It’s only about 48 hours until my dissertation defense, and for all the celebrations and congratulations that will come with it, my defense comes in a time of peril for the humanities. My dissertation started as a National History Day Project in 2011. During my junior year AP U.S. History class, I focused on the moment when Cotton Mather advocated for the execution of George Burroughs for the crime of witchcraft. This moment appears in Chapter 4 of my dissertation. Without National History Day, I wouldn’t be doing this dissertation. The Trump Administration gutted the National Endowment for the Humanities, including $336,000 for National History Day.
The cancelled NEH grants total $363 million, or 0.000054% of the federal budget. In conjunction with cuts to the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the research infrastructure of this country is being dismantled before our eyes. The complete assault on this system by Trump and Musk is an assault on democracy, but instead of the violence seen on January 6, 2021, this attack is through spreadsheets and line items.
Humanities help people strive in their citizenship through critical thinking and empathy. Humanities bring us together through shared culture and an embrace of our differences. How we communicate and how we understand one another are both vital to informed civic engagement. When we study our humanity, we chart a course on our future. DOGE cuts don’t move us forward, they hold us back and stop us from asking the important questions about ourselves, where we’ve been, and what’s next.
During my Ph.D. program, I called the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media my intellectual home. The Trump administration cancelled $789,000 in unspent funds that the NEH awarded to six RRCHNM projects. RRCHNM has a mission to democratize history by providing free K-12 education materials, producing narrative podcasts, and creating historical datasets, as well as education graduate students like me.
The NEH never funded my dissertation or gave a grant so I could study the Salem Witchcraft Trials. But the projects funded by the NEH, the intellectual culture supported by these organizations, and the fruits of their labors are why I am defending a dissertation this week.