Why Should Americans Support a _National_ Endowment for the Humanities?


For all that has been done to bring the humanities to the people in less 
than three decades by this small federal agency in cooperation with 
thousands of historians, philosophers, literature scholars and other 
professionals in the humanities, we Americans are once more asking 
the question, Do we need for a _National_ Endowment for the Humanities?

The question is not one of money. Currently, we Americans tax ourselves 
at about 70 cents per capita; we set aside about $177 million dollars 
in support of all national humanities activities and much of what 
happens in public humanities in every state and territory. The National 
Endowment for the Humanities has made possible, to name but two examples, 
preservation of newspapers and books from America's past which 
would otherwise be lost forever and continues to bring together teachers 
from all areas of the country in institutes where they learn more 
about the cultural heritage of America. The Endowment has also supported 
hundreds of thousands of programs in communities large and small where 
citizens of all ages gather to discuss what it means to be an American 
by looking again at the very best of what Americans and observers 
of our culture have said about who we are and what we might be. Seldom 
has so much been done by a federal agency with so little; a modest 
appropriation which is doubled and doubled again and again by those 
who receive the grants. The federal dollars bring private and local 
support because of the deserved _national_ recognition for projects 
which celebrate our American heritage and challenge us to think about 
where we have been as a people. The recognition by the National Endowment 
for the Humanities does not come easily, nor should it. In some division 
of the Endowment, less than one in ten applications survive a rigorous 
review by panelists and reviewers who are both professionals in the 
humanities and representatives of the general public. The question 
is not "Can we afford the National Endowment for the Humanities?" 
or "Is the appropriation for a National Endowment for the Humanities 
fairly and effectively administered?" Before us once again is 
the question, "Should there be a_ National_ Endowment for 
the Humanities?"

In comparison to citizens of all other societies and governments in 
the world, present and past, Americans have always been the least 
supportive of setting aside national resources for preservation, celebration, 
and scholarly examination of their heritage. Outside observers have 
commented again and again that we have no time to consider our past. 
Alexis de Tocqueville in the early 1830s, for example, noted that 
America, as the most democratic of nations, was made up of citizens 
who ". . . care but little for what has been, but they are haunted 
by visions of what will be; in this direction their unbounded imagination 
grows and dilates beyond all measure."

Tocqueville in his _Democracy in America_ characterized Americans 
as having little or no time for the humanities, for scholarly reflection, 
historical analysis, earnest review of the past. Remarkably, he saw 
over 160 years ago a nation of citizens who would find no time to 
examine their opinions, to reflect on their history--in fact, 
to _think_. Restless, bent on finding complete liberty and equality, 
eager to find the shortest path to happiness (which, Tocqueville said, 
Americans always equate with physical pleasure), Americans strive 
for the impossible; we look for a better future unmindful of any possibility 
that our material gain in physical well-being could come at the cost 
of loss to fellow citizens. In no society which has ever existed has 
a nation ". . . awaken[ed] and foster[ed] a passion for equality 
which they [democratic institutions] can never satisfy." Tocqueville 
astutely observed that which has made America the most democratic 
of nations where individual freedom and equality of citizenry has 
reached unprecedented sustained expression may also be the cause of 
our place in the history of social compacts as the one where "untried 
thoughts" (unexamined opinion) and perhaps even the tyranny of 
majority rule contribute to a society in which we are, in Tocqueville's 
words, "prohibited from thinking at all."

Tocqueville, so accurate in many of his predictions about what America 
would become, found the young American society of the 1830s totally 
preoccupied with the business of getting and spending. Not much about 
our character and values would surprise him were he to pay a visit 
to a more mature America, but he would be most interested in the 
formation of a National Endowment for the Humanities in 1965 and its 
achievements over thirty years. Future historians and visitors like 
Tocqueville will point to the creation of the National Endowment for 
the Humanities in 1965 and single out its authorization as an example 
of setting aside political partisanship and individual differences 
in religious persuasion and in the myriad of conflicting philosophies 
and opinions of the thousands of groups and organizations which characterize 
American society. The existence of the National Endowment for the 
Humanities and its largely unanticipated success in terms of what 
it has accomplished in terms of public support and participation bespeaks 
a basic affirmation of common values and virtues which unite us as 
Americans and says proudly to the rest of the world, that we are not 
a nation impoverished in ideas and spirit. Future historians may highlight 
that American generation which led the United States from 1965 to 
1995 as the one (will it be the only?) that recognized, in the words 
of the authorizing legislation, "The world leadership which has 
come to the United States cannot rest solely upon superior power, 
wealth, and technology, but must be solidly founded upon worldwide 
respect and admiration for the Nation's high qualities as a leader 
in the realm of ideas and of the spirit."

Should we allow the National Endowment for the Humanities to die quietly? 
Should Americans accept the the notion that government has no role 
in preservation and promulgation of culture, that it is better left 
to the private sector to support such activities? Should we cut off 
the National Endowment for the Humanities, which has heretofore made 
possible doing much more than even its creators considered possible 
in terms of bringing Americans together in celebration and considered 
reexamination of their cultural heritage? If we do, what do we say 
to the rest of the world? Certainly, we do cannot expect admiration 
for balancing a federal budget at the cost of withdrawing so little, 
especially when it has accomplished so much--even in terms of 
contributing to economic growth because of the private support it 
engenders. It is not the money--a pittance in comparison to nearly 
all else the nation supports and sustains through a federal agency. 
In terms of what the poorest of nations allocate to recognition and 
preservation, celebration and scholarly examination of their cultural 
heritage, the appropriation is triflingly small. Doing away with the 
National Endowment for the Humanities says, in fact, that Tocqueville's 
was right about us, especially in his pessimistic prognosis for public 
support of the humanities in the United States, the most successful 
of democracies which has ever existed in the history of humankind 
in so many other ways.

If we say there shall be no National Endowment for the Humanities, 
we say "The United States has no need to think about its ideas 
and values; no reason to support, with public money, historical research; 
no interest in identification and preservation of the best of what 
has been said of our heritage and culture by writers and thinkers 
through such projects as the _Library of America_ series--at 
least not if it involves sustaining a _National_ Endowment for 
the Humanities. This we will say unmistakably to the rest of the world, 
to our children, and to the future we would all make better (on this 
particularly American focus we agree, about this Tocqueville was certainly 
right--we look for a better tomorrow). More than anything else, 
we say "We do not hold values and ideas in common, and we find 
no need to seek them."

This, after all, is at the heart of our skepticism of the very notion 
of a _National_ Endowment for the Humanities--the assumption 
that we can come together and hold values in common. Its existence 
connotes the antithesis of what Tocqueville so glumly predicted would 
be the cost of democracy: unthinking subservience to the unexamined 
public majority opinion of the moment, formed in unreasoned passionate 
pursuit of happiness of a particular American variety--material 
well-being. The opinion would be formed, suggested Tocqueville, by 
associations and political parties which seemed to offer alternative 
means to the common goal. Tocqueville found little real differences 
in the basic philosophies of the political parties he observed in 
the United States. In fact, he concluded that most differences were 
rhetorical masks consciously created in an effort to appear to be 
different from those who were in power.

Through the thousands of grants it has awarded and the hundreds of 
thousands of programs it has made possible over the last three decades, 
the National Endowment for the Humanities, which has enjoyed unusual 
bipartisan support, has demonstrated another vision of America: a 
coming of age and maturity, a search for common value, and the discovery 
of a common heritage which can stand up to scholarly examination and 
comparison with the best of what has been thought and expressed through 
the arts and humanities of other civilizations and societies. The 
very existence of the institution suggests that thinking and democracy 
are not mutually exclusive; on the contrary, as the "Declaration 
of Purpose" in the enabling legislation so nobly set forth, we 
are indeed a nation whose citizens can come together in support of 
scholarship in the humanities and encouragement of participation in 
the humanities "by all the people of the United States" 
in the same way in which we support science and technology. Tocqueville 
concluded that education in America would be in technology and mechanical 
arts almost exclusively. He could not envision a Congress which would 
say in 1965, "An advanced civilization must not limit its efforts 
to science and technology alone but must give full value and support 
to the other great branches of scholarly and cultural activity in 
order to achieve a better understanding of the past, a better analysis 
of the present, and a better view of the future."

The creators of the National Endowment for the Humanities were well 
aware that many Americans would find the last rationale for the Endowment 
particularly problematic, for institutionalizing "a better view 
of the future" by creating a federal agency could connote the 
notion that there was one view, and we seem to be so many different 
Americans. The enabling legislation addresses the need to be "sensitive 
to the matter of public sponsorship" and the necessity of "the 
fostering of mutual respect for the diverse beliefs and values of 
all persons and groups." That the National Endowment for the 
Humanities has continued to thrive through the last three decades, 
a period during which American society and government has changed 
so dramatically, indicates that we can indeed come together to support 
a common heritage in the most divisive of times. In fact, the Endowment 
grew and came of age during the turbulent Vietnam era and the years 
of the civil rights movement. Perhaps the most serendipitously fortunate 
of circumstances created a partnership between the National Endowment 
for the Humanities and independent nonprofit organizations in all 
the states and territories in the early 1970s. During the next two 
decades, this partnership made possible the hundreds of thousands 
of programs which made the humanities more widely available to and 
better understood by citizens in fulfillment of the hope expressed 
in the enabling legislation which declared that the humanities "belong 
to all the people of the United States." With matching funds 
from the National Endowment for the Humanities, for example Americans 
gathered in libraries and church basements, schools and bank hospitality 
rooms to study the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights and talk 
about the ideas of Thomas Paine after reading what he wrote. Other 
programs celebrated local history and literature and provided a forum 
where citizens of all ages, from all backgrounds, came together in 
civil discussion of their past and its meaning to them and future 
generations. At time when newspaper headlines and lead stories on 
television and radio shouted a "nation divided," citizens 
with very different points of view and fierce loyalty to competing 
political parties found time and place in a _national _program 
to sit down and listen to each other and to reflect upon a common 
cultural heritage presented in books and film, exhibits and lectures.

It was the existence of and the sustained commitment to a _National_ 
Endowment for the Humanities which created state humanities councils. 
The continuation of the National Endowment and its _national_ 
vision is the only assurance that the remarkable outreach of the humanities 
will continue. Before the early 1970s, nothing like state humanities 
councils existed in any state; there is little evidence that they 
will continue should the National Endowment for the Humanities cease 
to exist. It is much more than the federal dollars and the minimal 
yet appropriately insistent National Endowment for the Humanities 
guidelines and interpretation of the national legislation which sustain 
state humanities councils. Indeed, it is the affiliation with a _national_ 
program which has attracted private support, unusually high match, 
and totally uncharacteristically high participation by citizens in 
programs which explore history and literature and the other humanities. 
Perhaps the reason why those book discussion programs which once drew 
a handful in outreach programs by university extension services came 
to be demanded by hundreds bespeaks a yearning for expression of common 
experience and participation in discussion of values and ideas on 
a national level which has little precedent in the American experience, 
with such notable exceptions as the national Chautauqua movement of 
the turn of the century when all of America read the same texts and 
felt part of a common intellectual activity. Because of the _national_ 
program and its expectation that the humanities had validity and value 
beyond the academy and classroom, Americans have indeed come to a 
greater mutual respect for each others ideas, beliefs, and values. 


Most significant among the accomplishments of the National Endowment 
for the Humanities is the legacy of a _public_ sphere for history 
and the humanities. It is no small matter that thousands of scholars 
have come to understand that their audience is much broader than those 
who professed the humanities but a generation past. What once was 
available to a privileged few in university and college classrooms, 
and even fewer who read journals of humanities disciplines, has become 
available to the general public through television documentaries and 
interpretive exhibits, books and computer programs, and thousands 
upon thousands of open public lectures by those who once spoke to 
only a few. It was, after all, the National Endowment for the Humanities 
which made possible Ken Burns' _Civil War Series_ and made 
a national celebrity of historian Shelby Foote, to cite but one example.

There are those who are of the opinion that National Endowment for 
the Humanities should end on its thirtieth anniversary in 1995. They 
suggest "privatization," or perhaps, at best, a radical 
decentralization which passes through a much larger percentage of 
far fewer federal dollars to state councils. These would have Congress 
revise the "Declaration" of 1965, which noted second only 
to the premise that "the humanities belong to all the people 
of the United States" the recognition that "The encouragement 
and support of national progress and scholarship in the humanities 
and the arts, while primarily a matter for private and local initiative, 
_are also an appropriate matter of concern to the Federal Government_ 
[emphasis added]."

If the revision takes place, more than the words "an appropriate 
matter of concern to the Federal Government" must be deleted. 
We must also agree to take out the word "national." The 
implication is clear: Congress would be saying, "The encouragement 
and support of progress and scholarship in the humanities and the 
arts are a matter for private and local initiative." Period.

The questions before us are "Will we go our separate ways? Will 
we send humanities scholars back to ivory towers and think tanks? 
Have we no need for a national search for common values, no reason 
to participate in national reflection on our heritage?"

At very least, we would do well to frame the question 
honestly rather than asking another in hope that we can avoid the 
consequence of saying "No!" for a different reason, one 
which ignores what is before us. "Can we afford the National 
Endowment for the Humanities?" does exactly that. Tocqueville 
predicted that we would never find time, let alone common resources, 
to pay any attention to anything but some sort of vague notion of 
being happier tomorrow. It is undeniable that our society is the most 
wealthy, technologically advanced, and egalitarian which ever existed. 
Although the United States in the 1990s does indeed have pockets of 
real poverty, our collective creature comfort remains unparalleled 
in the history of humankind. But what of our intellect and spirit? 
How accurate are the oxymoronic characterizations of Americans as 
the "impoverished wealthy, the poor rich Americans," what 
accounts for what Tocqueville calls our "strange melancholy" 
which "haunts" us "in the midst of abundance"? 
Why our "disgust with life" that grips us in "calm 
and easy circumstances"? In 1845, Henry Bellows said of American 
society,

"It is said that we are not a happy people. And it is true; for we most 
unwisely neglect all those free fountains of happiness which Providence 
has opened for all its children. Blessed beyond any people with the 
means of living, supplied to an unparalleled extent with the comforts 
and luxuries of life, our American homes are sobre and cheerless
abodes. . . . The excessive pursuit of gain begets a secrecy of thought, a 
contradiction of ideas, a barrenness of interest, which renders its 
votary any thing but social or companionable. Conversation incessantly 
takes an anxious and uninteresting turn; and the fireside becomes 
only a narrow exchange, and the parlor a more private news-room."

Millions of Americans have found the means to discuss and reflect 
on ideas and values in the living room created by the National Endowment 
for the Humanities. In a very real, tangible way, the Endowment has 
made it possible for many Americans to both feel and express living 
in America being at home. In Chautauqua tents on the Great Plains, 
in living rooms throughout the country with millions of Americans 
watching Ken Burns' _Baseball_, in the tiniest of libraries 
in the smallest of towns where the most common of citizens pull down 
a volume in _Library of America_ series, Americans have responded 
to the opportunity for thoughtful reflection, to join with fellow 
citizens throughout the country in serious discussion of the question 
"Who are we who call ourselves _Americans_, what can we 
learn from our past and from that which we celebrate as our American 
heritage that will draw us together as a people?

To be sure, we are still restless, still wanting change. Tocqueville 
said that "Americans cleave to the things of this world as if 
assured that they will never die, and yet are in such a rush to snatch 
any that come within their reach, as if expecting to stop living before 
they have relished them. They clutch everything but hold nothing fast, 
and so lose grip as they hurry after some new delight." He found 
us terribly unhappy, in pursuit of but never in a state of happiness, 
in contrast to the rest of the world of the 1830s, where citizens 
of the most oppressive of governments still found a degree of serenity 
and reason to have "a jovial disposition," because, concludes 
Tocqueville summarily, they have a _tradition_.

Perhaps more than anything else, the National Endowment for the Humanities 
has focused our attention from time to time at the possibility of 
an American tradition much deeper and more satisfying than fireworks 
on the Fourth of July or turkey, trimmings and pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. 
The very existence of the _National_ Endowment for the Humanities 
suggests an America of shared ideas of justice and truth, a people 
with a common great literature, a bringing together of people who 
seem so different and self-interested. The existence of the Endowment 
says that there is an America which transcends the differences of 
being a Republican or Democrat, a Christian or Moslem, an accountant 
or history professor, man or women, Californian or North Dakotan. 
That the United States sustains a National Endowment for the Humanities 
which embraces all citizens of all races and backgrounds says to the 
rest of the world, to our children, to our future, "There is 
an America; we are Americans."

How much is necessary, in tax dollars, to sustain the Endowment's 
role in bringing us together can be debated, as can fine-tuning the 
way in which the National Endowment does its work. The very notion 
that the National Endowment for the Humanities has affirmed the possibility 
of common American values, that it has provided a public space for 
humanities scholarship, and that it has indeed made our the humanities 
in general and our American heritage in particular more widely available 
to and better understood by the general public may well make it the 
greatest bargain in the history of our government at 70 cents per 
person.

Everett C. Albers
Bismarck, North Dakota
Thanksgiving, 1994



ealbers@cerfnet.com
Everett C. Albers
ND Humanities Council
2900 Broadway E., Suite 3
PO Box 2191
Bismarck, ND 58502-2191

FAX: 701-223-8724
TELEPHONE: 701-255-3360
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