratives of American exceptionalism (e.g., research support for a biography on Nikola Tesla in the Gilded Age and new grant programs to research the American Revolution and the founding of the United States) are preferred over projects that challenge traditional Western, mainstream narratives that foreground racial, gendered, and colonial critiques. There should be space for the full range of historical and contemporary lived experiences, even those that interrogate the very power structures on which our nation was built. Falling back on comfortable historical narratives erases the complexities the humanities seek to confront. History is, and has always been, uncomfortable, and we must sit with that discomfort to become better scholars, learners, empathizers, allies, and problem solvers — everything the humanities teach us to be. It is unfortunate that, according to the current administration, any narrative that dares to include race, systemic injustice, and social critique of the United States of America, past, present, and future, is deemed unpatriotic.
The Administration’s attack on public media adds to this federal disinvestment in the humanities. On May 1, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order that directs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), citing accusations of political bias and divisive ideology (NPR, 2025). The loss of funding to our nation’s public broadcasting media means reduced access to local news, educational programming, and emergency alerts, especially for rural communities. It also means silencing journalism and limiting community access to news that is without fear or favor.
Ultimately, these cuts to federal funding reflect not merely a disinvestment in the arts and humanities, but a calculated move by the Trump administration to diminish our collective freedom to think, question, critique, create, and remember. Critical inquiry, cultural memory, and intellectual freedom are under fire. History, culture, and education, as well as access to impartial information, are at risk of being co-opted by an administration that seeks to control narrative, suppress dissent, and reshape public knowledge to serve its ideological aims. While I’m always quick to compare our current climate to a science fiction novel like George Orwell’s 1984 or Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 with regards to censorship, surveillance, and our slide into dystopia, I can’t help but paraphrase that quintessential line from Whoopi Goldberg in the classic film Ghost:
America…you in danger, girl.
All Slow Digest posts are independently researched and written by individual contributors. All opinions expressed therein are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views, policies, or positions of UW-Milwaukee or the UW system.
Look for parts II and III of this essay in the Slow Digest feed on Wednesday, May 21 and Friday, May 23.