Re: Congressional vote on the NEH
Dave Postles (pot@leicester.ac.uk)
Sat, 7 Jan 1995 09:40:29 +0000
Perhaps Mr Zincavage's line of argument was flawed but I must say that while
the potential erasure of the NEH causes me to pause, I am willing to see
what would end up being wrought. I speak about this as no
crypto-reactionary but it has long occurred to me, as an academic now and
a former manager of an art gallery in Washington, that funding for NEH and
NEA ultimately does not deliver superior creativity nor superior art nor
necessarily pursuasive scholarship. If universities were forced to take
on the role, at least on the academic side of things, where this research
and productivity would be funded by the institutions of higher learning
as I think they should be, then we might see very different results. I
work on the IRA and terrorism and I have never been enamored with the
idea of the government having any kind of interest in my work whatsoever
so I might well be a bit of a case on this, but I do not see the NEH
doing anything that might be better handled within universities. In any
case generous tax deductions for the funding of these activities would
be something I would like to see tried because I am not particularly
impressed with the results we get now and I think that these agencies are
an easy out for university administrators who live and die nowadays by
things such as TQM.
sean farrell moran
oakland university
moran@vela.acs.oakland.edu