Andy Horowitz, a UConn history professor whose role as state historian requires him to advise state government and promote the teaching of history, said massive funding cuts ordered by the Trump administration imperil free speech and free thought.
"The destruction of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the destruction of the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the attacks on our universities, these are structural assaults on our social capacity to think, to question, to speak and to learn," Horowitz said during an afternoon news conference in the Legislative Office Building hosted by Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, co-chairwoman of the legislature's budget-writing Appropriations Committee.
"They're a $13 billion industry in Connecticut," Osten said to about 20 museum, arts and cultural destination professionals there. "That means they support jobs. They support communities. Without having the funding for this very important industry, we will lose access and we have the potential of losing collections and not being able to store those collections safely. If we lose this industry, it will be devastating. We need to support these programs because they support Connecticut."
"With the loss of federal funding and the matching grants they catalyze, hundreds of sector jobs are at stake," said Jason Mancini, executive director of the Connecticut Humanities Council, who was recently informed of the termination of $2 million in NEH grants that cascade around the state. "This is happening in every U.S. states and territory. Without further investment we might not be here to commemorate the nation's 250th anniversary next year." A lot will be riding on court challenges to the Trump administration orders.
Deborah Schander, the state librarian whose office is across the street from the State Capitol, said that Trump's order last month to end the annual Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grants, which date back to 1996, are in jeopardy and could total millions of dollars.
Lydia Blaisdell, director of programming at Ball & Socket Arts, in a former historic factory complex in Cheshire, said that in January of last year they were awarded an NEH grant of $24,850 that enabled the non-profit to find the property's history. They hired a paid researcher to help probe its evolution and production.
"Last week at 11:31 p.m., we received an email notifying us that our grant was canceled," Blaisdell said. "Our organization still had $13,299 left to receive and a year and a half left in the project period. Most vitally, we cannot finish the project without the funds we were promised, leaving us without a strategic interpretive plan and abruptly canceling contracted work for nine professionals, including historians, a filmmaker and exhibition design professionals."
"Schools, libraries, museums, historical societies, theaters, these are the places that bring us together within our communities and across our differences," Horowitz, the historian said. "By informing us, by helping us see things from other people's perspectives and by enabling us to find common ground, humanities's institutions comprise a critical infrastructure of our democracy and we need them now more than ever."
Horowitz said that Prudence Crandall - named the state heroine in 1995 - received a lot of local and statewide opposition when she opened a school for Black girls in 1833.
"This Connecticut teacher opened her classroom to students who were politically unpopular, so the General Assembly quickly cut her school's funding and then people in town set the school on fire and then the school closed," Horowitz said. "In times of crisis, decisions can feel complicated. I guess the aspiration to teach African-American children felt that way to many people in Connecticut in the 1830s. In time, the state legislature realized that the teacher had been right and they had been wrong."
Horowitz called the current moment in history a crisis that is creating a "haze" of uncertainty. "But I feel confident that protecting the vulnerable, protecting students and teachers, protecting those institutions dedicated to pursuing the truth even when it is unpopular, I feel confident that in the fullness of time we will recognize the people who do these things as heroes too."
