Two grants consume 10% of humanities funding amid process concerns

The National Endowment for the Humanities just allocated nearly $21 million—a tenth of its annual budget—to two projects, raising questions about how the agency decides where money goes.

One grant, $10.4 million to the Jewish educational group Tikvah, will fund what's called the Jewish Civilization Project. The initiative aims to combat antisemitism by creating school curricula, expanding high school fellowships, developing university courses, and supporting scholarly work and early-career journalism. The project's scope is ambitious: it touches everything from K-12 classrooms to academic publishing.

The other major award, $10 million to the University of Virginia, supports editorial work on founding-era documents and a public website called ForgingUS, timed to the country's 250th anniversary.

What's sparked concern isn't the projects themselves, but how they were chosen. The NEH's advisory council reportedly voted against the Tikvah grant, citing worries about its advocacy focus and vague application details. Yet NEH acting chairman Michael McDonald approved it anyway, arguing that "the humanities also have a vital role to play" in addressing antisemitism.

The process has become murkier still. The NEH has introduced "chairman's grants"—awards of up to $30,000 that skip the usual scholarly review entirely. One such grant is titled "Meritocracy vs. Equity: The Declaration of Independence in Tension With Critical Race Theory and D.E.I."

Representative Chellie Pingree, the top Democrat overseeing the NEH in Congress, has flagged what she calls the "rapid destruction" of the agency's grantmaking process. In a letter to McDonald, she pointed to staff cuts, the dissolution of the review council, and the shift toward larger, less-vetted awards as signs the agency is drifting from its founding mission.

The tension reflects a broader question facing cultural institutions: who decides what scholarship and education get funded, and by what standards. The NEH was created in 1965 to support rigorous humanities work across the country. Whether these recent changes strengthen or undermine that mission depends partly on what happens next—and whether the agency's leadership can rebuild trust in how it allocates its resources.