The National Endowment For The Humanities
THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES, NEH. Creating politically correct history.
NEH gives “particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history.” The Endowment helped fund Ken Burns The Civil War, a “landmark documentary.” Ken Burns said of southern monuments, “Take’em down.”
Believing science was smothering the humanities, in 1965 the LBJ administration and Congress formed the National Endowment for the Humanities, NEH, to insure LBJ’s “Great Society” into the future. “Because democracy demands wisdom... (the Endowment) convey(es) the lessons of history to all Americans.” The NEH … seeks to “facilitate research and original scholarship…in the humanities.” The humanities are languages; literature; history; law; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, the arts; humanist aspects of the social sciences; the study and application of the humanities to the human environment.
An example of historical interest, the Founding Fathers in a Digital Age, preserves the Founders personal letters, private diaries, financial records, revealing “the humanity beyond the statues, portraits, and memorials.” Beyond the memorials? In 2009, Annette Gordon-Reed received National Humanities Medal for her book asserting Thomas Jefferson fathered seven children of mulatto slave Sally Heming. DNA proved the father of Heming’s children was a Jefferson, one of 20 males in the Jefferson line. Historians generally decided against Jefferson the slaveholder defaming the reputation of the author of the Declaration of Independence enshrining natural rights to life, liberty and pursuit of Happiness to whom Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King turned for the moral foundation of abolition and civil rights. Surely, Washington with his wooden teeth had bad breathe.
Generally politically correct subjects winning The National Humanities Medal in recent years (multiple winners in each year) include; Chicano experience, clean cooking, technology, failures and foibles of successful giants and titans, jazz music, race in America, faith and its traditions, empathy in medicine, disadvantaged adults, African-American places, African-American journey. Also Indian-American experience, Arabic letters, American West, twentieth-century Latinas, ethical and the edible, Romantic tradition, a free Nation built by forced labor, common values of Eastern and Western cultures, African American experience, indigenous traditions in architecture, African Americans through film, southern women, and spanning ideology, race, and class.
Some upcoming Endowment grants seeking applicants include: Dialogues on the Experience of War; Hispanic-Serving Institutions; Tribal Colleges and Universities; Black Colleges and Universities. Also sustainable approaches to … reduce …use of fossil fuels, and benefit its green initiatives.
A search of Open Secrets reveals some political leanings. The Endowment is a large bureaucracy. But the Chairman and listed Directors of NEH’s divisions only three of 13 by name and address are possible contributors. A search of “NEH” as an occupation finds 35 contributions of which four were to Republicans. National Endowment as an occupation/employer revealed 11 of 51 contributions were to a Republican.