American Council of Learned Societies
May 9, 2003

It’s wonderful to return for another springtime visit to Philadelphia, and to see so many old friends and august scholars.

Last year, at the ACLS meeting, I had arrived in Washington only a couple months earlier, and despite my being rather long in the tooth, felt rather wet around the ears.

A year later, that feeling has dissipated only slightly. I still find myself reminiscing fondly over my many years as a professor. There are so many things I miss: the harmonious fellowship of faculty meetings, the delight of grading final exams, and of course, the abundance of convenient parking.

I see you feel my pain.

Since we met here last year, there have been many developments within the NEH and indeed, within the world of the humanities. Today, I’d like to tell you more about what we have been doing and share with you some of our exciting plans for the future.

As I said last year, my first priority as the Chairman of the NEH is to strengthen and enhance the core functions of the endowment, and to foster excellence in scholarship, research, and the public programs the NEH sponsors. The NEH was founded both to promote such excellence in humanities scholarship and to disseminate the fruits of that scholarship as broadly as possible to the American people.

I am very proud of NEH’s record in the last year in meeting these goals. Let me list a few highlights from the long list of projects funded since our last conversation.

NEH has provided fellowships to hundreds of scholars at work in every humanities discipline. This year NEH support is allowing UC-Berkeley Professor Sanjyot Mehendale to produce an electronic catalog of ivory and bone carvings from ancient Afghanistan. NEH is also underwriting Ohio State’s Saul Cornell’s account of the Second Amendment history and enabling independent scholar Deborah Yaffe to spend the year writing about the impact of equalized funding of New Jersey schools.

Our renewed commitment to documentary editions has brought additional funding to foundational works of scholarship. In the last year, the NEH has provided support to projects such as Black Anti-Slavery Writings from 1760 to 1829, The Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, and the Papers of Eleanor Roosevelt and those of the War Department.

Nebraska public television will produce a documentary film on the literary life of Willa Cather. NEH is also supporting a documentary on the 1938 boxing match between Joe Lewis and Max Schmelling--a sporting event laden with social and political significance.

At the University of Pittsburgh, NEH funds are helping preservationists microfilm 3,000 Chinese language monographs on Chinese history and culture published before 1976. At Columbia 7,000 brittle Slavic language volumes published from 1850 to 1960 are being cataloged and preserved on microfilm.

These excellent projects bring a song to my heart. . . . And are but a taste of the breadth and variety of NEH programming and grant lines. And the good news is that we may soon have the means, the capacity, and the support to expand our sponsorship of many more excellent projects.

Over the past year, I have argued that the humanities are essential to the proper functioning of a democracy. As our nation’s founders asserted, an informed and educated citizenry is essential to the health of the body politic. Times of uncertainty only underscore the need for the NEH, and the necessity of the humanities in providing wisdom and guidance to deal wisely with the complexity of international conflict and national challenges.

We have made this argument in the academy, in the Congress, and even in the White House. And we are thrilled by the support we’ve received.

Last fall in the White House Rose Garden, President Bush announced the launch of NEH’s We the People initiative. The initiative aims to encourage and enhance the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture.

In March, the President’s fiscal year 2004 budget included a historic 22 percent increase in NEH funds. If approved by Congress, this $25 million dollar increase will be the largest in NEH history.

And last week, President Bush announced that his support will be ongoing. Over the next three years, the President is requesting $100 million in additional funds for the NEH. That figure is almost the size of our entire annual budget at present.

We are grateful for the President’s vigorous support.

The We the People initiative consists of several different components, some of which we have already launched. On May 1st, at the White House’s We the People Forum on American History, Civics, and Service, the NEH held its Inaugural “Heroes of History” lecture. Robert Remini of the University of Illinois at Chicago delivered the lecture on “Ordinary Heroes: Founders of Our Republic,” and gave a fascinating account of the challenges and the personalities of the First Congress.

We chose the title of the lecture series deliberately. In some quarters, the very notion of the hero has fallen out of fashion. But we believe that such stories not only instruct but enliven the imagination. And the account of various heroes--civil rights leaders, suffragettes, teachers, scientists, soldiers, humanitarians, and others--in history can illuminate a whole landscape of social history and cultural context.

In addition, this year the NEH sponsored the first “Idea of America” essay contest for high school juniors. We asked students from across the country to write 1200 word essays on a principle of the American founding--such as freedom of expression or the rule of law--and relate it to a specific event in history. We received over 1300 submissions. And last week, we honored the six winners at the We the People Forum, where they received medals from the First Lady.

Most importantly, the We the People initiative will massively--let me repeat: massively--extend the grant-making capacity of the NEH. If appropriated, the We the People funding will not only provide new dollars for proposals that enhance the teaching, study and understanding of American history, but also free up funds for scholarship and research in all other areas--including projects like the Sumerian Dictionary Project, the Sackler’s exhibit of Chola Bronzes, the preservation of artifacts and antiquities around the world, and collaborative research projects spanning the globe.

Let me explain how this will work: If NEH is appropriated the funds the President has requested, a portion of these funds will go to projects on American history and culture which come to NEH through our existing programs. Every We the People project supported with new funds would free up money to support other applications on any topic which come to our regular programs.

The We the People initiative will also open up new grant competitions as well as extend existing ones, including:

• a dramatic expansion of NEH’s summer Seminars and Institutes program to benefit hundreds more university and secondary school teachers each year;
• a new grant program for model curriculum projects to help schools establish or improve course offerings in American history, culture and civics;
• expanded local and statewide projects on American history, culture and civics sponsored by the 56 state humanities councils;
• enhanced support for American editions and reference works. New funding will also support the digitization of these volumes. We will work to ensure that anyone with Internet access will be able to plumb the depths of these intellectual gold mines.

As the We the People initiative proceeds, we will continue to solicit grant proposals that tell the story of America’s history in its entirety--the peaks and the valleys, the margins and the center, the good, bad, and the ugly. Humanities scholarship rests on a foundation of trust and truth. We will not whitewash America’s history and thereby jeopardize the credibility of our scholarship. But nor can we allow an entire generation of students to grow up ignorant of the ideas, ideals, institutions, and events that have shaped and formed their nation.

We hope you’ll share our excitement and optimism about this promising new initiative, and we welcome your thoughts, suggestions, and support.

Support for the We the People initiative has been both deep and wide. There are so many in this room that have offered such solid and vocal support, and I thank you for your work, your advice, your input, and your help.

It is always a dangerous thing to acknowledge a few people and institutions, when so many have been of assistance. But I’d like to extend special thanks for their support to the membership of the Association of American Universities, the National Humanities Alliance, and the Federation of State Humanities Councils. And I’d like to recognize and thank Nils Hasselmo, President of the AAU; John Hammer, Director of the NHA; and Gail Leftwich of the Federation. Thank you for your work, and the steadfast support of your member organizations.

Of course, our own story cannot be understood in a vacuum. NEH’s new initiative to enhance knowledge of American History and culture will, as I’ve explained, only enhance our work in other areas of the humanities.

In fact, I’m proud to announce that the NEH is taking an active role in addressing the fate of endangered antiquities in Iraq.

As part of a government-wide effort, the NEH is making $500,000 available for applicants working to document, recover, and restore Iraq’s priceless heritage. NEH grants may support, for example, digitizing or microfilming museum and library catalogs, and making those resources accessible through the Internet.

The NEH also will invite American conservators to provide assistance in stabilizing damaged objects and manuscripts, and training Iraqi conservators. NEH will play an ongoing role in the effort to help restore these collections.

I’ve asked George Farr, who is here today, to convene a working group of NEH staff with expertise relevant to the issues at hand. The group also will begin drafting a RFP calling for applications, such as bibliographic or digital projects, which could document Iraqi collections. When conditions in Iraq permit, the NEH will launch a special initiative to support scholarly access to collections and research in Iraq.

These efforts are considered the first steps in what will be a long-term engagement between American and Iraqi scholars and institutions. There is a shared interest in discovering and understanding our common history and civilization.

The NEH exists to preserve, cultivate, and share the wealth of the humanities. We have a responsibility to promote excellence in scholarship. We have a mandate to sustain the work that others can or will not support. And we have the privilege and duty to share the knowledge flowing from that scholarship with the American people.

This is an exciting time for the NEH and the broader community of humanities scholars. Many of you may bring ideas, expertise, and, of course, applications, to the NEH under the We the People initiative. Others will find new opportunities to work with us as all of our programs benefit from the agency’s renewed energy.

To fulfill our responsibility to the American people and to uphold the highest standards of scholarly excellence, we need your participation and your expertise. From documentary films to archaeological digs to seminars for schoolteachers, NEH programs require the close involvement of humanities scholars. Together, we can work towards fulfilling that great democratic imperative: to give each succeeding generation a brighter light, a broader perspective, and an enriched legacy with which to face the future.

Thank you.