The Department of Government Efficiency canceled hundreds of National Endowment for the Humanities grants in April, including two research grants at Pitt.
The NEH supports the humanities through federal grant programs that fund museums, universities, libraries and more. Two researchers at Pitt lost their funding during April cuts.
Ruth Mostern, a history professor and the director of the Institute for Spatial History Innovation, had 16% of her $349,797 terminated two years into her three-year NEH grant.
Mostern earned the grant in 2023 through the Digital Humanities Advancement Grants program to support her software platform, the World Historical Gazetteer. The grant was cancelled in April, despite its end date being planned for December.
Mostern said she learned about her most recent grant’s cancellation through the internet before being notified by the government.
“Somebody anonymously within NEH developed a list of all of the grants that would be cut. I learned informally that my grant was on that list, but I didn’t get a cancellation notice,” Mostern said. “But because it wasn’t official, that gave me a little bit of a runway to try to spend a little bit more of the money.”
After being notified that her funding was cut, Mostern said the government “added insult to injury” by requiring her to fill out cancellation paperwork that neither she nor Pitt had ever done before.
“It’s just an outrage,” Mostern said. “Even if the federal government is acting in ways that are unprecedented and probably illegal, we still are trying to do our reporting as regularly and compliantly as possible. Having to do the grant cancellation paperwork was bitter and time consuming.”
Mostern has received a total of three grants from the NEH over the past nine years, including the grant that was recently cut, all aimed at supporting the World Historical Gazetteer. The program supports the teaching of spatial connections between historical places, time and language.
The World Historical Gazetteer will stay online and be continuously updated, despite cuts, using funding from the Institute of Spatial Innovation.
Assistant vice chancellor for research Shelome Gooden’s research program grant for $29,573 was the second Pitt grant cut in April.
Gooden did not respond to requests for comment.
During a University-wide town hall over the summer, Rob Rutenbar, senior vice chancellor for research, said Pitt has been helping its faculty find alternative sources for funding and training them on how to effectively apply for grants.
“When a researcher loses funding, we ask them to first connect with their school research leadership to determine if there are alternative sources of funding to continue their work. We have also been directing faculty to our huge database of research funding opportunities, called PIVOT,” Rutenbar said. “We have resources to help people dive into this data and look for alternatives.”
As for the future of the NEH grants at Pitt, Mrinalini Rajagopalan, an associate professor in the history of art and architecture department, said she had been planning to apply for a Humanities Initiative grant before the program was canceled.
“[Me and a collaborator of mine] have been incubating this research project for a while. We did want to apply for an NEH grant together, and we signed up for a webinar in April,” Rajagopalan said. “We were gearing up for that, and then that was cancelled. And that program is no longer available.”
Alison Langmead, who holds a joint faculty appointment between the School of Computing and Information and the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, has had three NEH grants in the past. Langmead said if a grant fulfills her research needs, she would apply again, despite any potential cuts.
“I believe in the agency as it is, and I believe it will go on,” Langmead said. “I think it will change, as it has changed at every turnover of the administration.”
Langmead said that while the NEH has never been perfect, their future lies in the ability for legislators and educators to effectively collaborate.
“Maybe now is the wake-up call to really start thinking as a community about what we want [the NEH] to do for us and for our country,” Langmead said.
Though the NEH may continue to change, Mostern said its work is vital because it supports more than just universities and their research. The NEH also awards money to local museums, libraries and historic sites — five of which in the Pittsburgh area lost federal funding from NEH cuts.
“We want to have museums that have exhibits, and we want to have public programming on our public television stations that is educational and insightful,” Mostern said. “Culture is important.”