21-04-2025
DOGE cut my grant-funded project at St. Ed's. Our history is worth fighting for
Ten years ago, I used a sabbatical to begin my work as an oral historian. I type the words 'oral historian' with hesitation: I had no degree or training in oral history, and it is not part of the formal curriculum at St. Edward's University, the small, Catholic, Hispanic Serving Institution where I have taught for nearly 16 years.
Nevertheless, determined to use my time away from the classroom to gather the stories of people adopted from China (my daughter, 19, is a Chinese adoptee), I set about learning how to conduct oral history interviews. Ultimately, I launched an oral history collection called Our China Stories.
After three different grant applications for National Endowment for the Humanities funding, I was approved last spring for a two-year grant, just shy of $60,000, to create a two-course oral history sequence to be embedded in a new Digital Storytelling major. Students would gain an introduction to oral history, a method of gathering, interpreting and studying the voices and memories of people, communities, and participants in past events. They would conduct interviews with participants in the Our China Stories collection, allowing young people of similar age but different life experiences to learn about one another as they learned this new discipline. One day our students — 30% of whom are first-generation college students — could share the stories of their communities.
Thanks to NEH funding, I finally had time to dig into ambitious work that would elevate our curriculum and give our students a crucial means of connection, empathy and exploration.
Then DOGE wielded its chainsaw.
This month our funding was cut, along with 85% of the grants NEH funded. The termination letter read, in part: '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.'
What does furthering the president's agenda mean? According to an April 10 New York Times article, some of the lost grant support will be redirected to 'build President Trump's proposed National Garden of American Heroes, as part of a reorientation toward the president's priorities of celebrating patriotic history.'
The article explains that the 24-member NEH advisory council, a mix of scholars and educators appointed by Presidents Obama, Trump and Biden, were given no notice of the cancellations. NEH staffers were also left in the dark. The DOGE emails arrived from outside the portal NEH uses to communicate with its awardees. In many cases, they landed in spam folders.
The realization that the work we do in communities, libraries, museums and universities holds no value to the knife-wielders cutting down our federal agencies is a bitter pill. How unpatriotic can they be? By capturing the voices and experiences of everyday people, oral history is truly pluralistic and democratizing. It is international and also quintessentially American.
How can we find solace? I'll tell you how I'm managing. Next year, I will make time to complete the grant work. My husband, who is not a wealthy man, has offered to pay my research assistant. Most of the other budgeted items will have to go, but I realize how lucky I am to continue at all.
I remain grateful to the NEH professionals who helped me navigate the grant application process. Their expertise has supported the efforts of countless academics, documentarians, artists and others who contribute so much to the cultural life of this country. Many of those NEH staffers were placed on administrative leave this month. These experts deserve our gratitude, not the disregard and disrespect of recent weeks.
Like many, I have hesitated to speak out, but the time has come for us to raise our voices. Please make yours heard. If you can, consider donating to institutions you value that have lost funding. Call your representatives and U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. Demand that NEH funding be restored. Our rich cultural history crosses boundaries of race, sex, class and political ideology. Together, we must fight for it.
Jena Heath is professor of Journalism & Digital Media and an associate dean in Arts and Humanities at St. Edward's University. She can be reached at jennah@
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: DOGE cut my grant-funded project at St. Ed's. I'm pushing on | Opinion
