ACLS President’s Community Messages & Statements: 2025

Community Messages

• December 2025
  “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.” 
  
• May 2025
  “We are committed to speaking out with the goal of re-centering humanistic knowledge in academia and in society at large as a force for mutual understanding, the enrichment of individual lives, democratic participation, and better stewardship of our planet.”
  
• January 2025
  “Those who want to exercise their free speech rights should and must do so; ACLS and our member societies will forever defend their right to do so. This isn’t an argument against dissent or protest or emotion, but an appeal to make arguments and resist power in ways that embody a better way of being with one another. “

Statements

• April 2025: Joint Statement on Cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities
  “We hold steadfast to the belief that sparked the creation of the NEH: that “the humanities are not merely our, but the world’s best hope.” We stand by the National Humanities Alliance in their request to prevent funding cuts to this critical agency.  We call on the administration and on Congress to uphold our nation’s historic commitment to these cherished values and activities in American communities.”