The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has canceled three grants awarded to the University of Utah, resulting from the federal agency’s termination of over a thousand grants nationwide.
The University received notice that the NEH terminated the grants awarded to the J. Willard Marriott Library on April 2.
The school is appealing the NEH’s decision, according to Sarah Shreeves, the Alice Sheets Marriott dean of libraries, who spoke at Tuesday’s weekly research town hall.
The federal agency, dedicated to preserving and researching the humanities through museums, universities, and libraries, cut over 1,400 grants this month, according to the Association of Computers and Humanities’ grant termination database.
The Washington Post reported that NEH acting chair Michael McDonald wrote that the funds were being disbursed in “a new direction in furtherance of the President’s agenda” in termination letters.
The NEH issued 11 grants to the University from 2019-2024, totaling nearly $1.5 million in funding.
A three-year grant to the Marriott Library’s Special Collections and Books Arts Program was one of the three canceled grants.
The funds from this grant were used to hire a catalog records assistant to improve access to the library’s vast array of visual arts books.
Shreeves said the project focused on creating a “standard vocabulary to describe artist books” and that other libraries across the country were replicating the project.
Shreeves added that the library is picking up funds to keep the assistant on staff as they appeal the grant cancellation.
The second grant that was cut short funded the research and development of a project called “From Jikji to Gutenberg: The Origins of Printing from Cast-Metal Type.”
This NEH grant funded the project’s research into the emergence of metal type, the publishing of a children’s book on its history, and an online exhibition on the early history of movable type.
The exhibition is planned to open in 2027 to commemorate the 650th anniversary of the earliest surviving text ever printed with the revolutionary typing method.
“This is actually a really interesting grant that is countering the narrative that Gutenberg was the inventor of printing from metal type.
That work really started in Korea,” Shreeves said.
“And so this grant was bringing together a whole group of scholars around this question, and they were developing scholarships and editing a book to put together for this.”
The grant was on a no-cost extension and had roughly $10,000 left to spend, so the library should be able to keep the project going, Shreeves said.
The last grant that was terminated would fund a three-week-long convention called the “Humanities Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence,” hosted at the University, with a planned start date of July 14.
The convention would bring faculty from all over the country to examine how AI and the Humanities intersect.
Utah Humanities, a non-profit that provides humanities programs throughout the state, also had its NEH grant terminated on April 2.
The non-profit stated that the funding loss would “decimate” their “ability to serve Utah communities, eliminating programs and partnerships that are essential to our cultural infrastructure.”
“Without NEH funding, we will lose our ability to provide grants and programs that educate, inspire, and bring communities together,” the statement continued.
“At UH, we work with over 100 partners each year and match at least $2 in private investment for every $1 of federal support.
The ripple effects of these cuts will be felt in every corner of the state.”
These terminations come on the heels of several NIH grant cancellations earlier this month, bringing confusion to health researchers at the University.
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