A blog post from CHR Director Alok Yadav on the 2026 National Humanities Alliance (NHA) Annual Meeting
The annual meeting featured a keynote from Laurie Patton, president of the American Academy of Arts and Science, where the Humanities Indicators project, led by Mason alum and CHR Advisory Board Member Robert Townsend, is housed.
Also presenting was Matthew Gibson, executive director of Virginia Humanities.
Much of the program at the NHA annual meeting was oriented toward interdisciplinary developments in relation to the humanities (humanities and public policy, applied humanities, humanities and STEM, humanities and AI)—some of which resonate with our own activities at the CHR including the AI and the Humanities series and the fellows talks and annual symposium (with keynote speaker Setha Low) organized around the theme of space, territory, and mobility.
The other main emphasis of the annual meeting was advocacy for the humanities and the infrastructure that supports humanities scholarship (NEH, NARA and NHPRC, Title VI and Fulbright-Hays), which resonates with our own collaboration with the University Libraries to think about open access publication and the open access ecosystem for humanities scholarship.
There were nine of us making up the Virginia delegation for Humanities Advocacy Day and between us we met with staffers from ten Virginia members of Congress—the two senators (Warner and Kaine) and eight representatives (Vindman, Beyer, McGuire, Walkinshaw, McClellan, Cline, Kiggans, and Subramanyam), advocating for robust funding of NEH, NARA and NHPRC, and Title VI and Fulbright-Hays in the FY27 appropriations process.
A link to some humanities advocacy resources from the NHA website:
https://nhalliance.org/resources/
Pictures from the meeting with Sen. Kaine's office:
Holly Yanacek (JMU), legislative assistant Julia Kravitz (Rep. Don Beyer's office), Meg Homer (UVA), and Alok Yadav
Alok Yadav, Holly Yanacek, Melinda Adams (both of James Madison U), legislative assistant James Whaley (Sen. Tim Kaine's office), and Chris Thornton (ACLS)
March 13, 2026