The University of Arizona has received termination notices for eight National Endowment for the Humanities projects, spokesperson Mitch Zak said Friday.
“We are assessing the impact on the university and will work with our researchers as they navigate these changes,” he said in a written statement to the Arizona Daily Star. “We are proud of the scholars, staff, and students whose work drives innovation and discovery, and we will continue to champion their work to help address global challenges.”
Zak didn’t disclose the names of the eight grants or projects or any further information on how much funding the UA is losing; how this affects researchers, faculty, students or staff positions; and what kind of humanities research is affected by the cancellation.
Nationally, NEH under the Trump administration has canceled most of its grant programs and started putting staff on administrative leave, the New York Times reported Thursday. “Starting late Wednesday night, state humanities councils and other grant recipients began receiving emails telling them their funding was ended immediately” as the agency will be “repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the president’s agenda,” the Times wrote.
The UA lists 19 NEH grants or projects for applications on its Office of Research, Innovation and Impact website. Earlier this year, the UA announced its Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research and its College of Information Science were awarded a $349,357 grant by NEH for “training of the next generation of museum professionals through American Southwest cultural heritage collections.” It isn’t known if this was one of the grants cancelled.
NPR reported that “acting NEH Chair Michael McDonald told senior staff that the Department of Government Efficiency or ‘DOGE’ wants to claw back $175 million in grant money that has not yet been disbursed.”
Inside Higher Ed reported this week that humanities advocates do not know exactly how large the cuts will be to the NEH staff, which employs about 180 people and has a $78.25 million grant budget.
This comes in the midst of the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education by cutting nearly half of its staff in mid-March, as reported by the Associated Press; efforts to cut the National Institutes of Health’s overhead cost rates for grants; as well as the cutting of foreign aid research programs funded by the U.S. Department for International Development or USAID.
