January 5, 2001

Rethinking the Humanities Endowment

By STANLEY N. KATZ

Let's be clear. The National Endowment for the Humanities is about money. The social critic Dwight Macdonald once quipped that a philanthropic foundation was a large pile of money surrounded by sucking noises. That is also a perfect description of the endowment. For almost two decades, we who have worked for federal support for the humanities have been caught up in debates about what the endowment should finance (research, state programs, fellowships, regional centers, the documentary-editing

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