In April of 2025, the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency drastically cut the staff of the National Endowment for the Humanities and canceled the majority of its grants, including those made to local humanities councils. As a result of legal challenges since then, some of these grants have been reinstated. In addition, on August 20, 2025, the NEH announced a radical restructuring of its programs under Acting Chairman Michael McDonald. Having reduced its staff by two thirds and restructured its previous seven divisions down to four, the NEH has also reoriented its mission by launching its “A More Perfect Union” project, whose goal is “to promote a deeper understanding of America’s history and culture, advance civics education and knowledge of the nation’s core principles of government, and preserve and provide access to the nation’s heritage.” This re-orientation has sparked sharp criticism, placing the humanities at the center of a debate about US culture and identity.

This just-in-time session seeks to understand what is at stake in this debate and its significance for humanities education. Questions to be addressed include: What do the changes at the NEH mean for the future of the humanities? Are there two versions of the humanities in conflict in the US today? What should be the role of the federal government in the humanities, and how do the recent initiatives change this role? While existing scholarship has addressed the future of the humanities, there has been limited discussion of the way in which the Trump administration’s initiatives will affect this future.

The session will consist of three presentations, each of which will be limited to 10 minutes, and a respondent. We therefore anticipate at least 30 minutes for unstructured discussion.

David Damrosch contends that programs whose faculty overwhelmingly belong to a single political party should work to find ways to promote greater diversity than we now display. At the same time, our strength is in helping our students develop deeper and more nuanced versions of the views they hold, and we should be able to do this without firing half of our faculty and hiring an equal number of conservatives in their place. He suggests that we need to actually talk with our undergraduates about their views, and work to develop courses that both respect and challenge the actual diversity that exists in our classrooms. College and university faculty need to become much more involved in K-12 curricula and textbooks. Before they ever come to college, students need to understand the complexity of sources and the pleasures as well as challenges of gaining a deep knowledge of textual evidence and of historical and cultural difference.

Anne Gere will explore the challenges of teaching a literature class in the face of the conflicted view of the humanities offered by a presidential mandate that focuses on founding-era documents and a rejection of considering American race relations. She will describe a course, “The Pursuit of Happiness,” which begins with the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution and goes on to consider various representations of happiness in literature written by Wheatley, Apess, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Larsen, Otsuka, Harjo, Sui Sin Far, Morrison, Erdrich, and El Rassi. She will consider: what the claims and promises of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution mean in light of the current administration's attempts to redefine the humanities; what happens to the humanities when the teaching of literature is subject to MAGA surveillance and students are encouraged to ‘report’ faculty who challenge MAGA ideals; and what version of the humanities faculty members can or should offer their students.

The Trump administration’s plans for the NEH aim to turn back the multiculturalist transformation of the humanities, and David Pan argues that such policies will be good for the humanities because the multiculturalist curriculum has gradually undermined the values of liberal democracy. The multiculturalist insight into the equality of all traditions means that tradition is all the more important as the only basis for thinking about cultural identity. He suggests the return to a Western Culture-oriented curriculum and the closing of gender studies and ethnic studies departments and the integration of their faculty and curricula into philosophy, history, and arts programs. Such changes will bring back more debate to humanities topics and re-orient the humanities around the public discussions that are essential for maintaining republican virtues.

The panelists and respondent have been chosen in order to reflect a variety of perspectives on the problem, including some more conservative as well as more liberal voices.