ANALYSIS: Just before Trump’s assault on “wasteful” programs, NEH awarded$ 2.4M in DEI offers to professors and institutions.
According to a College Fix study, the National Endowment for the Humanities lately granted practically$ 2.4 million in grants to higher education institutions, including one for a reserve about LGBTQ+ artists and another for a review of “feminist mapping.”
The national firm, which awards grants to arts projects, announced via a media release on January 14 that it would “award$ 22.6 million in grants to 219 humanities projects across the country,” including to museums, libraries, social organizations, and universities.
A College Fix examination found 35 offers to professors or higher education institutions that were awarded in terms of climate change, race, and sex. More than$ 2.38 million was allotted for these tasks as offer financing.
The award announcement came less than a week before the opening ceremony for President Donald Trump on January 20. The Democrat leader immediately enacted an administrative order to end “wasteful state DEI programs.” The jury is hearing a case against the attempt.
The Fix emailed The NEH repeatedly to inquire whether any of the offers in the news on January 14 had been put on hold by the Trump administration.
According to The Fix’s study, one give awards$ 60, 000 to Margaret Galvan, a professor in the University of Florida’s British section, for” a book on the graphic formats innovated by LGBTQ+ artists in the 1980s and 1990s.”
This job excavates stories of vivid gay communities to inspire a new era at a time when LGBTQ+ people are facing renewed threats, according to the grant description.
For” a research about race, class, and gender relationships of African American hair shops in Vegas,” Nicole Jenkins, a professor of sociology and sociology at Howard University, even received a$ 60, 000 offer.
Meghan Kelly, a professor at Syracuse University, received$ 74, 725 for a project titled” Feminist Mapping.” The project is described as” an empirical study investigating alternative map icons, a conference on map symbolization and cutting-edge mapping tools, and the development of a research agenda that re-envisions conventional map icon libraries.”
According to Kelly’s grant description,” Map icons are frequently overlooked and used universally in maps despite reflecting cultural contexts and power relations due to their size and ubiquity.” I’m applying for a grant to rethink map icons as feminist resistance sites and their libraries.
Galvan, Jenkins, or Kelly wrote to The Fix repeatedly asking for more information about their projects as well as the possibility of the funding being cut by the Trump administration.
The Fix also reached out to Kara Schlichting, who was awarded a$ 40,000 grant for” a book on the historical and structural foundations of climate inequalities among New York City residents and neighborhoods,” but she chose not to comment because she was “absolutely buried this term.” She teaches history at Queens College in New York City.
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Even though the description may not make it perfectly clear, National Association of Scholars spokesperson Louis Galarowicz said it’s possible that even more of the grants “are critical or social justice related” are likely to be forthcoming.
In the humanities, social sciences, and health sciences, DEI serves as a common framework for scholarship. He told The Fix in a recent email that many grant award committees either implicitly or explicitly ask grant applicants to explain the relationship between their work to DEI.
Galarowicz said that grant applicants who have varying levels of personal commitment adhere to the DEI framework and language when designing their projects and presenting their proposals.
A book by environmental studies professor Brian McCammack at Lake Forest College called” Black, Brown and Green” is one of the other projects on the NEH list.
According to the grant announcement, the book will be” a collective biography examining the experiences and perspectives of environmentalists of color who attempted to create a racially diverse environmental movement.”
In a news release from the college, McCammack stated that” the majority of the mainstream environmental movements ‘ histories tend to start in the 1980s and tend to ignore people of color or ignore their multiple responses to the mainstream movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s.”
Another grant provides for the publication of history professor Asif Siddiqi’s book,” How mid-twentieth century space exploration was made possible through extensive physical infrastructure constructed in developing countries.”
According to the grant description, “it asserts that space activities during the Cold War masked and excused a number of practices that were extensions and reformulations of older colonial practices, including forced displacements of indigenous populations, environmental damage, illegal occupations, resource extractions, and exploitative market forces.”
The Fix had several emails from The Fix asking for comments, but neither McCammack nor Siddiqi responded.
Previous grants from the NEH have also received criticism for being “highly ideological” and “progressive,” as The Fix previously reported.
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute mentioned a$ 270, 000 grant from 2022 to create classes on” Latinx history, hip-hop, and contemporary Filipino American art” in a report from last year.
MORE: UMaine recovers nearly$ 30 million in USDA funding from its Title IX investigation.
Dmitry Demidovich/Shutterstock: An image of American currency with DEI imagery atop it.
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