In the meantime, my attention on Jeff Sessions is intensifying. I think a lot of people dismiss him as an anti-intellectual crank, but he's quite sophisticated at speaking to people who are, at the first, suspicious of the humanities, and who are suspicious of federal support for research of any kind except for the most pragmatic (and military).
Sessions is the ranking GOP member of the Senate Budget Committee. In a few days, he could be the incoming chair of the Senate Budget Committee. At which point, every budget emerging from his committee will include little to no funding for basic research of all kinds. The NEH and NEA are obvious targets, but the NIH is going to be in trouble too. It's all bad for knowledge.
So if there's a GOP Senate, that's not going to be fun. In such an environment, though, targeted groups cannot respond to pressure through this behind-the-scenes fait accompli kind of a decision making. They have to gather stakeholders in, make us feel part of the process, make us feel like the NEH is something worth fighting for.
And right now, when Sessions says cut the NEH, my emotional response (not rational response) is to shrug and say, "whatever." Because it's pretty clear, right now, that the big fancy folks at Washington don't care about my voice. Or your voice. It's not our NEH, so why not just let Sessions gut it.
I will try to resist such emotional responses, but none of this was necessary. The NEH could have contacted its program Directors (and through them past participants) and said - "we have this series of bad choices and are trying to figure out what's the least bad response. One thought was to cancel foreign programs for the following reasons..."
In such a circumstance, they build community and sympathy for making hard budget choices. But they also then have to be transparent about what those choices actually are and I fundamentally don't believe they have been.
- To my knowledge, they aren't really saving much money (and possibly not any money) by cutting the program.
- To my knowledge, the foreign seminars attract more applicants than the domestic ones, so the NEH's suggestion that this is about access doesn't stand up.
- To my knowledge, the NEH foreign seminars consistently produce books, conference sessions, and career-changing/sparking moments in ways that they would have not have without their on-site location.
I continue to believe this decision is part of a defensive crouch in the face of the coming GOP storm. To duck and cover while ridding yourself of allies seems like a poor choice strategically.
Our next moves will also have to be political.
