The Trump administration appears ready to eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, and uncertainty also looms over the future of scientific research, leaving many academics at Washington State University and elsewhere scrambling to understand how the new presidency will impact publicly funded research.
Music professor Greg Yasinitsky, a renowned saxophonist who leads the WSU School of Music and plays for the Spokane Symphony, said he can’t comprehend why Trump would eliminate the NEA, which offers financial support to artists, symphonies, museums, theater houses and dance companies across the country.
The NEA and NEH each operate on just $150 million annual budgets, representing a tiny sliver of the multi-trillion-dollar federal budget. Yasinitsky fears that Trump’s cost-cutting zeal could have a chilling effect on the fine arts.
Cornell Clayton, a political science professor and director of WSU’s Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service, said the endowments are also valuable resources for K-12 schools and communities in “middle America.”
“Talk to any rural librarian,” Clayton said. “These kinds of grants are what allow them to bring exhibits and other things to rural communities.”
Federal grants are a big deal at WSU, which received nearly $138 million from more than a dozen federal agencies in 2015. The biggest contributor was the USDA, which operates veterinary science and agriculture facilities on the Pullman campus.
Projects funded by the arts and humanities endowments include a comprehensive history of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness in north-central Idaho; a WSU historian’s research into the use of missionaries as government spies during World War II; and public lectures at the Foley Institute.
In terms of the budget savings, the cuts would be “miniscule,” Clayton said. “It’s more about symbolism than having any impact on the budget.”