At least two grants awarded to Georgetown University faculty were terminated April 2 by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), a federal agency that funds humanities research, citing a change in presidential priorities, multiple faculty members confirmed to The Hoya on April 22.
The grants are among more than 1,200 the NEH terminated across the country. The NEH cuts come as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Donald Trump administration’s initiative aiming to reduce federal spending, reduces research funding, primarily targeting scientific research.
According to letters The Hoya obtained, Michael McDonald, the acting chairman of the NEH, told grant recipients the terminations were the result of an executive order.
“NEH has reasonable cause to terminate your grant in light of the fact that the NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President’s agenda,” McDonald wrote in the letter. “The President’s February 19, 2025 executive order mandates that the NEH eliminate all non-statutorily required activities and functions. Your grant’s immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities.”
Amir Zeldes, an associate computational linguistics professor, received a $350,000 NEH grant in 2023 alongside a collaborator at the University of Oklahoma for a project documenting and developing tools to study Coptic, an Ancient Egyptian language.
Zeldes said losing the grant will bring his project to a halt and harm Georgetown’s linguistics department.
“The cancellation of our project in the middle of the grant period without any explanation means that we do not have the resources to continue the work we proposed, to pay employees doing work for the projec or even to run all the servers that the project interfaces rely on,” Zeldes wrote to The Hoya. “I think this has an immediate impact for people working with these resources and damages a leading project in Coptic Studies — this is concrete and reputational damage to the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown and our scholarly mission.”
Huaping Lu-Adler, a Georgetown philosophy professor, received a $190,000 grant from the NEH to support bringing a cohort of higher education faculty to Georgetown’s campus this summer to examine 17th and 18th century philosophical debates about slavery and colonialism.
Lu-Adler said her grant’s termination is forcing her to scale back the initiative, even after most of her participants were enrolled.
“My NEH-granted Institute could have helped to transform how generations of scholar-teachers teach and write about the Enlightenment philosophy,” Lu-Adler wrote to The Hoya.
“Most importantly, even though we may be able to continue the work in some form virtually, having a three-week in-person institute would have helped us build a lasting community of scholar-teachers,” Lu-Adler added. “There is simply no substitute for this kind of community building.”
A university spokesperson said Georgetown is familiar with the Trump administration’s reassessment and is continuing to respond to the administration’s actions.
“We are closely monitoring changes to federal policies and regulations that may impact the Georgetown community,” the spokesperson wrote to The Hoya. “We will remain attentive to new federal policies and laws, continue to evaluate any impacts they may have on our community and share updates on this work.”
Ananya Chakravarti, an associate history professor who previously received NEH funding to support archival research in India for a book project, said NEH support was pivotal in her career.
“Receiving the news that I had won was one of the proudest moments of my career and I am devastated for all those incredible colleagues around the country, including those whose awards have been cancelled this cycle,” Chakravarti wrote to The Hoya.
Recent NEH guidance dictates the agency will not fund programs the government sees as promoting “gender ideology,” “discriminatory equity ideology” and “environmental justice initiatives.”
Kathryn Temple, an English professor who previously received grants from the NEH, said she chose not to reapply for a grant in light of these topical restrictions.
“I was prepared to submit for the current cycle (the deadline was a few weeks ago), but I could not imagine how to pursue my project given the current constraints against gender and race studies, so I did not apply,” Temple wrote.
“To see the NEH reduced as it has been to disallowing critical commentary on race, gender and other matters deemed unsuitable by the current administration is disturbing,” Temple added.
Chakravarti said university faculty will continue to support the humanities amid changes at the NEH.
“The loss of the NEH to my colleagues, both inside and outside Georgetown, is profound and we are all in mourning and we are all determined to do what we can to prevent its dismantling,” Chakravarti wrote.