DOGE cuts trim funding for arts and humanities efforts in Minnesota

WASHINGTON – A year ago, the Northfield-based Norwegian American Historical Association hailed approval of a nearly $300,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), a federal agency that promotes history, culture and the arts.

That grant would allow the society to digitize and preserve five collections that document the efforts of Norwegian Americans to help occupied Norway – and its resistance fighters – during World War II.

One collection is a compilation of papers from the American Relief for Norway (ARFN), a group founded by Minnesotans to relieve distress among the people of Norway.

Another collection is about the Camp Little Norway Association, an organization of Minnesotans of Norwegian descent who supported a training base for the Royal Norwegian Air Force in Toronto.

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But last Wednesday, Norwegian American Historical Association Executive Director Amy Boxrud received an email that said the multiyear grant had been canceled, leaving the efforts to preserve those historical documents and many others in doubt.

“It actually went into my spam folder,” Boxrud said of the notice. “It’s lucky I went into that folder.”

More than 1,000 NEH grants were terminated last week by the administration in an effort led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

DOGE did not respond to requests for comment. However, the termination emails said the NEH is “repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of President Trump’s agenda.” 

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Not only were hundreds of nonprofits and universities across the nation cut off from money for projects that are hard to fund in other ways, but more than 180 NEH employees are being laid off.

Boxrud said her organization had been able to draw down some of the NEH grant money before it was canceled, allowing for some preliminary work on the project.

“But we had an archivist move from out of state and she’s in limbo right now,” Boxrud said. “There were all these efforts of Norwegian Americans who did everything they could to help occupied Norway. That’s what’s in those papers and if they are not digitalized, it’s hard to discover” that history.

Minnesota nonprofits and universities have received more than $4 million in the past year from NEH to preserve history and art and promote education.

NEH has also provided grants to every state humanities council for decades. Those have all been canceled, including those for the Minnesota Humanities Center, which will lose $1.2 million in annual funding.

Kevin Lindsey, the CEO of the Minnesota Humanities Center, said he found out his NEH grant was canceled the way Boxrud did — through an email from DOGE.

The money the center receives was used to give grants to other nonprofits working on projects involving culture, history and the arts, and to fund its own projects, such as a proposed film about slavery in the years just before the Civil War.

“There’s a need for us,” Lindsey said.

Humanities councils across the nation are considering joining to seek a court injunction to prevent the loss of NEH money.

Minnesota colleges losing humanities money, too

Since 2007, the Minnesota Historical Society has received eight grants from the NEH for its ambitious project to digitize more than 120 newspapers. But, like other NEH grant recipients, the society received notice last week that its eighth grant, in the amount of $300,000, had been canceled.

“The loss of these funds will result in fewer newspaper pages being digitized and available for research,” said Kent Whitworth, Minnesota Historical Society director.

He said the society is “fortunate to have alternative funding sources” and will continue to collect and digitize Minnesota’s newspapers.

But Whitworth said he is concerned about the impact DOGE funding cuts will have on the Institute for Museum and Library Services — an independent agency dedicated to supporting and funding museums and libraries — as well as on the Smithsonian Institution “and on a profession to which many of us have devoted our life’s work.”

Most Minnesota colleges and universities are also NEH grant recipients, including the University of Minnesota, Carleton College, Macalester College, St. John’s University, the College of St. Benedict and schools in the Minnesota state university system.

The University of Minnesota said three of its NEH grants were canceled, but did not identify which ones.

According to USASpending.gov, a website that tracks all government spending projects, the University of Minnesota received recent NEH grants in the amounts of $249,056, $199,985, $143,386 and $99,782. The school also received several, much smaller, NEH grants.

The NEH money to the university was earmarked for a number of programs, including work at its Office of Digital Humanities, which — among other things — studies the relationship between technology and society.

Other NEH-funded programs at the university include a program that teaches American history and culture “through intensive, place-based professional development for K-12 teachers at historical sites, colonial settlements, battlefields, artists’ and writers’ homes.”

Other programs support the National Digital Newspaper Program, help small and mid-sized institutions improve their ability to preserve and care for their humanities collections and fund community-based efforts to mitigate climate change and safeguard cultural resources. 

Meanwhile, Macalester spokesman Joe Linstroth confirmed that the school has lost a $149,660 NEH grant to update an archive of Soviet history. And Michael Hemmesch, the spokesman for the schools, said St. John’s University lost a $59,936 NEH grant, while a $58,640 grant at the College of St. Benedict was also canceled.

Editor’s note: Ana Radelat wrote this story for MinnPost.com. Radelat is MinnPost’s Washington, D.C., correspondent. 

This article first appeared on MinnPost and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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