Members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation are asking the acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities to explain the agency’s recent decision to cancel NEH grants in Massachusetts and across the country.
In a letter sent Monday to Michael McDonald, the acting NEH chair, the delegation demands to know “why you are crippling an agency that punches so far above its weight and is essential to enabling access to libraries, museums, archives, historic sites and more for Massachusetts residents.”
The lawmakers’ missive comes after the Trump administration announced a sweeping reduction of the NEH as part of deep cuts recommended by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Locally, Mass Humanities, the Massachusetts affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, saw its $1.3 million grant terminated. In addition, the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association lost a $300,000 NEH grant, and the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester had its $380,000 grant canceled. A $150,000 grant for The Yiddish Book Center in Amherst was canceled, as was a $40,000 grant for the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum in Hadley.
In total, according to The New York Times, DOGE has recommended cutting up to 80 percent of NEH staff and canceling virtually all grants made during the Biden administration. In early April emails to state humanities councils, NEH leadership said the agency would be “repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the president’s agenda,” and McDonald has since suggested that the focus will be on “patriotic programming.”
In its letter to McDonald — which is signed by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey and Representatives Bill Keating, Jake Auchincloss, Stephen Lynch, Jim McGovern, Seth Moulton, Richard Neal, Ayanna Pressley, and Lori Trahan — the Massachusetts delegation called the cuts “shortsighted” and predicted they will have “devastating impacts on our nation’s cultural institutions and scholarship” and “harm people, organizations, and communities throughout the country.”
The NEH, founded by Congress in 1965, funds libraries, museums, archives, historic sites, media outlets, research institutions, and educators. Between 2019 and 2023, according to the lawmakers’ letter, the federal agency issued more than $46 million in grants in Massachusetts. Examples of work supported by the grants include: a project by the Appalachian Mountain Club to preserve trail maps, photographs, writings, log books, and scrapbooks of journalists and outdoorspeople documenting more than a century of wilderness experience in Western Massachusetts and New England; a documentary about the role of Jewish women’s slave labor during the Holocaust, produced by the Center for Independent Documentary in Newton; and a training program for teachers focused on the industrial revolution, with hands-on learning at the textile mills in Lowell.
In demanding that McDonald explain the cuts, the delegation has asked the agency’s acting chair to respond to a series of questions, including: Who was involved in these decisions? Will there be an opportunity to appeal termination decisions? Does the administration plan to seek repayment of funds already disbursed? Provide a description and examples of “patriotic programming.”
“These actions at NEH mark another instance of overreach by the Trump administration, causing more destruction and devastation to research institutions and scholars across the country, but providing little in savings,” the letter reads.
Mark Shanahan can be reached at mark.shanahan@globe.com.