Update: June 26, 2025
On April 2, 2025, all humanities councils received emails and letters under the signature of NEH Acting Chair Michael McDonald notifying them that all awarded federal grants, including their 5-year General Operating Grants and other program-specific awards were canceled in their entirety, effective retroactively to April 1, 2025. These grants represent up to 95% of our member council budgets and would prevent a large majority of our members from attending the 2025 National Humanities Conference.
Additionally, the federal government’s cuts of grants to institutions of higher learning will likely negatively impact the ability of scholars to travel to the Conference. Finally, due to these circumstances, which are beyond their (and our) control, our local host and partner, Michigan Humanities, is unable to commit resources—financial or staffing—to the planning or execution of the Conference, further impacting our ability to hold the Conference as originally intended. This was a very difficult decision for the Michigan Humanities team; we greatly appreciate the position they are in, and we want to profusely thank them for their support and guidance in the planning process, which began during COVID in 2021 for this conference.
With all of this in mind, the Federation of State Humanities Councils and the National Humanities Alliance have mutually agreed to cancel this year’s National Humanities Conference in Detroit. We are also not going to hold a fully virtual conference in lieu of an in-person conference in the fall, nor do we plan to convene a smaller group at that time in Detroit.
A huge thank you to everyone who took the time to create and submit a session proposal. We greatly appreciate your interest in this year’s conference, and we were all very excited about the session ideas that were proposed and were looking forward to hosting them. Unfortunately, as we are unsure where the next year will take us, we will not be holding on to your proposal for future conferences. If you need a copy of your session proposal so you can submit it elsewhere, please email events@statehumanities.org.
We are deeply disappointed that the Administration’s decisions have impacted our community, and we look forward to a time when we can be together in person again.
Sincerely,
Phoebe Stein, President, Federation of State Humanities Councils
Steve Kidd, Executive Director, National Humanities Alliance
