Humanities in Trouble • Source New Mexico (2025)

Former Santa Fe poet laureate bemoans the loss of the New Mexico Humanities Council

In early April, state humanities councils in all 50 states received a letter from the infamous DOGE. It read “Your grant no longer effectuates the agency’s needs and priorities and conditions of the Grant Agreement and is subject to termination” It meant — simply put — their funding was axed. Many councils had probably foreseen this coming, given prior moves that undermined integrity at the Kennedy Center and the National Endowment of the Arts.

Councils have been in a tailspin since. It’s a cultural domino effect. The federal money humanities councils received would otherwise have been divvied out in smaller grants to libraries, historical societies and museums.

Checking online websites, I see councils across the nation posting heartfelt apologies, alongside lists of programs they will no longer support. That’s bad enough. New Mexico Humanities Council Director Brandon Johnson, however, offers the most dire prognosis: He expects the NM Humanities will have to shut down.

Gone. Utterly gone — lock, stock and barrel — ending its mission to support relevant work.

Which is? It’s work related to history, philosophy, literature, ethics, media and cultural studies. It’s helping a local art museum fund a special exhibition, exploring Hispano traditions. It’s funding the library to sponsor a special speaker who has just published a book preserving Native American stories. It could be be funds for a public exhibition in which you or your children could participate. It’s providing free access to a lecture on that small piece of history that you feel hasn’t been done justice.

Because that’s what the humanities by definition is: the intellectual study of human culture. The job of councils, on the other hand, is to make these studies available to the general public, regardless of location, and without cost.

I have been a beneficiary of the New Mexico Humanities Council, both as someone seated in the audience, and as an artist/historian. The NM Humanities Speakers Bureau programs sends writers, and artists of various disciplines, to public institutions across the state. I have traveled extensively, delivering lectures on Black American history, especially the Black presence in New Mexico.

It’s a subject many New Mexican have never devoted attention to, given the state’s small Black population. I love watching audiences, who have come to hear me with obvious curiosity, as their eyes light up, exploring new vistas. A Q&A follows every lecture. This is the part that is truly in the Socratic tradition. Knowledge isn’t simply delivered on a silver platter. It’s probed. It’s investigated. It’s put to the test.

However, looking back, the most memorable incident in my lecturing career occurred in a private encounter with an audience member. It was a question from a very young man who said he was college student. He approached me after I finished my talk with an earnest, but worried look. I could tell he had serious intentions. He was very somber, though his question was quite naive.

“I …uh… wanted to ask you something…”

Go ahead, I signaled with a nod.

“Ummm… how do you read books, and enjoy them?”

I was flabbergasted because this wasn’t a question about my subject matter.

He asked me about the roots of studiousness.

I asked: Was he having trouble in school? Was he overwhelmed by books?

He said he was a freshman who until recently had never been required to read so much — or so extensively.

And he was fascinated by his college subjects.

And he was simultaneously feeling overwhelmed.

I finally answered that all an ideal reader needed to have was passion.

I believed he had this.He was young, with a genuine desire to become a better reader. His commitment wasn’t feigned. He was beginning a lifetime’s worth of scholarship.Stick with it, I said.

I feel proud, looking back, believing my lecture awakened an earnestness inside him, or stirred his desire to read and read and read. I believe in tens of thousands of New Mexicans out there —especially from underserved backgrounds — waiting to be stirred, provoked or inspired in the same way.

Reaching them is a mission that must be restored, by reinvesting in humanities councils, or else we will give the phrase “the closing of the American mind “a new meaning.