Marc Blanc (left) and Jessica Samuel (right) discuss the status of the humanities amid funding cuts. (Rachel Benitez-Borrego | Staff Photographer)

Four postdoctoral researchers — Marc Blanc, Jessica Samuel, Jesse J. Lee, and Danielle Williams — spoke in a panel titled “Humanities Politicized” on April 17 to address the status of humanities research in academia amid funding cuts and restrictions to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) by the Trump administration that began in early April. 

The event drew a small crowd of attendees consisting primarily of professors and fellow researchers. Postdoctoral research fellows are contracted by universities for periods of typically no more than two years. Some are experiencing increased anxiety about their career prospects in the midst of funding cuts. 

Lee, a fellow who works within the John C. Danforth Center for Religion and Politics, was one of the organizers of the event and said that the impetus for holding it was to bring together postdoctoral researchers to reflect on the current moment in academia and politics. 

“I wanted us to be able to reflect on the uncertain situation that we’re in, because we have no idea what next year will look like, so I wanted this to be a place of solidarity and a place where we could talk about having a voice together,” Lee said. “We have expertise to help give a better perspective of the current political, cultural, legal situation.” 

During the panel, Blanc, a fellow in the English department, spoke about how he sees the humanities as a vehicle of resistance against controlling political structures. 

“The funding cuts right now are not incidental to slice the government budget, it’s a tactic employed by authoritarian regimes throughout history,” Blanc said. “The value of the humanities is self-defense against creeping fascism.” 

In response to being asked what he views as the biggest threat to the humanities, Blanc said that there are widespread consequences when funding sources are cut off since funding precludes those in academia from being able to engage in research. 

“The NEH has lost a massive amount of its funding and its staff and so, practically, that means that the money that was formerly there for those kinds of projects are no longer there, and so the work isn’t getting done,” Blanc said. “Without that money, it grinds the profession of the humanities to a halt.” 

Aside from direct funding cuts, Blanc also noted that there is an ideological threat to the humanities as a result of the current presidential administration. 

“The Trump administration is hostile to the pursuits of humanistic inquiry. Critical thinking and the sustained attention and thought that humanities programs develop in people are a threat to authoritarianism, because programs produce free thinkers, and free thinkers aren’t good for authoritarianism,” Blanc said. 

Blanc noted that one of the reasons why the administration has been able to leverage attacks on higher education fairly easily is because there is a stark disparity in the U.S. to accessing higher education and a disconnect regarding the purpose of education. 

“To a fair amount of Americans, the purpose of higher education, especially with humanities, is niche,” Blanc said. “Academic humanists, I think, have a responsibility to try to remedy that distance between campus and communities that might not have a financial stake in what’s going on on campus.” 

Lee echoed Blanc’s sentiment, stating that being in academia alienates people from wanting to talk to him because of a gap in accessibility and understanding. 

“[We need] to articulate better who we are, what we are doing, exactly what our purpose is … and advocate for the humanities more outside the academy,” Lee said. “Our role as humanities instructors and humanities researchers is not just to our students in the classroom, but to society as a whole.” 

In regards to his view on the future of the humanities, Lee said that his personal opinion is that the statuses of academia and the humanities are going to suffer and will have a hard time recovering. 

“Things are going to get really bad, and when things get really bad at that time, we’ll realize that the way we’re doing things is not sustainable: this hyper-polarization, dismissal of authority, anti-intellectualism, anti-institutionalism, the way that social media operates,” Lee said. “We just have not wrestled with it enough.”

Lee said that his advice for undergraduate and graduate students who are looking to support the humanities is to get involved in small ways like taking a class. 

“You don’t have to major in a humanities major, but so much about university politics is about enrollment, and with an institution like WashU that really emphasizes STEM, enrollments for classes are down,” Lee said. “Humanities are getting squeezed out at both sides, so there needs to be an intentional decision of undergrads to take classes and an intentional decision of administrators to support the humanities.” 

Samuel, whose work focuses on race, education, and the environment within African and African-American Studies, said that people want to engage in higher education and that it is essential to keep access open to students who are interested in pursuing degrees in the humanities. 

“[Students] choose to come here, they choose to sign up, they choose to stay in the class, and they choose to engage in conversation,” Samuel said. “Clearly it is an indication that this is what the market wants. This is what our students want; they want to learn and understand more about why things are the way they are.” 

Sophomore Betty Lee affirmed that an education in the humanities provides depth to her education and new perspectives on her work and the world around her. 

“I think, especially in undergraduate education, humanities open a forum of thought — to challenge our own thinking, and to situate our skills in a broader context to ponder what it means to be studying, to be pursuing careers we are pursuing, and to be in communities,” Lee said.