The Center for Humanities Research (CHR) is devoted to supporting and promoting humanities scholarship at George Mason University. Our mission situates us within a wider network of ideas, values, and peer institutions, including publicly supported humanities institutions and funding agencies (e.g., the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), museums, libraries, archives, scholarship programs like Fulbright-Hays). We thrive when they thrive. Universities themselves are institutions for open inquiry and critical thought, and a national political culture that accepts dissent, critique, and free expression as crucial features distinguishes liberal democracies from authoritarian and repressive states.
I’d like to report on some recent occasions I had for expressing our support for the humanities during National Humanities Advocacy Day and at the Virginia Forum conference, and call attention to two upcoming occasions for all of us to support the institutions and values that allow the humanities to flourish: the National Day of Action (April 5, 2025) and the AAUP’s National Advocacy Day (April 17, 2025).
The National Humanities Alliance organized a National Humanities Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, March 11, 2025. Over 200 advocates gathered for this effort and the group lobbying members of Congress from Virginia consisted of seven persons—three from the University of Virginia, two from James Madison University, one from the American Society of Overseas Research, and myself. We met with staff at five congressional offices of members in the Virginia delegate in the Senate and the House of Representatives (Senator Mark Warner and Representatives Don Beyer, Gerry Connolly, John McGuire, and Suhas Subramanyam).
R: With a staffer at the office of Rep. Suhas Subramanyam
The meeting with staffers were positive—but somewhat anticipatory, since the congressional appropriations process for FY26 hasn’t gotten underway yet. There will be occasion to follow-up with them when the appropriations process is underway and if you would like to participate, you can write to or call our congressional representatives to make clear the importance of appropriations for such things as the NEH, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and its grant-making arm, the National Historical Records and Publications Commission (NHRPC), Dept of Education Title VI (for foreign-language and area studies programs) and the Fulbright-Hays programs, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). While President Trump has issued executive orders shuttering some of these entities, congress can nonetheless decide to fund their activities if we exert enough pressure. [*See below, regarding an urgent call from the National Humanities Alliance to respond to DOGE targeting of the NEH.]
Later that week, on March 14, 2025, I attended the Virginia Forum conference at Bryn Mawr, co-organized by George Oberle of Mason Libraries and featuring a plenary roundtable on Humanities Centers in Virginia. An audience member asked what we can do in the face of the attack on research and scholarship across so many fields—and while it may not be a full answer to the question, one part of it is certainly that we keep doing the work that we find valuable (which, in the humanities, has always depended on personal commitment and dedication to the work) and also that we advocate for the importance of scholarly values (of informed and thoughtful consideration of issues; critical scrutiny and discussion of claims, evidence, and arguments; commitment to integrity of scholarship; etc.) against the anti-intellectualism and degradation of public discourse that are marked features of our contemporary moment.
An upshot of this conference was a networking initiative among several of the humanities centers at Virginia universities and the public humanities regional centers supported by Virginia Humanities. Connections and solidarities among those engaged in humanities work is another part of the needed response to our moment.
R: Plenary roundtable at Virginia Forum, with a representative from Virginia Humanities and directors of humanities centers at the University of Richmond, George Mason University, and Virginia Commonwealth University
A broader effort along these lines will take place on Saturday, April 5, 2025, during the National Day of Action to protest many of the unilateral cuts and layoffs enacted by the current administration and the attacks on dissent, critical discourse, and free speech being enacted against student protestors, universities, news outlets, law firms, cultural institutions, as well as the attacks on judges, US allies, members of Congress, government contractors, and private enterprises whom the administration views as opposed to their ideology. This protest is being organized by groups such as Indivisible, MoveOn, and Third Act, which represent liberal points of view. What’s most important here are not the substantive policy positions of the protestors, but ability to speak out against those in power. Protests and rallies such as this are important defenses of democratic norms: whatever political views people hold, they should support the freedom to assemble and express one’s views, as a fundamental right in any democratic polity. As Michel Foucault reminds us, what is politically important is not some generic notion of “free speech” (the freedom to utter whatever we want on whatever topic) but what the ancient Greeks called parrhesia—bold speech, dissident speech, speaking truth to power.
Later, on Thursday, April 17, 2025, the AAUP (American Association of University Professors) is organizing a Day of Action for Higher Ed. The stated agenda of the action is to stand up for the value and mission of universities, “advancing the democratic mission of our colleges and universities”: “It is our labor and our ideas which sustain higher education as a project that preserves and extends social equality and the common good—as a project of social emancipation. On April 17, 2025, we will hold a one-day action on and around our campuses to renew this vision of higher education as an autonomous public good, and university workers as its most important resource.”
I would put the emphasis somewhat differently (it’s not clear to me that higher education, a rather hierarchically organized domain in terms of prestige and resources, “preserves and extends social equality”): for me, the mission of universities as a public good centers on their function as a locus for critical inquiry and scholarship that seeks to broaden, deepen, and critically examine our understanding of the world. Providing this sort of space for discussion, dialogue, and disagreement is precisely one of the important functions of universities—alongside cultivating respect for genuine learning, critical intelligence, and subject-matter expertise (as against the anti-intellectualism and degraded level of public discourse in our society). In his contribution to Freedom: Its Meaning (edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen, 1940), Bertrand Russell writes: “The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other. This technique is as old as the hills; it was practiced in almost every Greek city, and the moderns have only enlarged its scale.” Our job is to unmuzzle the intelligent and to support the institutions that make their work possible.
Learn more about upcoming advocacy opportunities mentioned above-
*NHA Statement on Threats to the NEH: On Monday, March 31, 2025 we learned that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is targeting the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) with the aim of substantially reducing its staff, cutting the agency’s grant programs, and rescinding grants that have already been awarded. DOGE is targeting a small federal agency that—with an annual appropriation that amounts to a rounding error in the U.S. budget—has a positive impact on every congressional district.
Let your Members of Congress know that you condemn these actions and support the National Endowment for the Humanities!
Full Statement: https://nhalliance.org/nha-statement-neh-doge-threats/
*NEH Call to Action: https://p2a.co/DdtlGIT
April 5- Hands Off National Day of Action: https://thirdact.org/act/handsoff/
April 17- AAUP National Day of Action: https://www.aaup.org/event/national-day-action
and https://www.dayofactionforhighered.org/
March 31, 2025