Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
It is an honor to appear before you again to speak on behalf of the budget request for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Established in 1965, NEH is an independent grant-making agency that is specifically charged with promoting and advancing the humanities in the United States. We are the largest source of support for research, education, preservation and access, and public programs in the humanities in the nation.
The Administration and NEH are requesting $141.355 million for the agency for fiscal year 2008. Our request includes $15.239 million for the Endowment’s ongoing We the People program. I appreciate your strong support of the NEH, We the People, and our partners in the state humanities councils.
This fall will mark five years since I joined President Bush in a Rose Garden ceremony to launch We the People. Since that day, the Endowment has focused on a clear and vital mission. NEH is leading a renaissance in knowledge about America’s history and principles—because citizens who cannot define their liberties cannot defend them. And we are working to democratize the humanities and bring their benefits to all Americans—because as our founding legislation declares, “Democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens.”
We are pleased that Congress has enthusiastically endorsed and provided critical financial support for We the People. For FY 2004, new funds of $9.876 million were appropriated to implement the program. In recognition of the program’s growing accomplishments, funds were increased to $11.217 million for FY 2005 and $15.239 million for FY 2006, and $15.239 million was again provided for FY 2007. The $52 million in new funding has helped NEH to put new programs and grant opportunities in place and to support significant projects in American history and culture for our citizens. The agency’s fiscal year 2008 budget request continues the President’s and the Endowment’s strong commitment to We the People.
It has been an eventful five years. And while the challenges remain great, we have made much progress. I would like to take a few moments to illustrate some of the many successes of our program and suggest what would have been missing from the humanities in America if We the People had not existed.
If We the People did not exist teachers from across the country would not have had an opportunity to spend a week at Mount Vernon, Virginia, attending a special workshop for schoolteachers on “Shaping the Constitution: A View From Mount Vernon, 1783-1789.” This is one of 148 week-long workshops for teachers in 44 locations nationwide that NEH has supported since we created our new Landmarks of American History and Culture program with funds appropriated for We the People. Through these workshops, 6,000 teachers have encountered American history at the places where it was made. They have met with renowned scholars and learned vivid lessons, and they have taken these experiences back to their classrooms, where they are bringing American history alive for generations of students.
Without We the People, more than 4,000 school and public libraries nationwide would not have received free sets of classic books from our We the People Bookshelf program. Through this program, libraries receive a set of 15 classic works of literature that convey important themes from American history and culture to an audience of young readers. Libraries in towns and cities across the nation have benefited from the program, including libraries in Tacoma, Washington; Wichita, Kansas; Lexington, Kentucky; Farmington, Missouri; Appomattox, Virginia; Roseville, California; and Clovis, New Mexico. Each year the Bookshelf program explores a different theme. This year’s theme, “Pursuit of Happiness,” includes such works as Aesop's Fables, A Wrinkle in Time, O Pioneers!, and The Great Gatsby. We will soon be awarding sets of these books to 2,000 libraries in every state of the nation. In addition to receiving the books, each library also will plan reading and discussion programs keyed to the works and the “Pursuit of Happiness” theme.
In a world without We the People, millions of our citizens would not be enjoying and learning from the many public programs, exhibitions, and television documentaries that the program funds. For example, one hundred libraries across America would not be hosting the magnificent traveling exhibition, Forever Free: Abraham Lincoln’s Journey to Emancipation, which features rare documents exploring Lincoln’s role in the emancipation of slaves, the Civil War era, and abolition. And forty other libraries would not be hosting “Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America,” an exhibition that interprets Hamilton’s role in the creation of our government and culture.
Without We the People, NEH would not have been able to launch the National Digital Newspaper Program. Through this innovative program, we are working with our partners at the Library of Congress to digitize 30 million pages of American newspapers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For its part the Endowment is awarding grants to digitize the newspapers, while the Library is providing technical support and will mount and maintain the database of digitized files on its website. Tomorrow, NEH and the Library will be announcing the launch of the prototype website, “Chronicling America.” At this site, scholars, teachers, students, and anyone interested in the “first draft” of our nation’s history will be able to go online and, at the click of a mouse, get immediate, searchable, and free access to these incredible materials.
In a world without We the People, our valued partners, the state humanities councils, could not have developed the impressive array of state and local programming that We the People funding has made possible. The state councils have always been concerned with how to bring the humanities to the local and personal level, which makes them natural partners in our efforts to democratize the humanities. The Endowment has provided a significant portion of funds appropriated for We the People each year to the councils. They have used these funds to sponsor special reading and discussion programs, lectures, exhibitions, and other programs that illuminate our nation’s history and culture. I have been very gratified by the successes of these projects and have visited with some of the councils as they launched their activities.
In addition to We the People grants and the direct funding support that is provided to the state humanities councils each year for their regular programs and operations, I am proud that the Endowment was able to make some additional funds available in 2005 and 2006 to help the councils in the Gulf Coast states cope with the devastating effects of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The councils were an important part of NEH’s overall Hurricane Relief special initiative, which we put in place soon after the storms struck. Since the fall of 2005, we have awarded more than $2 million in grants to state councils, museums, historical sites, libraries, and educational institutions in the affected states. This support included 46 quick turnaround Emergency Grants of up to $30,000 each and $750,000 for larger projects to stabilize collections of historical documents and other humanities materials.
We the People has also enabled NEH to launch another exciting program this year called “Picturing America.” This new initiative will help students trace our national story by bringing American artistic masterpieces back into the classroom. The program will provide schools with high quality poster reproductions of key works of art, promote the teaching and study of American history, and foster visual literacy and basic art historical understanding among the nation’s youth.
As you can see, We the People has had a profound impact in its relatively brief existence. It has restored the Endowment’s central mission and reinvigorated our core programs. It has strengthened our grant-making by freeing up funds for the other excellent work supported by all of NEH’s grant programs. And while We the People has focused on increasing Americans’ knowledge of their own country, the Endowment has continued to provide strong support for the study of other cultures, times, and places.
We the People has also served as a needed reminder to the humanities community that our scholarship must serve the broader public—and to help Americans develop “wisdom and vision.” Through We the People, NEH is ensuring that every American learns the great story of our nation, so that they are motivated and prepared to add their own chapters to that ongoing story.
We the People is just one component of NEH’s multi-faceted effort to democratize the humanities. Another critical component is our new Digital Humanities Initiative, which we launched last year. Digital technology offers an unprecedented opportunity to bring the humanities to a vast audience. It will provide citizens with new ways to collaborate, to ask new questions, to see connections that they could not see before, and thus to produce new knowledge. And, of course, digitization is crucial for preserving fragile records and documents for the benefit of future generations.
Digital technology promises to make the world of the humanities more accessible, more collaborative, and more democratic. Anyone who cares about the future of the humanities will recognize this possibility and embrace it—and that is what we are doing at the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Through our Digital Humanities Initiative, we have established several new programs. Digital Start-Up Grants, for example, are providing much-needed “seed money” to help promising, experimental projects get off the ground. For example, we recently awarded a Start-Up grant in support of a collaborative project at several universities called “Ashes2Art.” This project will utilize digital technology, art history, archaeology, graphic design, and other disciplines to recreate ancient Greek monuments in 3-D. These “reconstructed” monuments will eventually be posted on the Internet — and they will combine visual and written elements in ways that enhance humanities teaching and scholarship.
Another program, Digital Humanities Workshops, will provide support for projects that help K-12 teachers deepen their knowledge, understanding, and skills in using digital resources in their classrooms. NEH is also supporting the work of a number of digital humanities centers nationwide, and next month we will host the first “summit” meeting of these centers.
Let me provide the Committee with one example of the dramatic effect that digitization can have on the humanities. It is another project that would not be happening were it not for the funding that was made available for our We the People program. For four decades, a scholar named Philip Lampi searched through countless courthouses and newspaper archives to compile a wealth of information on election returns on the federal, state, and local levels from 1788 through 1825. His collection, which numbers over a quarter million records, is now located at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. Now, thanks to two We the People grants from NEH, the Society is creating a digital database of these records that will be free and accessible to all. This database will allow scholars, students, journalists, politicians, local historians, and others to study trends in voting and party development in the early decades of American democracy. Thanks to digital technology, this invaluable resource—which took four decades of labor by one man to create—will be available to anyone to search and study. Without question, digitization is the great new frontier in humanities knowledge, and NEH is proud to be taking a leadership role in its exploration.
Funding also is requested for FY 2008 to enable the Endowment’s core programs to continue supporting high quality projects in all fields and disciplines of the humanities. These time-tested and cost-effective programs advance scholarship, education, preservation, and public understanding in the humanities throughout the United States. In FY 2006, NEH funds supported nearly 1,300 humanities projects in all states of the nation, as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. territories. The products of these grants, as well as the projects funded through the state humanities councils, annually reach millions of Americans of diverse social, economic, and cultural backgrounds. In addition to the projects I have already mentioned, some of our other noteworthy accomplishments include:
-More than 3,700 teachers from every state of the nation participated in NEH-supported seminars, institutes, and workshops on such diverse subjects as ancient Roman architecture, the literary friendship of Hawthorne and Longfellow, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Shakespeare’s plays, and the personality and character of Thomas Jefferson. NEH’s education programs are based on the idea that students benefit most when their teachers have a mastery of their disciplines and are themselves actively engaged in learning.
-The 56 state humanities councils supported thousands of high quality humanities projects in 2006 that reached millions of Americans. These programs included reading and discussion programs, speakers’ bureau presentations, local history projects, films, exhibitions, teacher institutes and workshops, literacy programs, and Chautauqua-type historical performances. Whether through grant-making or their own programs, state humanities councils strengthen the cultural and educational fabric of their states by reaching into rural areas, urban neighborhoods, and suburban communities.
-In addition to projects to collect and edit the papers of noted Americans as part of the We the People program, other recent NEH grants to produce authoritative editions, research tools, and reference works include The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, an edition of the letters of English poet and preacher John Donne, and an annotated collection of Middle English texts focusing on vernacular poetry and prose written between 1200 and 1550. NEH also is supporting the creation of an online encyclopedia of Egyptology and an online dictionary of Sumerian, the first documented written language dating from 3300 BC. Serious works of scholarship such as these are important resources for scholars, students, and teachers.
-In FY 2006, we continued our special initiative in partnership with the National Science Foundation to document the world’s endangered languages. The initiative supports projects that create, enhance, and deepen our knowledge of the estimated 3,000 currently spoken languages that are threatened with extinction in the near future. NEH’s grants are being provided for projects to record, document, and archive information relating to these languages, including the preparation of dictionaries, lexicons, and databases. For example, in FY 2006 awards were made to create a searchable digital archive of Western Apache language texts, to develop a digital archive of Plains Indian sign language, and to document and preserve a group of disappearing languages in Cameroon.
-Notable NEH-funded television productions that aired on PBS in 2006 examined key aspects of American history and culture. John and Abigail Adams, which was broadcast as part of PBS’s American Experience series, used the voluminous correspondence between John and Abigail to capture the couple as real people living in extraordinary times. Another broadcast, Do You Speak American?, examined the history and continuing development of American English. Accompanying the broadcast were digital enhancements, including a database of historical materials that document the thoughts of the nation’s Founders about American English and an “official” language, online discussions about American slang and dialects, and audio clips of Civil War veterans and ex-slaves. Other NEH-supported programs currently in development include documentaries on the rise and fall of Spain’s global empire, Jewish immigration to North America and the integration of Jews into the fabric of American life, the history of the Federal Writers’ Project and its place in American culture, and the life and work of Helen Keller.
-Last year the Endowment released nearly $10.5 million in Challenge Grant funds to match more than $31 million in private, nonfederal contributions to institutions with long-term plans to enhance their humanities activities. The agency released another $6.9 million in funds to match donations to other NEH-supported humanities projects. Encouraging private-sector support for cultural activities is an important goal of both the Administration and Congress—NEH matching funds have proven to be an effective means of leveraging private contributions on behalf of the humanities.
Above all, we are proud of the crucial part that NEH has played, and will continue to play, in democratizing the humanities. This is a noble endeavor, because the humanities are essential for the well being of our democracy, for enlightened citizenship, and even for national survival.
Thank you.