NEH funding cuts hit Mass. groups focused on history, culture

Boston Globe

04-04-2025

On Tuesday, NEH officials told staff that DOGE had recommended staff reductions of as much as 80 percent, as well as the cancellation of grants made under the Biden administration that had not been fully paid out.
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Brian Boyles, executive director of
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Since the 1960s, Massachusetts Humanities has provided funding to projects around the state focused on local history, literature and storytelling,
'We have received an annual grant from the NEH for 50 years,' Boyles said.
In 2024, organizations in Massachusetts received grants totaling $7.4 million, according to the Mass Humanities website. 'While information is still forthcoming, we believe all of these grants were eliminated this week,' the organization said in a statement on its site Thursday.
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Other local organizations have also been hit hard. The Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association saw a $300,000 NEH grant cut this week, said Timothy Neumann, the group's executive director. The funding supported historical research on Lucy Terry Prince, a Black woman poet who was well-known in the Massachusetts free Black community during the Revolutionary War.
The NEH also cut a $40,000 grant for the
Boyles said he learned of the Mass Humanities grant termination in an email he received at 12:39 a.m. Wednesday night. The email, from the NEH's interim director, Michael McDonald, originally went to Boyles' spam folder, he said, because it was sent from a non-governmental address.
'I am stunned at the manner it was handled,' Boyles said.
Boyles said he was bracing for funding cuts, but did not expect them to come quite so suddenly.
'We were given no indication by NEH that this was coming,' he said.
The letter sent to Boyles said, 'NEH has reasonable cause to terminate your grant in light of the fact that the NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President's agenda.'
The letter also said the grant termination was an 'urgent priority' for the Trump administration, and that due to exceptional circumstances, 'adherence to the traditional notification process is not possible.'
NEH-supported projects in Massachusetts that got grants starting in 2023 or 2024 are at risk because their grants are supposed to run for several more years, said Boyles, who is trying to keep track of cancellations.
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A project list Boyles shared with the Globe includes more than 75 initiatives on topics including slavery, Native American studies, poetry, international relations, urban design, maritime history and musical instruments.
In Hadley, the historic farmstead Sánchez-Eppler helps run was erected in 1752 and passed down in the same family for two centuries, allowing architecture, furniture, and documents including diaries to be preserved, she said.
'Because it has so much stuff, it really tells a broad social-historical story,' said Sánchez-Eppler, who is also an American Studies and English professor at Amherst College.
Much of grant
money that was canceled supported the museum's semiquincentennial exhibits, including restoring part of the home's garden to what it would have looked like in the 1770s, she said.
Now, staff don't have the money to populate the garden with flowers and plants, Sánchez-Eppler said. Museum workers will have to describe to visitors what the garden would have looked like, she said, sighing.
'That's a tangible loss,' she said.
Other museum exhibits tell the stories of two enslaved people who lived on the farm, and explore the diary of a woman who owned the farm during the Revolutionary War.
The loss of the grant means visitors won't be able to learn about those important parts of US history, Sánchez-Eppler said.
'The basis of democracy is knowledge, having a knowledgeable populous that can deliberate and make decisions about the present, and also about the past,' she said.
This is a developing story.
Claire Thornton can be reached at