One subscriber on H-POL asked yesterday:
How, if at all, will H-Net be affected by the likely zeroing
out of NEH, and if it will be affected, is there anything
that subscribers should be doing to contact their members of
Congress?
H-Net is operated primarily by the donated volunteer time of the
120 editors. We have $177,000 of NEH money, which we use to hire
technical staff (most of them are humanities grad students with
good computer skills), and for travel and for training workshops.
H-Net has a whole series of grants pending right now. If they
come in we will expand H-Net operations. For example, we want to
set up elaborate gopher and World Wide Web access to H-Net lists
and files, and start a major program of scanning or retyping
historical texts. If the grants do NOT come in we will continue
to operate all the lists, but the quality and quantity will be
less than what is possible. Our subscribers teach several
hundred thousand undergraduate students every semester, and many
people, especially at smaller colleges, have told us that the
H-Net lists makes their teaching more effective.
As for NEH (and NEA): H-Net has been providing highly
detailed "NCC Washington Updates" by Page Putnam Miller, our ace
Washington reporter. My reading of the situation is that NEH
faces three immediate challenges: Rescission, Refunding and
Reauthorization.
Rescission refers to cut backs in this year's budget. That
has already happened. NEH took a 3% cut ($5 million). In actual
practice, the impact will be slight. Refunding refers to the
budget for the next fiscal year. Clinton asked for a small
increase, including $4 million for computer-oriented initiatives.
Congress has not started to act on this yet; my personal guess is
that there will be a cut of 5-10%, and that the computer
initiatives will stay in the budget.
The fireworks will be in Reauthorization. An agency like
NEH is not permanent; its existence has to be approved every 5
years. There was a flak over NEA (arts) three years back, and the
Congressional powers (Democrats like Senator Pell and Congressman
Yates) decided to take the risk that the flak would die down
eventually, so they did not get a reauthorization passed when it
was required. They never dreamed they would lose control of
Congress.
Attacks on NEA last fall were a staple of the Religious
Right and its allies who are convinced that the arts community is
basically liberal-left, and ought to be defunded. It's the sort
of argument that perpetual losers make. But the losers suddenly
became winners last November, and they soon made a curious
discovery. Yes indeed, the arts-folks are left-liberal. However,
the patrons of the arts--who buy the concert tickets and donate
to the building fund at the Roxy--are rock ribbed conservatives,
Chamber of Commerce leaders, and especially, community boosters.
Likewise the patrons of the humanities who support local
historical societies and museums and pay the tuition and do the
fundraising for local state universities and regional liberal
arts colleges. These folks have been organized by local arts
groups, and they have (I think) turned Congress around.
Conservative spokesman Charlton Heston went to the Senate and
said that in 1946 there was theater only in Manhattan, and today,
thanks to NEA, hundreds of theaters and orchestras and festivals
flourish in every state and congressional district. That was a
pretty decisive argument for many Republicans. (On a more subtle
plane, the argument goes like this: without the Endowments, arts
and culture will be controlled by Hollywood, Manhattan and a
powerful left-liberal national elite. The Endowments are
powerful decentralizing forces that allow original arts and
humanities to flourish locally, without that central control.)
So I think the votes are there for reauthorization. (I hope we
can soon publish a detailed name-by-name breakdown of where every
members of Congress stands.)
I believe it will help if H-Net subscribers write letters to
their Representative and both Senators. I think H-Net is an
excellent example of how NEH has decentralized humanities, so
that it is no longer dominated by a handful of famous graduate
schools. It gives voice to people at hundreds of smaller
colleges--and to graduate students everywhere--who not long ago
were isolated or on the periphery. (H-Net has more editors from
Newt's own Kennesaw State College in Marietta Georgia than
Harvard, Yale and Princeton combined.) The genius of Congress is
that the geographical system guarantees that the periphery is
very well represented. I do not think NEH will be zeroed out,
because people on the periphery have been contacting their
Congressmen explaining that it is a valuable service to the
teachers and students in their own district.
The budget-cutters are very powerful in Congress, and they
keep asking why not let the private sector pay for the arts, thus
saving a little federal cash. However, in the private sector,
everybody is fully paid for what they do. [and there are very few
professional artists in any one Congressman's district.] Most
people are couch potatoes who are merely consumers of
entertainment. On the other hand, in the nonprofit NEH/NEA
sector, many thousands of people volunteer their time & talents
for free, donating them to the community. This is the incremental
'value added' that the Endowments stimulate--genuine new
resources that would not otherwise exist. Local examples will
prove telling to a locally-oriented Congressman; H-Net itself is
a striking example of this newly released volunteer energy. Our
editors and subscribers contribute many thousands of hours to the
humanities community because of H-Net, and hundreds of thousands
of students are beneficiaries.
Richard Jensen
H-Net Executive Director