ACLS Community Message for December 2025

Dear ACLS Community, 

ACLS is committed to sustaining humanistic knowledge and the people devoted to advancing it. We award grants and fellowships to outstanding scholars, advocate on behalf of humanistic study (and empower others to do the same), and work to improve academic culture and policy. We believe in the power of open inquiry and the principle of academic freedom. 

This year has brought many reminders of the fragility and vulnerability of scholars and scholarship. Federal and state officials have slashed funding for research, libraries, and language programs, threatened academic freedom and the autonomy of colleges and universities, made it more difficult for international scholars to live and work in the United States, and derided expertise.  

We work tirelessly to support the right to pursue knowledge freely, without fear of retribution or censorship. We are fortunate to work alongside many partners and allies. But none of us can do this work alone. 

This Giving Tuesday, we ask that you join ACLS by taking one or more of these steps: 

• Donate. Consider making a donation as you are able. Your gift helps us expand our advocacy, share critical information with our network, and support outstanding scholars. 

• Stay informed. Follow our advocacy updates and share our statements with friends, colleagues, and (if you’re a faculty member) your students. Keep up to date with the work of our member societies, many of whom are issuing their own statements and opportunities for advocacy.  

• Show and tell. With family members, at social and professional gatherings, on campus, and in public forum, help model the kind of thoughtful, inclusive conversation our democracy needs. Write to your representatives and submit op-eds and blogs in local publications about the importance of federal funding for the humanities and social sciences as well as international exchange. Lift up the many creative ways scholars are responding to threats and attracting new students and new audiences. Check out our page on advancing what we call the “New Academy” for examples.

• Support cultural institutions like museums, libraries, and historical societies that open up access to humanistic knowledge in your local community. 

• Spread the word. Scholarship today comes in many forms: open access resources, born-digital work, community-engaged research, public-facing scholarship, and more. Tell as many people as possible what excites you! Intentionally expanding our circle of allies is critical for ensuring public understanding of the value of our fields.    

In times of uncertainty, it is tempting to focus on what is right in front of us. But humanistic study teaches us to think in longer arcs—to consider the roots of present crises, to imagine alternatives, and to cultivate the habits of attention and empathy that allow societies to move forward without forgetting the past.  

ACLS is doing the long-term work of securing the future of humanistic inquiry, even as we respond to crises in the headlines. I hope you’ll join us in both.  

Joy Connolly 
ACLS President 

As we enter the winter season, let us look ahead to the light and warmth of summer and remember “how to think in beautiful.” Thanks to Dianne Harris of the University of Washington for the reminder of this mind-opening poem.

Emergence
by Joy Harjo

It’s midsummer night. The light is skinny;
a thin skirt of desire skims the earth.
Dogs bark at the musk of other dogs
and the urge to go wild.
I am lingering at the edge
of a broken heart, striking relentlessly
against the flint of hard will.
It’s coming apart.
And everyone knows it.
So do squash erupting in flowers
the color of the sun.
So does the momentum of grace
gathering allies
in the partying mob.
The heart knows everything.
I remember when there was no urge
to cut the land or each other into pieces,
when we knew how to think
in beautiful.
There is no world like the one surfacing.
I can smell it as I pace in my square room,
the neighbor’s television
entering my house by waves of sound.
Makes me think about buying
a new car, another kind of cigarette
when I don’t need another car
and I don’t smoke cigarettes.
A human mind is small when thinking
of small things.
It is large when embracing the maker
of walking, thinking and flying.
If I can locate the sense beyond desire,
I will not eat or drink
until I stagger into the earth
with grief.
I will locate the point of dawning
and awaken
with the longest day in the world.