Introducing Advocacy in Action

The new administration has moved rapidly to change the United States federal government. When it comes to colleges, universities, museums, and other cultural organizations, the gut punches we’re facing now are landing on top of the slow bleed of budget cuts and loss of public respect that became acute after the 2008 financial crisis.

The week of January 27 saw a brief attempt by the administration to freeze federal funding for hundreds of federal agencies, including the National Endowment for the Humanities. As federal grantees, ACLS and many member societies and institutions were forced to pivot toward emergency contingency planning even as we tried to figure out how to fight back, only to learn less than 24 hours later that a judge had intervened to “unfreeze” the funds. Shout out to our allies: the American Council of Education (ACE) held a webinar on the freeze attended by a reported 3,000 people; the National Humanities Alliance (NHA) activated their contacts on the Hill and kept members updated.

This week colleges and universities are reeling from last Friday’s announcement of a radical reduction in indirect cost rates. In addition, hiring at the Smithsonian remains frozen, billions of dollars in financial aid are at risk, and initiatives supporting faculty and student success are being closed down or disrupted.

Here at ACLS, we are determining how we can ramp up our advocacy for humanistic knowledge. While we will not be hiring a lobbyist at this stage, we are actively engaging the networks and allies that we already have. We are supporting our member societies in their own advocacy efforts and sharing examples of success in strengthening humanistic programs with college and university leadership in our Research University Consortium and Associates network, to show how they can mobilize their communities to sustain humanistic inquiry for the next generation.  

In the coming weeks and months, ACLS is also committed to telling a louder, clearer, bolder, more compelling story about the value of humanistic knowledge to a broader audience. This includes taking opportunities to speak directly to people outside academia to help redress distorted ideas about humanistic inquiry and the purpose of higher education in a democratic society.

Our final line of response is to continue our work. This doesn’t mean doing business as usual or burying our heads in the sand. It means standing firm in our conviction that the work we do – supporting our member societies, funding scholars, convening people to catalyze positive change in the academy, seeking more funding for all these efforts – itself represents meaningful action in the struggle. We are steadfastly committed to helping the scholars of today and tomorrow do their best work in diverse, welcoming environments. We will forge on.  

For example, last year, ACLS announced the inaugural cohort of ACLS HBCU Faculty Fellows and Grantees – 20 exceptional teacher-scholars whose research is illuminating untold histories and offering new perspectives on culture and society. This program was co-designed by ACLS staff and faculty working at dozens of HBCUs across the country. We look forward to announcing the next cohort of awardees in March. This program emerges from our ongoing commitment to excellence in scholarship; it recognizes scholars in a severely under-resourced sector of higher education; it stands up for the principle that the state of our knowledge improves when knowledge is produced from many perspectives and backgrounds.

Some people say of the current climate that “this is a marathon, not a sprint.” I don’t agree: I see our situation more like interval training. We need to keep jogging steadily, sprinting when we can, always moving forward. This is just the beginning. Watch this space. Tell your friends. Thank you for your support.

Joy