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Coping with Democracy, Coping with the Culture War: a Policy History of the National Endowment for the Humanities

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Coping with Democracy, Coping with the Culture War: a Policy History of the National Endowment for the Humanities Coping With Democracy, Coping with the Culture War: A Policy History of the National Endowment for the Humanities Author: Daniel Francis Geary Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:108118 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2018 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Coping With Democracy, Coping with the Culture War: A Policy History of the National Endowment for the Humanities Daniel Geary A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the department of political science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Boston College Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences Graduate School June 2018 © Copyright 2018 Daniel Geary Coping with Democracy, Coping with the Culture War: A Policy History of the National Endowment for the Humanities Daniel Geary Advisor: R. Shep Melnick, Ph.D. Abstract: In 1965, at the height of the Great Society, when there was also a consensus about the importance of the humanities to edify American life, Congress established a federal agency to support them: the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH). Shortly thereafter arose a sea change in scholarship and education in the humanities, which by the 1980s became an issue in the broader U.S. culture wars. Many scholars and intellectuals became sharply divided over such questions as the authors and books to prioritize and include in liberal arts curricula, modes of interpretation of texts, and perspectives on the goodness (or lack thereof) to be found in Western civilization and American history. This policy history examines how, in this changing context, the NEH has managed to endure and how it has interpreted and carried out its mandate to support the humanities. It is divided into two parts. Part I tells the story of how the NEH has maintained itself; how it has survived attempts at termination, achieved budget increases and sustained losses, and how it has set its budgetary priorities. This analysis of organizational maintenance traces the evolution of the national debate over federal funding for culture, looking at how the major political parties have changed position on this issue over time. It examines how the NEH built a clientele, the state humanities councils, to bolster its support in Congress. And it looks at how changes in party positioning and related developments in the culture war effectively empowered that clientele—with the effect of helping save the agency when threatened with abolishment, but also giving that clientele greater influence over the NEH’s policies and budgetary priorities. Part II explains how the NEH’s internal bureaucratic structure has operated during the culture wars. When the agency was founded, Congress established a structure with the goal of empowering the NEH to make decisions on the basis of nonpolitical expertise in the humanities, assuming that the agency would need to be able to resist pressures to award grants to favored constituencies at the expense of merit. Part II analyzes how that structure has operated in a different and wholly unanticipated context, one in which many of those who could claim the mantle of expertise have become polarized on issues such as multiculturalism and the importance of “great books.” It compares the bureaucratic structure at the NEH with the structures and practices that have evolved at other federal grant-making agencies: the National Endowment for the Arts and National Science Foundation. The analysis shows how the structure at NEH has enabled Democratic and Republican appointed chairmen to push the substance of grant-making in progressive and traditional directions, respectively, despite continuity of formal rules, procedures, and professional staff. This dissertation concludes with an assessment of what can be expected from the NEH in regard to its durability, budgetary priorities, and grant-making under Republican and Democratic administrations. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. iii List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... v List of Figures ................................................................................................................... vi Preface .............................................................................................................................. vii Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 The Challenge of Democracy ................................................................................................... 5 The Culture-War Challenge .................................................................................................. 10 Dissertation Structure ............................................................................................................. 18 Part One: Organizational Maintenance........................................................................ 20 1.0 The Founding of the NEH .................................................................................. 26 1.1 General Education and Western Civ........................................................................ 28 1.2 Cultural Enrichment for the Masses ........................................................................ 33 1.3 Elite Fears of Mass Culture on the Right and Left ................................................. 36 1.4 The Humanities Lobby Goes to Work ..................................................................... 40 1.5 Legislative Precursors for the Arts ........................................................................... 44 1.6 The Cornerstone of the Great Society ...................................................................... 50 1.7 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 56 2.0 Party Position Change in the 1970s ................................................................... 58 2.1 The NEH’s Early Years: Hostile Republicans Limit Agency Growth .................. 61 2.2 Republicans Change Postion ..................................................................................... 66 2.3 Elitism Versus Populism ............................................................................................ 74 2.4 The Fragility of the Great Society Ideal ................................................................... 96 3.0 Constituency Building: The Formation of the State Humanities Councils ... 98 3.1 A Grassroots Constituency for the Humanities ..................................................... 101 3.2 The Founding of the State Humanities Councils ................................................... 106 3.3 The 1976 Reauthorization ....................................................................................... 115 3.4 The Federation of State Humanities Councils ....................................................... 119 3.5 Toward Client Politics ............................................................................................. 125 4.0 Party Positioning: 1980 – 1995......................................................................... 127 4.1 No Constituency on the Right for Excellence ........................................................ 129 4.2 Agency Reputation in the Culture War ................................................................. 141 4.3 The New Republican Position: Terminate the NEH ............................................. 154 iii 5.0 The State Humanities Councils and the NEH: The Tail Wags (and Saves) the Dog 161 5.1 Distant and Tense ..................................................................................................... 162 5.2 State Councils Improve their Standing .................................................................. 172 5.3 The Client Comes Through—and Comes Out on Top ......................................... 182 5.4 A New Political Context for the NEH ..................................................................... 188 6.0 NEH in a Fractured Republic .......................................................................... 189 6.1 Party Positioning: 1995 – 2017 ................................................................................ 189 6.2 The New Federal-State Partnership ....................................................................... 206 6.3 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 210 Part Two: Bureaucratic Structure .............................................................................. 211 7.0 Designing the NEH ............................................................................................ 217 7.1 Humanists Look to the NSF .................................................................................... 218 7.2 The National Science Foundation: Reconciling Expertise, Accountability, and Efficiency................................................................................................................................ 219 7.3 Humanities Foundation Goals ................................................................................ 228 7.4 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................
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