{"id":595,"date":"2026-06-21T07:08:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T07:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=595"},"modified":"2026-06-21T07:08:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T07:08:23","slug":"who-bought-the-humanities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=595","title":{"rendered":"Who Bought the Humanities?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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W<\/span>hen federal humanities funding wobbled in 2025, the Mellon Foundation was ready.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more A Father\u2019s Hand in the Valley of Death<\/a><\/p>\n

That year, its <\/span>annual report<\/span> says it issued more grants \u201cthan in any other year in its history.\u201d After federal cuts hit state and jurisdictional humanities councils, Mellon <\/span>extended<\/span> a $15 million \u201clifeline\u201d to council employees and organizations in all 50 states. It also committed more than $26 million for American museums and $12 million for community-based archives.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Mellon is not a minor donor writing cheques from the margins of academic life. It is one of the most influential private funders of the arts and humanities in the United States. <\/span>No single entity<\/span> has a stronger claim to fiscal and cultural sway over the arts\u2013 subjects like literature, history, art, religion, and philosophy \u2013 than the Mellon Foundation. In 2025, the National Endowment for the Humanities\u2019 budget request <\/span> $74.4 million for grant programs. Mellon, meanwhile, <\/span>issued<\/span> nearly 650 grants totaling about $540 million in 2024, with an endowment of $7.7 billion.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

When one private foundation has that much money in a struggling field, its priorities matter.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the humanities are <\/span>struggling<\/span><\/i>. By 2024, humanities degrees had <\/span>fallen<\/span> to just 8.4 percent of bachelor\u2019s degrees, its lowest share since comprehensive accounting began in 1987. Almost every humanities discipline <\/span>awarded<\/span> fewer degrees in 2024 than twelve years earlier. Departments are losing students, fighting for their budgets, and trying to convince administrators they still deserve to exist.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Read more The Courage to Question<\/a><\/p>\n

In that environment, the priorities of an institution offering you money start to look a lot less like preferences than directives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mellon\u2019s preferences are blatant enough. In 2020, the foundation <\/span>announced<\/span> a \u201cmajor strategic evolution\u201d: social justice would be at the core of all grantmaking decisions moving forward. For six years, Mellon has emphasized \u201c[working] with colleges, universities, and other organizations that embrace equity in higher learning \u2026 with a focus on historically underserved populations,\u201d in pursuit of \u201can informed, culturally diverse, and civically engaged society.\u201d Mellon\u2019s <\/span>2025 grantmaking<\/span> to efforts like the $500 million Monuments Project, writing fellowships for \u201cwriters impacted by the U.S. carceral system,\u201d and public art projects highlighting Black and Filipino communities in Alaska show its commitments are not apolitical patronage.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

No one at Mellon needs to frogmarch English or History departments into ideological obedience. The majority of professors already lean leftward ideologically. <\/span>National surveys<\/span> indicate that approximately 60% of university faculty identify as liberal or far-left, <\/span>with<\/span> \u201cgreater shares of left-leaning faculty found in the humanities and some social sciences.\u201d A humanities center or university department looking to scrape up money can see what kind of language and work gets rewarded. The grant guidelines just make the incentives clear.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Mellon has played a large role in making politics the price o<\/span>f admission for the humanities. It did not invent the drive for politicization in the humanities and the arts, but it has shown how politicization becomes deeply embedded. At the end of the day, the institution with the money gets to define the terms of survival.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Futbol: The Beautiful Game, Allegedly<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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