The Tamesis
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded $75.1 million to 84 projects, the first round of grants since last fall when President Donald Trump fired nearly all members of the National Council for the Humanities, the advisory body that helps set NEH’s funding priorities.
The funded projects cover a wide range of topics but largely reflect the Trump administration’s emphasis on American exceptionalism. More than $1 million in grants were awarded primarily to universities for projects focused on civics and classical Greek philosophy. The largest awards – $10 million each – were awarded to the University of Texas at Austin (UT) and the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education (FEHE).
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The University of Texas at Austin, whose leadership was replaced this year by a former Republican lawyer, has largely agreed with the Trump administration’s push for conservative changes to its curriculum. The university will use the federal grant to hire 16 faculty members to establish a “strategy, statecraft, and classics scholarly major” — an umbrella term that references classic texts in the Western academic tradition and appears repeatedly in grant descriptions from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of South Carolina.
FEHE, a conservative think tank based in Princeton, New Jersey, will receive $10 million to develop humanities programs for research universities and provide professional development for faculty and students. NEH also awarded more than $2 million to conservatives The Abigail Adams Institute near Harvard University, which hosts seminars and scholarships focusing on “historical, literary, philosophical, and civic topics.”
Grand Central Atelier, a small art school in Queens, New York, that promotes “art untouched by modernism” and teaches methods “rooted in traditions that predated the advent of photography in the 19th century” has received a $2 million grant. Its founder, realist painter Jacob Collins, has publicly criticized modernism and the avant-garde, including at the National Conservative Conference in Washington, D.C., in September. Collins describes himself on his website as “a leading figure in the contemporary renaissance of classical painting.”
Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution received $2.2 million – the largest grant ever awarded to a museum. The institution came under scrutiny in 2023 for hosting events by the far-right group Freedom Moms, which the Southern Poverty Law Center said opposed “inclusive curriculum, LGBTQ rights, and reading materials they deem inappropriate in classrooms and libraries.” The funded museum projects focus on American history or commemorate the United States’ upcoming sesquicentennial, with individual awards of approximately $100,000.
Smaller grants totaling approximately $350,000 have also been made available for conservation, primarily to instruct students in subject matter. Grantees include New York University, the University of Delaware, the Center for the Preservation of Midwestern Art in Minneapolis, the Center for the Preservation of Art and Historic Preservation in Philadelphia, and the Northeastern Massachusetts Document Preservation Center.
A complete list of NEH grant recipients can be found here.
