Scholars Fear Humanities Endowment Is Being Dumbed Down

An emphasis on popular programs limits funds for research projects

By RON SOUTHWICK

A traveling exhibition entitled "Barn Again" is delighting audiences across the country.

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The exhibit, viewed by tens of thousands of people each year, shows photographs detailing the history of the barn as a fixture of the American landscape. It was developed with a $115,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

While supporting programs like "Barn Again," the N.E.H. is mulling plans to cut off support for many projects that involve the editing of important scholarly papers. The endowment may reduce or simply eliminate funds for efforts that include work on the collected records of Thomas Jefferson; the papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony; and a dictionary of the Sumerian language, the world's oldest written language.

To many scholars, the idea that the endowment supports barn photography with enthusiasm while it considers cutting scholarly projects represents a terrible shift in priorities. And to these scholars, the shift couldn't come at a worse time, since the agency is already short on cash, with a budget of only $115-million. After the Republican-led Congress slashed the N.E.H.'s budget by 36 percent in 1995, the endowment cut spending in nearly all of the academic programs it supports, including research grants to colleges and fellowships to scholars.

Colleges received 31 percent of the N.E.H.'s awards in the 1999 fiscal year, compared with 37 percent in 1995. This year, the University of California system, for example, received $2-million from the endowment, 60 percent less than its peak of $5-million in 1995. The Rutgers University system received $449,000, down from $1.3-million in 1996. The University of Wisconsin at Madison received $897,000, nearly a 50-percent cut from $1.7-million in 1997.

While those amounts may seem small in terms of outside support for campus research, they constitute the bulk of such funds available for work in the humanities, and are not easily replaced. What's more, many researchers fear that the endowment is dumbing down its programs under the leadership of William R. Ferris. That is a concern shared by some lobbying groups and even some of the N.E.H.'s own staff members. While funds for long-time projects have been reduced or eliminated, the endowment has pressed forward with new projects that have no more than tepid support in the academic community. The plans include new regional centers to study the humanities, and a more vigorous commitment to folklore.

Another sore point for university professors: The endowment's financing to state humanities councils -- a group of 56 affiliates that generally promote popular pro grams rather than academic research -- has remained steady even as research programs have been cut. Meanwhile, more and more scholars are being told that they must find matching support from outside sources in order to receive N.E.H. grants. And the dozens of long-term editing projects are in danger of budget cuts even though they are prized for their use in research.

"There isn't any doubt that the academic-research community is not thrilled with the way Bill Ferris has been running the agency," says Stanley N. Katz, director of the Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies. "He's got no strategic view of the humanities. He doesn't have a vision of what the academic humanities are or where they fit."

Ann D. Gordon, associate professor of history on Rutgers's New Brunswick campus, says the agency's faltering commitment to scholarship is obvious. "It's not just that the N.E.H.'s budget has taken terrible hits. By their own internal figures, funding for research has declined."

Mr. Ferris, who became the agency's chairman in December 1997, does not apologize for trying to broaden its audience. A large, autographed picture of the blues musician B.B. King hangs in his office, as does a photograph of Mr. Ferris with the actor Morgan Freeman, who narrated a film promoting the N.E.H.

The chairman says the agency has to promote public programs that reach the average citizen in order to win support from Congress. Sheldon E. Hackney, his predecessor, was battered in Congressional hearings in the mid-1990's for not doing more to reach the public. Mr. Ferris argues that broadening the agency's audience will lead to bigger budgets and, eventually, more money for universities.

"A rising tide lifts all boats," he says. "We are seeking a high profile for the humanities. As a result, scholars are going to benefit."

Congress generally supports the endowment's approach. Mr. Ferris persuaded Congress to come up with an extra $5-million for this fiscal year, the first noteworthy spending increase since 1995, although the agency's $115-million budget is still far less than the $172-million figure of 1995. The Senate and the House are still working on the agency's budget for the 2001 fiscal year, but Mr. Ferris says he expects another $5-million increase.

"I think Bill [Ferris] has played his cards very well -- and it isn't a particularly attractive hand," says John H. D'Arms, president of the American Council of Learned Societies, a leading lobbyist for humanists. He says the N.E.H. chairman has won support from Republicans, including Rep. Ralph Regula of Ohio, head of the House appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the agency.

When Congress considered killing the N.E.H., in 1995, lawmakers criticized the agency for not paying enough attention to rural states and for financing projects that no one ever sees. Mr. Ferris responded by developing a program called "Extending the Reach," which awards grants to 14 states, including Alaska, Florida, and Ohio, that had been "underserved" by the endowment in the past. In July, those states got 138 special grants, totaling $1.26-million, on top of the awards that they received through the regular process.

The N.E.H. has long struggled with balancing the demands of financing both academic research and public programs, and that challenge has intensified since the budget cuts of 1995. Mr. Ferris has worked to support more state programs that promote popular projects built on academic research.

The state humanities councils received $29.1-million this year, up from $28-million in the previous year, an increase that Mr. Ferris says is consistent with the N.E.H.'s mission. "To suggest that anything that is not at a university campus is a dumbing down of the humanities is shortsighted," he argues.

The chairman has unveiled other plans to expand the endowment's appeal. He hopes to construct 10 regional facilities around the country to study the humanities, similar in concept to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, at the University of Mississippi, where he was director before joining the N.E.H. Twenty universities have received planning grants of $50,000 to develop the centers; the agency will select the 10 best proposals next year. Mr. Ferris also hopes to develop a set of online encyclopedias on the history of each of the 50 states -- another idea based on his own experience. He was an editor of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.

He is directing the agency to put more emphasis on the study of folklore, a field in which he has specialized throughout his academic career. This year, the N.E.H. hired Robert Baron, director of the folk-arts program at the New York State Council on the Arts, for a yearlong consulting post to find ways to finance more folklore studies.

Those new projects are generating more support for the endowment in Congress, Mr. Ferris says. "Our founding legislation asks us to do what we're doing -- which is to bring the humanities to all American people."

The emphasis on populist programs, however, irks many researchers. Steven H. Balch, president of the National Academy of Scholars, says the endowment has "drifted away" from traditional disciplines, spending too much on state councils, regional culture, and folklore, and not enough on history and the study of ancient languages.

"For the most part, you're not talking about the type of high culture that the N.E.H. was created to support," he says of the N.E.H.'s focus on regional and folk studies.

Researchers are also skeptical about the regional humanities centers and online encyclopedias. "I still have some lingering questions," says Page Putnam Miller, former executive director of the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History, an advocacy group for 59 archival and historical organizations. The humanities centers are organized on the basis of regional descriptions provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, which lumps together states and territories that have little in common, she says. For example, a proposed "South Atlantic" center includes South Carolina, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

There is discontent even among the state humanities councils. Michael Sartisky, director of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, and a supporter of Mr. Ferris, says building regional humanities centers is a bad idea, considering what he calls the agency's inadequate support for colleges and state councils. "It strikes me as putting our efforts and meager resources in the wrong direction," he says.

At the same time the endowment is investing in Mr. Ferris's new ideas, it is requiring more of its grant recipients to find matching support from other sources. The University of Maryland at College Park, for instance, received a "challenge grant" to build a facility that emphasizes using computer technology as a tool to teach the humanities. The N.E.H. will provide $1 for every $4 the university raises, with a maximum grant of $410,000, says James F. Harris, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities.

Mr. Ferris says matching grants help the endowment's money go farther. But such conditions make it harder for individual scholars to win grants, unless they want to spend a lot of time raising money, says Eric Foner, a history professor at Columbia University.

In addition, the increased reliance on matching grants means a greater likelihood that scholars will be beholden to corporate interests. "Once you say, 'You've got to go out and raise a lot of money if you want N.E.H. money,' you're giving veto power to people who are not always representing a full public interest," Mr. Foner says.

Mr. Foner and other humanists bemoan the fact that the N.E.H. has spent an ever-shrinking proportion of its budget on fellowships and research for individual scholars. A new study by the National Humanities Alliance, an umbrella organization that lobbies for scholars, shows that the percentage of money used for those purposes fell from 79.6 percent in 1967 to 25.5 percent in 1995, the year Congress slashed the agency's budget. In 1998, the last year covered in the study, only 21.1 percent of the N.E.H.'s funds went to research and fellowships, according to the alliance, which based its study on the N.E.H.'s annual reports.

The endowment's own staff members seem increasingly frustrated with the direction of the agency and the neglect of scholars. Morale at the agency is low, according to a survey conducted by the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents N.E.H. employees. About 40 percent of the 150 staff members responded to the survey; many said they believe that the endowment has become less effective and less supportive of research.

Perhaps most telling is the response of one employee who likes her job but nonetheless wishes that the top administrators would "recognize that the value of the N.E.H. lies in its programs of support for scholarship [and] public programming -- it's not in the promotional activities."

University scholars and some of the endowment's staff members say Mr. Ferris has promoted new projects even as the N.E.H. plans to spend less money on long-term archival projects to come, specifically those requiring at least 10 years of support. The National Council on the Humanities, a 22-member panel that advises Mr. Ferris, is seeking public comment on a plan to curb funds for editing projects that require multiyear commitments, in order to put money toward other efforts.

Divided on the issue, the council's members will discuss at their November meeting a plan to withdraw or reduce support for some current academic projects, including efforts to collect and publish presidential papers and letters, and to compile ancient-language dictionaries. Some project directors might be asked to meet earlier deadlines, and to get matching funds from other sources. Or the council may recommend that the N.E.H. simply limit the number of years that those projects will get funds.

Mr. Ferris says that while no solution will make everyone happy, the endowment has to change the way it supports long-term scholarly editions. With the N.E.H. financing only 20 percent of all the proposals it receives, he argues, the agency has to consider limiting the amount of funds for some editing projects in order to support other proposals. "If we do the same pattern of activity and the same policies we inherit, we're not securing the future of the agency," he says.

Such thinking makes scholars nervous. "The endowment is absolutely crucial to the survival of long-term editing projects," says Ms. Gordon of Rutgers, who leads the editing of the papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, a project that has a multiyear commitment of support from the endowment.

The N.E.H. already has eliminated funds for some editing projects. In 1997, it stopped supporting a long-running effort to publish the letters of James K. Polk, the 11th president of the United States. Since then it has rejected three annual applications for funds, says Wayne Cutler, head of the effort, which is based at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

For years, the endowment had contributed $50,000 to $60,000 annually to the project, and Mr. Cutler has been unable to find a private donor to replace those funds. Their loss has forced him to lay off one editor and reduce another to part-time hours. Mr. Cutler will not seek a grant from the N.E.H. next year, he says, because he doesn't foresee success.

"I do realize they can't do everything, but there seems to be no commitment to supporting the continuity of these longer projects," he says. "And it really hurts. It's hard to keep staff."

The N.E.H. currently supports 62 long-term scholarly projects, including work on the collected papers of Washington, Darwin, and Eisenhower. The total annual cost of those projects is about $5-million.

John Hammer, director of the National Humanities Alliance, finds it reasonable for the endowment to ask colleges to contribute more toward the editing projects. However, he worries that the N.E.H. will begin requiring all projects to seek matching funds from institutions or private or corporate donors. He says he would prefer an approach recognizing that more-obscure projects are less likely to find money elsewhere.

Noting that the N.E.H. is the sole reliable source of funds for editing projects, members of the National Council on the Humanities, the panel that advises Mr. Ferris, say the issue spotlights the agency's key dilemma. Mr. Ferris is pursuing a populist agenda that is designed to win more support from Congress. But by spending money on lesser-known programs that are unlikely to win money anywhere else, the agency is betraying its mission, scholars charge.

"The big question is whether the endowment should be spending as much as it does on non-scholarship, media, and outreach," says Robert I. Rotberg, a council member and a lecturer at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

"Common sense tells us it costs much more to produce a Ken Burns movie than it does to support even a senior scholar for a year. How many movies do we want to make?"

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