February 21, 2025 Advocacy Update
This new feature seeks to keep our community informed of the impact of current events on our mission to advance and circulate knowledge in the humanities and social sciences. These messages will appear in the monthly community newsletter and as urgent developments occur.
Over the past week, communications from the federal government regarding the implementation of the Administration’s Executive Orders have sowed confusion and panic across higher education: the February 14 “Dear Colleague” letter to all institutions that receive federal aid from the US Department of Education and the February 18 directive to directors of fellowship programs from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
The February 18 message states: “As required by the Administration’s Executive Orders, NEH awards may not be used for the following purposes: promotion of gender ideology; promotion of discriminatory equity ideology; support for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives or activities; or environmental justice initiatives or activities.”
One of the recent Executive Orders includes a carve-out (Sec. 7) for institutions of higher education engaging in First Amendment protected speech. But troubling questions persist about the scope of the larger mandates.
With its recent acts of legislative censorship, the state of Florida has treated teaching and research as promoting ideology. If federal officials were to adopt Florida’s view, this message would mean that the NEH is forbidden to fund research and teaching on gender, race, and the environment—a sweeping limitation that would gag scholars and do irreparable harm to the public understanding of humanity and human relations with the natural world.
Acting Assistant Secretary of Education Craig Trainor creates further confusion with his complaint in the February 14 letter about “racial preferences,” which notes that “forms of racial discrimination have emanated throughout every facet of academia” like the “shameful” “segregation” allegedly fostered by some residential programs and commencement ceremonies.
His implication that the Department may intrude on every aspect of student and faculty life rests on a disturbingly broad application of the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling on Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard. It raises the question of whether the “other programs” mentioned in the letter may include degrees in ethnic or religious studies, or literature or history degrees with concentrations in race or environmental studies, or centers promoting research into specific cultures or social experiences. This would mean censoring research and teaching on countless complex, sometimes painful topics that comprise what every American must understand if we are to improve our present and future.
The experience of nations behind the Iron Curtain and many other places where authoritarians feared the free exchange of knowledge shows the damage done by government interference in scholarship and teaching. The success of scholars of color and other traditionally marginalized groups who improve the quality of our collective knowledge while making the American professoriate more representative of our amazing diversity as a nation is something to be celebrated, not undermined.
ACLS stands proudly in defense of the free pursuit of teaching and research in all fields and of the academic infrastructure that supports these activities. We join those speaking out against the assault on science and expertise.
ACLS will continue to keep you informed about these developments as they affect our fields, to lift up the voices of our member societies and other allies, to fund scholars, and to sustain excellence in scholarship.