[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 153 (Thursday, September 28, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14545-S14546]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES

  Mr. PELL. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the extraordinary 
impact of the National Endowment for the Humanities on my home state of 
Rhode Island. Rhode Island has long had a special relationship with the 
Endowments--ever since the President of Brown University, my old friend 
Barnaby Keeney, formed a Commission to investigate the possibility of a 
national support for study in the humanities. 

[[Page S 14546]]
The Commission returned with a forceful recommendation for the creation 
of such a program and in 1965 we created the National Endowment for the 
Humanities. Since that time, the Humanities Endowment has supported 
scholarly research, education and public programs concerned with 
history, literature, philosophy, language and other humanistic 
disciplines, and have helped to make the United States a leader in 
these fields of study. Programs have included both popular and 
scholarly works characterized by their singular excellence, including 
the Pulitzer Prize winning Slavery and Human Progress and programs such 
as ``The Civil War,'' ``Columbus and the Age of Discovery'' and 
``Baseball.''
  Barnaby Keeney, a decorated veteran and a medieval historian, left 
Brown University to become the first chairman of the National Endowment 
for the Humanities. Since then, Brown University has been in the 
forefront of research and study in humanities, recognized for its 
extraordinary excellence with repeated fellowships and grants for 
humanities research over the last thirty years. Rhode Island and the 
Nation as a whole have benefited enormously from this work. Mr. 
President, I would ask unanimous consent that two pieces by Edward 
Abrahams, director of government and community relations at Brown 
University--an op-ed article on the importance of the humanities that 
appeared recently in the Providence Journal and remarks delivered on 
Humanities Day--be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

         [From The Providence Journal-Bulletin, Mar. 17, 1995]

             Lyndon Johnson, Brown and the Birth of the NEH

                           By Edward Abrahams

       `A great nation (and a great civilization) feeds upon the 
     depth of its scholarship--as well as the breath of its 
     educational opportunity.'' So said President Lyndon Johnson 
     at Brown University in 1964.
       Today, in sharp contrast, the new Republican majority in 
     Congress has targeted, among many other legislative 
     accomplishments of Johnson's Great Society, the National 
     Endowment for the Humanities. While President Clinton's 
     budget would increase expenditures for the endowment by 3 
     percent, to $183 million, House Republicans, led by Newt 
     Gingrich, say they intend to kill both NEH and its more 
     controversial partner, the National Endowment for the Arts.
       Because NEH has not been reauthorized for the past two 
     years, most analysts concur that the effort to eliminate it 
     could succeed. House Republicans have said that they do not 
     intend to fund any programs that remain unauthorized. In 
     fact, NEH will claim victory if it survives in its current 
     configuration with a smaller budget. Indicative of things 
     perhaps to come is the current drive to rescind $5 million 
     from this year's budgets for both endowments.
       Last year, the NEH spent about $150 million to help support 
     research, education and cultural life in America, including 
     $2.3 million in Rhode Island. Among the larger projects 
     funded by the endowment at Brown in their joint effort to 
     provide public service through education and research, for 
     example, were a summer seminar for college teachers on Piers 
     Plowman and The Canterbury Tales, a summer course for high 
     school teachers on The Tale of Gengi, and the Women Writers 
     Project. The last, matched by contributions from the 
     university, seeks to ensure the inclusion of women's 
     contributions to literature by rediscovering, encoding and 
     sometimes publishing (with Oxford University Press) lost 
     women's writing in English from 1330 to 1830.
       The project has enabled scholars to study the development 
     of the English language as well as pioneer the writing of 
     computer codes for international transactions of information 
     in business and technology.
       Brown's relations with NEH have been notably close. The 
     university's leaders were in fact present at the proposed 
     creation of the endowment. In September 1964, President 
     Lyndon Johnson traveled to Brown to receive an honorary 
     degree, and announce that in his view ``national greatness'' 
     required that ``there . . . be no neglect of the 
     humanities.'' Johnson said that he ``look[ed] with the 
     greatest favor upon the proposal [issued earlier in the year 
     by Brown's] President [Barnaby] Keeney's Commission for the 
     National Foundation for the Humanities.''
       In language suggestive of another era, the Keeney 
     Commission had recommended the creation of a federal 
     foundation to support ``whatever understanding can be 
     attained . . . of such enduring values as justice, freedom, 
     virtue, beauty, and truth.'' Within months of Johnson's 
     address, with the help of Sen. Claiborne Pell (who is 
     regarded as the father of both endowments) in the Senate and 
     John Brademas in the House, Johnson pushed through Congress 
     the act that established both NEH and NEA.
       In 1966, Keeney, a decorated veteran and a medieval 
     historian, left Brown's presidency to become the first 
     chairman of NEH.
       After Vietnam and Watergate, few intellectuals on either 
     side of the political spectrum find much firepower in the 
     old-fashioned liberal rhetoric that Keeney and Johnson both 
     used to launch their hope of providing modest federal funds 
     to promote education and research in the humanities. But in 
     1964 most Americans felt that the humanities and the arts not 
     only could enrich their lives, but that they also could 
     contribute to realizing the promise of American life, which 
     they did not then, and perhaps do not today, see only in 
     materialist terms.
       Without faith in the inherent national significance of the 
     mission of universities like Brown, not to mention the 
     federal government, it becomes difficult to defend, let alone 
     advance, the public commitment Johnson legislatively 
     harnessed only 30 years ago to support scholarship and public 
     programming and, with the passage of the Higher Education Act 
     in 1965, begin to provide universal access to higher 
     education. All have come under considerable pressure for 
     years. They are threatened even more by the new Congress.
       The attacks on both endowments are serious, far out of 
     proportion to the insignificant amount of federal dollars in 
     a $1.6 trillion budget they channel to such projects as 
     rediscovering lost literature or teaching high school and 
     college teachers medieval literature. They suggest that we 
     have lost confidence in our national institutions to solve 
     collective problems or to give us a sense of identity or 
     direction.
                                                                    ____


                             Humanities Day

       ``Our cultural institutions are an essential national 
     resource; they must be kept strong.'' So said President 
     Reagan in 1981.
       For over three decades, one of the most important agencies 
     that has helped keep them strong has been the National 
     Endowment for the Humanities. That is why the Association of 
     American Universities, which I represent here today, 
     unequivocally supports full funding for the Endowment. An 
     association of 60 universities represented in almost all 
     fifty states, the AAU is committed to advancing research and 
     education in America.
       NEH has more than fulfilled its mission. It has, in the 
     parlance of our budget conscious era, offered an impressive 
     return on the investment of public dollars. Every President 
     and every Congress since 1965 has supported NEH. They have 
     done so because they have understand that a free and good 
     government, in Jefferson's words, depends on an enlightened 
     citizenry.
       A single controversial project should not blind us from 
     seeing how well NEH has advanced culture and learning in 
     America, while helping us also conserve our nation's heritage 
     and preserve its memory.
       I have here a list which is also available to you. It is a 
     representative sample of NEH-sponsored projects at America's 
     colleges and universities. Permit me to mention three.
       At Rice University in Texas, an NEH grant enables scholars 
     there to compile and edit a seven-volume series of Jefferson 
     Davis' papers.
       At the University of Mississippi an NEH grant facilitated a 
     ``Memories of Mississippi'' exhibit that recorded ordinary 
     citizens' recollections of the Depression era in the northern 
     part of that state.
       And at Ohio State University NEH funds are assisting 
     secondary school teachers' efforts to integrate Arabic 
     language and culture courses in local high schools.
       What these projects have in common is that they make our 
     nation stronger through the advancement of knowledge, 
     culture, and education.
       In brief, we need to understand--and we need to make our 
     elected representatives understand--that if NEH is 
     disproportionately cut, America's cultural institutions will 
     not be kept strong. They will bleed.

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