{"id":3854,"date":"2026-03-11T23:01:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T03:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=3854"},"modified":"2026-03-11T23:01:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T03:01:32","slug":"how-ai-terminated-1477-neh-grants-a-naive-exercise-in-casuistry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2026\/03\/how-ai-terminated-1477-neh-grants-a-naive-exercise-in-casuistry.html","title":{"rendered":"How AI Terminated 1,477 NEH Grants: A Naive Exercise in Casuistry"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/a>
Nate Cavanaugh of DOGE (March 2025)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

From 2010 until its sudden termination by DOGE last April, I directed Music Unwound, an NEH-funded national consortium of orchestras and universities.  A letter from Michael McDonald, the acting NEH chairman, informed me that the demise of Music Unwound represented \u201can urgent priority for the administration.\u201d It was ended \u201cto safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I now learn, from a splendid March 7 New York Times<\/em> investigative piece<\/strong><\/a> by Jennifer Schuessler, that Music Unwound was cancelled midstream by a couple of young DOGE agents who deployed ChatGPT to determine which existing NEH projects were infected by DEI. Nearly every active grant made during the Biden administration, they decided, was ideologically toxic. 1,477 NEH grants were ended. Forty-two were kept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justin Fox and Nate Cavanaugh, with no background in the humanities, culled short summaries of ongoing NEH projects from the internet. The prompt that they fed to ChatGPT read: \u201cDoes the following relate at all to D.E.I.?  Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with \u2018yes\u2019 or \u2018no.\u2019\u201d In a deposition, Fox was asked about an NEH-supported documentary exploring the 1873 massacre in Colfax, Louisiana, of dozens of Black men attacked by a mob of former Confederates and Ku Klux Klan members. ChatGPT ruled it \u201cDEI.\u201d Fox agreed \u2013 \u201cbecause it focuses on exclusively anti-Black violence, which is a race,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, Fox and Cavanaugh functioned as hitmen in a self-fulfilling exercise in na\u00efve casuistry. But they doubtless perceived themselves as warriors for Donald Trump\u2019s white-washed version of \u201cAmerica First.\u201d<\/strong> Cavanaugh, one reads in the Times<\/em>, embraced DOGE\u2019s mission of shrinking \u201cuseless small agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the Music Unwound festivals \u2013 dozens of them in all parts of the United States — explored topics in American music, about which it is impossible to talk without reference to \u201crace.\u201d There would be no American music without Black America. Of the most recent Music Unwound festivals, four \u2013 in New York, Illinois, Indiana, and North Carolina \u2013 were cross-disciplinary celebrations of \u201cCharles Ives\u2019s America\u201d on the occasion of the Ives Sesquicentennial year: 2024. Ives is the great creative genius of American classical music. He is also the American concert composer who most tellingly culls American cultural memory. He fixes on the Civil War, in which his father served, and on Danbury, Connecticut, in which he grew up. His American vision is uplifting, even patriotic. Because it is also capacious, it incorporates the fate of Black Americans. His Second Symphony expresses \u201csympathy for the slaves\u201d by citing Stephen Foster\u2019s \u201cOld Black Joe\u201d (which is not a minstrel song in dialect, but an empathetic parlor song). Ives\u2019s \u201cThe St. Gaudens at Boston Commons\u201d ponders the heroism of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw\u2019s legendary Black Civil War regiment. A central purpose of the Music Unwound Ives festivals was to extrapolate these and other messages embedded in the symphonic memory clouds that Ives \u2013 and only Ives \u2013 densely fashioned. (For an example, click here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That alone would have sufficed to flag Music Unwound as \u201cDEI.\u201d But the festivals were never \u201cwoke.\u201d They did not argue for the arts as instruments for social justice. The arts are bigger than that, and fundamentally different. (To read something pertinent, click here<\/a><\/strong>.) In fact, the Music Unwound Ives festivals would more plausibly be regarded as non-ideological celebrations of \u201cAmerica 250\u201d \u2013 the Trump logo now flaunted by both the NEH and NEA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another terminated NEH project that I have written and broadcast about is MUSA \u2013 \u201cMusic of the United States,\u201d initiated in 1988 by the American Musicological Society. It\u2019s funded 41 scholarly editions of American music of all kinds \u2013 a New World cacophony including spirituals and Native American songs, blackface minstrelsy, early American symphonies and choral works, transcriptions of piano solos by Fats Waller and Earl Hines, and you name it. In an NPR piece on Trump and the arts, I focused on a MUSA project culling all the songs referenced in Laura Ingalls Wilder\u2019s\u00a0 Little House on the Prairie<\/em> children\u2019s books \u2013 in effect, a revelatory Middle American 19th<\/sup> century songbook. No one scanning the full list of MUSA projects \u2013 you can see it here<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 could reasonably infer an underlying DEI agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I now learn from Jennifer Schuester\u2019s Times<\/em> piece that the American Council of Learned Societies, of which the American Musicological Society is a constituent member, is partnering a lawsuit arguing that DOGE illegally took control of the NEH and inflicted cuts violating both the First Amendment and the equal protection clause of the Constitution. The plaintiffs are asking that the grants be reinstated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael McDonald, the acting NEH chairman who signed off on the AI-generated verdicts, is Trump\u2019s current nominee to become NEH chairman. It\u2019s also McDonald who recently announced a series of \u201cchairman\u2019s awards\u201d \u2013 an unprecedented round of NEH projects awarded non-competitively, and serving a conservative ideological agenda. Typically \u2013 up to now \u2013 NEH and NEH grants have been adjudicated by outside panelists in order to insulate the process from political interference. Never before have chairman\u2019s awards so dominated an NEH agenda. One lawmaker, Representative Chelie Pingree of Maine, has accused the Trump administration of turning the NEH into a \u201cslush fund.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a reasonable summation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For my NPR documentary on Trump and the arts, click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more on Music Unwound, click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From 2010 until its sudden termination by DOGE last April, I directed Music Unwound, an NEH-funded national consortium of orchestras and universities.  A letter from Michael McDonald, the acting NEH chairman, informed me that the demise of Music Unwound represented \u201can urgent priority for the administration.\u201d It was ended \u201cto safeguard the interests of the federal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-10a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3854"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3857,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3854\/revisions\/3857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}