Oregon Humanities faces steep federal funding cuts

Humanities councils across the country, including in Oregon, recently learned that the federal government is slashing their funding. A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities was meant to fund the councils through 2027, but it was rescinded on April 2 following reports that the Department of Government Efficiency was planning cuts at the NEH.

The abrupt lack of funding will affect organizations like Oregon Humanities, which facilitates public conversations and community-building events across the state. Last year, the nonprofit received 44% of its budget from NEH funding, which helped finance grants to libraries, social service agencies and other organizations in Oregon.

Adam Davis is the executive director of Oregon Humanities. He joins us to talk about what cutting humanities funding could mean for Oregonians.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Humanities councils across the country, including in Oregon, learned through an email last week that the federal government is slashing their funding. A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities was meant to fund the councils through 2027, but it was rescinded last Wednesday night. For Oregon Humanities, this means losing out on more than half a million dollars, money that could have been used to fund their own events and programs in addition to grants to libraries and social service agencies.

Adam Davis is the executive director of Oregon Humanities. He joins us now. It’s great to have you back on the show.

Adam Davis: Thanks, Dave.

Miller: What exactly does Oregon Humanities do?

Davis: We work around the state to try to get people connecting across differences of background and belief, mainly through community conversations, sharing stories, classes for low-income adults, and also a bunch of grants.

Miller: I have to say that’s different from what I thought your mission was. What you’ve just described sounds a little bit like the way I think about some versions of journalism. One of your key roles as you see it is to convene people and to get people to talk about and through their differences.

Davis: Yes, I think there are lots of ways to understand the humanities. The way we understand it out here is “shared questions about how we live in community,” especially the kind of questions that are hard to answer. It might take a while.

Miller: What’s an example of a program that you think epitomizes the work you do?

Davis: We have a program coming up next week in Pendleton with Chuck Sams, former director of the National Park Service from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, and we’re gonna be talking about public lands. And the question there is, “How do we relate to land? What should we expect of our capacity to use it?” The idea is to get people with lots of different perspectives together, listening to each other.

Just to say one more thing about what we do: we try to build trust, and we try to build trust around, again, the toughest things to talk about and the most necessary in community.

Miller: Why is this important now in 2025?

Davis: You say that, and you only just started to smile, which people can’t see. I think trust is always important in a democracy in a way we have to be able to talk to people that we don’t agree with or dismiss or don’t recognize. That’s how we get work done together. It is clearly more needed now, maybe more than ever; and a particular irony right now is that we’re approaching the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Oregon Humanities, like many other state humanities councils, is working on a big initiative to get people talking about things like freedom and equality as we approach this anniversary. And it’s at this moment that we have had funding pulled, as have many, many other organizations as well. So lots of small and mid-size organizations committed to getting people doing the work of democracy are suddenly facing real challenges.

Miller: What does National Endowment for the Humanities money mean to Oregon Humanities?

Davis: Well, to us specifically, it’s half our budget. We’re 14 full-time staff around the state. We give public program grants to Estacada, North Bend … you name it, we’ve given grants out there. Those grants are on pause already, so it means everything from the challenges of running a nonprofit that suddenly has to scale half of its expenses back, to all of our program and partner work suddenly having to be looked at in real serious ways.

Miller: Just so I understand, say, a library near Coos Bay or in Estacada, they might get federal money, but they get it through you.

Davis: There’s no way that most organizations around the state could apply for NEH funding directly.

Miller: Why not?

Davis: Too big. Imagine the federal government trying to process grant requests of $5,000. That’s what the state humanities councils can do. We are the way that federal money gets out to small, mid-sized, frontier rural organizations, and it’s also the relationships. Again, we work with over 150 different community organizations around the state, and that’s not going to happen coming out of Washington. It seems like what happens out of Washington right now is a late-night email that says, “You’ve got to stop doing that kind of locally based work.”

Miller: The potential of cuts has been in the air for a while, obviously, and real cuts have been happening. How have you and other humanities councils been preparing for this possibility?

Davis: We’ve been preparing for years and as of 10 years ago, Oregon Humanities was over 75% dependent on the federal government. These days it’s just under half. So one way is just diversifying funding. At the same time, as you can imagine, when half of your budget or more comes from the federal government there should be some reluctance to seek too much money in the local context. So we’ve been preparing on one hand by diversifying funding.

There’s also a very strong network of state and territorial humanities councils, and we’re all working together, to figure out both how to support each other and whether litigation can happen for this grant, which, again, was obligated through 2027. And the notification was outside the channels you’d expect and seems to run against statutorily obligated funding.

Miller: So there is legal action that’s already underway or that’s in the works on the part of these state humanities councils all across the country?

Davis: In the works. There is nothing formal yet, but in the works.

Miller: What did go through your mind when you got this email late Wednesday night, saying essentially, “Your grant through 2027 is terminated, effective right now”?

Davis: I think what went through my mind … two things. One, I think what this country needs more than anything is more opportunities to build trust with people that we disagree with or we distrust. So my sense was, “Bummer, we’re getting cut in a way that these things actually need more support.” And the second was the way that it happened, which felt disrespectful and disdainful of a 50-plus year relationship.

We are the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. We’ve been working really hard for the long-term to build trust and to get people connecting. And to see something come in that’s a couple sentences that says, “you’re done and here’s why” – actually, barely “here’s why” – I think there’s an undermining of the work we’re trying to do. That hits pretty hard.

Miller: As you just heard, there were massive demonstrations around the state, around the country over the weekend. It’s possible that some people were saying, “I’m here because I want my local library to get this $5,000 NEH grant through Oregon Humanities,” but that’s not likely given how much people are already paying attention to. What does that mean for you, when people are worried about Medicaid and Medicare, about Social Security, about maybe USAID, about tariffs, about massive deportations?

NEH money just has to be lower on most people’s lists of priorities, but it’s hard to imagine something like this. There’s legal action, which you talked about, which is still in the works, but it’s hard to imagine a decision like this being reversed if there isn’t a groundswell. It’s also hard to imagine a popular groundswell. I guess I’m just wondering where that leaves you?

Davis: I think it leaves us in a familiar place, which is, it’s nice that you’re doing this interview now. It’s nice that we’re getting coverage nationally. This work of slowly building trust and getting people to talk about the hard questions underlying their community happens all the time, often with little attention and out of the limelight.

Miller: And sometimes having nothing to do with an established program. It’s just people who want to get together.

Davis: Yeah, but the point I’m trying to make is that people pay attention in a crisis to some things, and that’s great, but the work of long-term health of democracy, it’s not crisis response. It’s got to happen all the time. And we’re gonna keep doing the work, we’re gonna keep doing it the way we’ve been doing it.

When you talk about, for example, policy around the border or deportations, we should always be thinking about what it means to belong. It’s not a simple question. There are real questions around borders. And I think one of the ways that our work helps Oregon and other state humanities councils help in their states is we get people talking about things like, “What does it mean to belong and what are the policies that ought to follow from it?” Not so that we need to agree right away, but so that we trust each other more and hear each other a little more.

Miller: In the short-term, how are you thinking about spending the money that you do have? If there have to be cuts, painful cuts of some kinds in terms of programming, maybe in terms of staff because you’re talking about an enormous hit to your budget, what’s most important, do you think, in terms of the work you’re doing?

Davis: Well, this was four days ago and we’re sorting it through. But our program with Chuck Sams next week in Pendleton is still happening. Our program with Danielle Allen early in May in Southeast Portland, talking about Democracy, is still happening. Our “Dear Stranger” letter writing program is still happening. Our Conversation Project is still happening. So we’re figuring out, by the time we get to late summer or early fall, what we’re going to cut back on – and there will be cuts, no question.

But the first question you asked me was about what we exist for. And again, it’s trust and relationships, it’s asking questions together and it’s increasing the sense of agency and communities – that’s what we’re going to be for.

Miller: Adam Davis, thanks very much.

Davis: Thanks, Dave.

Miller: Adam Davis is the executive director of Oregon Humanities. He joined us to talk about the announcement last week that a major federal grant to Oregon Humanities was canceled.

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