**Prepared Statement of Bruce Cole**

**Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities**

**Before the**

**Education and Labor Subcommittee on Healthy Families and Communities**

**U.S. House of Representatives**

**May 8, 2008**

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Madame Chairman and Distinguished Members of the Subcommittee:

I am honored to appear before you to speak on behalf of the National
Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). I wish to begin by giving you a
sense of the Endowment's overall mission, and then discuss the ways we
are fulfilling this mission through our programs and initiatives.

Our agency's enabling legislation declares that "democracy demands
wisdom and vision in its citizens." The Endowment fosters this wisdom
and vision by promoting excellence in the humanities and conveying the
lessons of history to all Americans. Since its funding in1965, NEH has
proved to be an effective way for the federal government to promote the
study and understanding of history, literature, philosophy, languages,
and other humanities subjects throughout the nation.

The NEH provides grants for high-quality projects that seek to preserve
and provide access to cultural and intellectual resources in the
humanities; strengthen humanities teaching and learning in the nation's
schools and institutions of higher education; facilitate basic
humanities research and original scholarship; and provide opportunities
for all Americans to engage in lifelong hearing in the humanities. The
Endowment also provides significant support for the projects and
programs of our essential partners, the 56 state humanities councils.
NEH grants typically go to cultural institutions, such as museums,
archives, libraries, colleges, universities, public television and radio
stations, and to individual scholars. In fiscal year 2007, we received
approximately 4,500 applications and awarded nearly 900 grants.

As a taxpayer-funded agency, we believe an essential part of the
Endowment's mandate is to democratize the humanities and bring their
benefits to citizens across our nation. In recent years, we have pursued
several new initiatives to fulfill this mandate. The most prominent of
these is our *We the People* program, now in its sixth year. This
program seeks to encourage and strengthen the teaching, study, and
understanding of American history and culture.

We created this program to meet a real and significant challenge: In
recent years, numerous surveys and tests have shown that our society is
growing less familiar with our origins and key institutions, and our
citizens less informed about their rights and responsibilities.

The NEH has a crucial role to play in addressing this worrisome trend.
Through *We the People*, we are leading a renaissance in knowledge about
American history and ideals. Since its inception in 2002, the program
has received over \$66 million in support from the President and
Congress. The Endowment has used these funds to provide over 1,400 *We
the People* grants --- and these grants have gone to every state and
territory in the Union.

Today, I want to discuss the newest element of *We the People*---an
initiative called Picturing America. On February 26, I joined President
Bush and the First Lady at the White House for the national launch of
this initiative, which supports *We the People*'s mission in a unique
and exciting way.

Americans are united not by race or religion or birth. Instead, we are
bound by ideas and ideals that every citizen must know for our republic
to survive. That survival is not preordained: the habits and principles
of our democracy must be learned anew and passed down to each
generation. Picturing America helps us meet this challenge, by using
great American art to ensure that our common heritage and ideals are
known, studied, and remembered. Works of art are more than mere
ornaments for the elite; they are primary documents of a civilization. A
written record or a textbook tells you one thing---but art reveals
something else. Our students and citizens deserve to see American art
that shows us where we have come from, what we have endured, and where
we are headed.

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With this in mind, the NEH has chosen notable works of American art that
will bring our history and principles alive for students and citizens of
all ages. Picturing America includes masterpieces of painting,
sculpture, photography, architecture, and decorative arts, including
beloved works such as Emanuel Leutze's *Washington Crossing the
Delaware*, Norman Rockwell's *Freedom of Speech*, and Frank Lloyd
Wright's "Fallingwater" house. The featured works range from
pre-colonial times to the present.

Through Picturing America, NEH is distributing forty large, high-quality
reproductions of these masterpieces to tens of thousands of schools and
public libraries across America, including public, private, parochial,
and charter schools, and home school associations. And they get to keep
these reproductions permanently, ensuring that the initiative's impact
will be felt for decades.

Along with the reproductions, schools and libraries will receive an
in-depth teachers resource book, which helps educators use Picturing
America to teach history, literature, and other subjects. The Endowment
has also created a dynamic online resource for all Americans, located at
[http://picturingamerica.neh.gov](http://picturingamerica.neh.gov/).
This site provides access to the images, resource book, and scores of
lesson plans, and also provides detailed information on the art and
artists.

The scope of this program is unprecedented for the NEH. Through
Picturing America, we are extending the Endowment's reach exponentially.
We are broadening public awareness of the humanities by bringing
American history and art to millions of young people and their families.
In January we began accepting applications for the fall 2008 Picturing
America awards. By the time we reached the application deadline on April
15, Picturing America had received more applications than NEH received
for *all* its grant programs over the past six years.

The initiative also enjoys support from a wide range of federal
partners, including, to date, the Institute of Museum and Library
Services, the Office of Head Start, and the National Park Service. The
Endowment has also forged partnerships with a number of non-federal
supporters who are helping to extend Picturing America's impact,
including the American Library Association and the History Channel, as
well as private philanthropists.

We are also excited about the role the state humanities councils will
play in this initiative. The councils have been integral to the success
of the *We the People* program, and we look forward to their
contributions to Picturing America.

By appealing to our young peoples' eyes, Picturing America will make an
indelible impression on their minds and hearts. These masterpieces will
give millions of students and their families a deeper understanding of
American history and principles---and that will help make them better
citizens.

Another way the Endowment is democratizing the humanities is through our
work in the digital humanities. The humanities are a dynamic enterprise,
and NEH has a duty to stay abreast of changes in the field and provide
leadership where it can be most effective. Digital technology is
bringing the humanities to a vast new audience, and changing the way
scholars perform their work.  It allows new questions to be raised, and
is transforming how we search, research, display, teach, and analyze
humanities resources. 

To focus the Endowment's digital efforts and ensure their effectiveness,
we created an agency-wide Digital Humanities Initiative in 2006. In the
brief time since its inception, the initiative has instituted several
grant categories, attracted many new grant applicants to the NEH, and
funded a wide range of innovative projects. To date, the Endowment has
made 57 awards for projects that are now exploring new approaches to
studying and disseminating the humanities. More than half of these
grantees had never received NEH awards, which suggests that we have
tapped an important unmet need.

Building on the success of the initiative and demonstrating our
long-term commitment to this new frontier in the humanities, we recently
transformed the initiative into a permanent Office of Digital
Humanities. This office will work with other NEH staff and scholars, and
with other funding bodies, both in the United States and abroad, to
pursue the great opportunities offered by the digital humanities.

The international nature of the digital humanities is particularly
important. Digital technology allows scholars from different nations to
collaborate more closely. To this end, the Endowment is actively
pursuing joint efforts with our international peers, which helps to
fulfill the charge in our founding legislation to "foster international
programs and exchanges." For example, we recently joined with the United
Kingdom's Joint Information Systems Committee to sponsor a program of
Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration Grants. These grants will help
build a "virtual bridge" across the Atlantic through support of digital
projects that will unify American and British collections of artifacts,
documents, manuscripts, and other cultural materials.

Last year NEH also entered into a partnership with the National Research
Council of Italy, and we are working on other collaborations with
agencies in Japan, China, Germany, and Mexico. Digital technology offers
the Endowment an unparalleled opportunity to fulfill our mandate to
bring the humanities to every citizen. We are pursuing that opportunity
aggressively.

The Endowment's grant-making programs continue to support high quality
projects in all fields and disciplines of the humanities. These
time-tested and cost-effective programs advance scholarship, education,
preservation, and public understanding in the humanities throughout the
United States. In FY 2007, NEH funds supported nearly 1,100 humanities
projects in all states of the nation, as well as the District of
Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. territories. An additional 2,000
awards were made, in partnership with the American Library Association,
to libraries through our annual *We the People Bookshelf* program. The
products of these grants, as well as the projects funded through the
state humanities councils, annually reach millions of Americans of
diverse backgrounds. In addition to the projects I have already
mentioned, some of our other recent noteworthy grants and
accomplishments include:

-   More than 4,200 teachers from every state of the nation participated
    in NEH-supported seminars, institutes, and workshops in 2007. Summer
    seminars and institutes were offered on such diverse subjects as
    Chaucer's *The Canterbury Tales*, the works of Mark Twain, World War
    II and its legacy in France, the plays of William Shakespeare, the
    significance of Alexis de Tocqueville's *Democracy in America*, and
    the art of teaching the Italian language through Italian art.
    Landmarks of American History workshops were held for schoolteachers
    at Mount Vernon, Pearl Harbor, the FDR library and museum at Hyde
    Park, and Ellis Island. NEH's education programs are based on the
    idea that students benefit most when their teachers have a mastery
    of their disciplines and are themselves actively engaged in
    learning.

-   The 56 state humanities councils supported thousands of high quality
    humanities projects that reached millions of Americans. These
    included reading and discussion programs, speakers' bureau
    presentations, local history projects, films, exhibitions, teacher
    institutes and workshops, literacy programs, and Chautauqua-type
    historical performances. Whether through grant-making or sponsoring
    their own programs, state humanities councils strengthen the
    cultural and educational fabric of their states by reaching into
    rural areas, urban neighborhoods, and suburban communities.

-   Recent NEH grants to produce authoritative editions of the papers of
    notable Americans and other world figures, as well as other research
    tools and reference works, include the papers of Abraham Lincoln; a
    Documentary History of the First Federal Congress; an edition of the
    correspondence of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning; a
    scholarly translation of a collection of ancient Jewish writings,
    including the Dead Sea Scrolls; and an interactive website featuring
    the cartographic history of water systems in ancient Rome. NEH also
    is supporting a project at New York University to digitize thousand
    of pages of Afghan books, serials, and documents published between
    1870 and 1930 that are currently held in public and private
    collections in the United States, Europe, and Afghanistan. Serious
    works of scholarship such as these are important resources for
    scholars, students, and teachers.

-   We are continuing our special initiative and partnership with the
    National Science Foundation to document the world's endangered
    languages. This initiative supports projects that create, enhance,
    and deepen our knowledge of the estimated 3,000 currently spoken
    languages that are threatened with extinction in the near future.
    Thus far, NEH has provided 53 awards totaling nearly \$4.5 million
    for projects to record, document, and archive information relating
    to these languages, including the preparation of dictionaries,
    lexicons, and databases. For example, recent grants are supporting
    the preparation of a dictionary of Klallam, an endangered Salishan
    language spoken in Washington state and Vancouver Island; the
    documentation of the linguistic characteristics of the Comanche
    language; and a project at the University of California, Berkeley
    that is enhancing access to linguistic materials that document over
    130 endangered American Indian languages.

-   Notable NEH-funded television productions that aired on PBS recently
    examined key aspects of American history and culture, as well as the
    history of other nations. The epic series, *The War*---a 14-hour,
    seven-episode film by noted filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynne
    Novick---aired last fall and was watched by nearly 40 million
    Americans. The series covered key events of World War II as seen
    through the eyes of people in four communities in the United States.
    The Endowment also provided funding for a two-hour documentary on
    Alexander Hamilton, architect of the modern American economy,
    champion of a strong central government, and leader of one of the
    nation's first political parties. The prime-time broadcast of this
    film on PBS was accompanied by an extensive website with special
    features that included an interactive timeline, teacher's guide, and
    video streaming. Another recent film NEH-supported, *The Rape of
    Europa*, is now being shown through theatrical release and at film
    festivals nationally and internationally. Adapted from a National
    Book Award-winning history by Lynne Nicholas, the documentary tells
    the story of the looting of European art treasures by the Nazis
    during World War II and the efforts to restore these artworks to
    their rightful owners.

-   The Endowment also is supporting projects related to the observance
    of bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln in 2009. To date,
    NEH has invested more than \$4.7 million in projects that will be
    available to the public during the bicentennial. This includes, for
    example, the creation and nationwide circulation of a panel
    exhibition, "Forever Free: Abraham Lincoln's Journey to
    Emancipation," that incorporates rare documents and drawings on
    Lincoln's role in the emancipation of slaves during the Civil War.
    The exhibition is scheduled to travel to more than 100 libraries
    through early 2010. With a grant of \$345,000 from NEH, the National
    Trust for Historic Preservation has created an exhibition and guided
    tours at the newly restored *Lincoln Cottage* in Washington, DC,
    which was used by Lincoln and his family as a seasonal retreat from
    1862 to 1864.

-   Building on our support for projects related to our 16^th^
    President, the Endowment has embarked on a long-term initiative to
    observe the sesquicentennial of the Civil War in 2011. We have
    already supported a number of planning projects, including a
    broad-based Civil War Sesquicentennial Project hosted by the Chicago
    Historical Society; an exhibition and programs on the war in
    Missouri; workshops in Mississippi for community college faculty on
    *"War, Death, and Remembrance: The Memory and Commemoration of the
    American Civil War*; and the preservation of Civil War muster rolls
    by the Pennsylvania Heritage Society. In 2009, the interest among
    cultural organizations to mount such programs will intensify, and
    NEH is prepared to invest *We the People* funds to support these
    teaching and learning opportunities.

Today I have only scratched the surface of the many ways in which the
Endowment contributes to the well-being of our nation. We are proud of
NEH's continued role in cultivating the enlightened citizenship that our
national survival requires.

Madame Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you again for
this opportunity to discuss the plans and priorities of the NEH.