CAA News Today

Last month, The College Art Association signed on to a letter from the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) directed to the EPA in protest of the agency’s decision to retire its online archive. The letter was sent on Monday, June 13, 2022, in coordination with the delivery of a letter from Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) with co-signers, including the Sierra Club several libraries, and other organizations.

The announcement is available on ASEH’s website.

EDGI’s letter can be found here, and their press release can be found here.

The College Art Association has signed onto a letter from the American Society for Environmental History directed to the EPA in protest of the agency’s decision to retire its online archive. The text of the full letter is provided below.

—

The Honorable Michael Regan
Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20460
michael.regan@epa.gov

Re:

Dear Administrator Regan,

We the undersigned write to express our opposition to EPA’s plan announced in February to sunset its online archive in July 2022. The vast majority of our government’s interaction with the public comes through digital channels; public digital archives such as the EPA’s are of enormous value to historians as well as to the public.

This EPA archive has already proven immensely useful to environmental historians. Not only are citations to it regularly featured in traditional scholarly venues, it has greatly facilitated projects such as “A People’s EPA”, a website and Twitter feed through which historians help explain the work of the EPA to a broader public.

Not just historians but those from a variety of academic disciplines as well as the public rely on the EPA digital archive for information, insight, and analysis. The site has provided resources for others working in ecology, biology, toxicology, and other environmental sciences as well as geography, law, sociology, political science, and public health. Professors and teachers at various levels, from K-12 schools to the graduate level utilize the archive as a pedagogical resource, directing students to pages that offer authoritative records of the geographies they are exploring. Not least among those who have relied on the EPA’s online archive are those working with and living in more marginalized or environmental justice communities, a stated priority of current EPA leadership.

Having easily accessible documentation of the extensive EPA’s investigations and records of decision for Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, for instance, has helped overcome local doubts about the agency’s effectiveness, yielded greater understanding of chemical exposures, and otherwise significantly supported the agency’s efforts at clean-up. Here and elsewhere, residents faced with a potential environmental hazard can more easily access the agency’s past work in their locale as an aid to understanding prior investigations at the site.

The importance of EPA’s online archive is perhaps best illuminated by considering what will be lost when this archive is taken down. The many mentioned uses of EPA documents will become much more difficult for those who cannot travel to EPA’s print collections, and with any pandemic recurrence, well-nigh impossible. A tremendous gap will also open up in what more recent historical records are accessible, as it takes many years for any preserved documents to be transferred to and made available through the National Archives. It will become much more difficult for historians to assess and interpret this agency’s recent past, much less to situate it within longer histories and larger contexts.

We understand that the EPA’s provision of a public archive of its own documents and deliberations is voluntary and that online maintenance entails some costs. But those need to be factored against the better and broader understanding it has nourished of the vital work done by this federal agency, whose own future hinges on greater public awareness of and support for what it does. Instead of doing away with the EPA archive, the Biden administration should promote it as a model for other parts of the Executive Branch. In our digital age, agencies should make their own publications and other public interactions more quickly, thoroughly, and durably accessible, both to historians and to the larger publics our government serves.

By Alexandra Klein, National Humanities Alliance (NHA) Communications and Government Relations Manager 

In early March, five months after Fiscal Year 2022 began, Congress finally passed a funding package for the year. The package included significant increases for federal humanities programs—most significantly, the largest increase we’ve seen in a decade for the National Endowment for the Humanities.  

This success followed a full year of robust humanities advocacy, much of which was supported by scholarly societies such as CAA. For example, thanks to their ability to mobilize their members, we were able to recruit advocates from all 50 states to participate in our 2021 Humanities Advocacy Day, which kicked off our advocacy for these FY 22 wins.  

In addition to many other engagements with members of Congress and their staff throughout the year, we followed Humanities Advocacy Day with two congressional briefings to highlight the impact of NEH funding.  

The first briefing, held in September 2021, discussed NEH funding for diverse histories and civics in K–12 education. Since 2018, NHA has worked with over 20 NEH-funded professional development programs for K-12 educators to survey their impacts, and this briefing was an opportunity for congressional staff to hear about the data we’ve collected. At the briefing, we shared that 100 percent of respondents to a post-program survey reported experiencing professional growth as a result of the program they attended and 98 percent of respondents said they would recommend participating in an NEH workshop to a colleague. Staffers also heard directly from project directors about how these programs—which covered a range of topics including Native American histories, the Mississippi Delta, the Transcontinental Railroad, and Japanese American internment—offer crucial professional development to our nation’s educators, illuminate diverse histories, and support civic education in our nation’s classrooms.  

The second briefing, held in November 2021, showcased how NEH funding for public humanities discussions enriches our communities by highlighting the example of the NEH-funded “Freedom Stories: Unearthing the Black Heritage of Appalachia the International Storytelling Center (ISC) in Jonesborough, Tennessee. Those involved in the project spoke about how it built space for dialogue and learning, and about how the discussions offered participants the chance to explore our rich histories and come together across differences. Thanks to a partnership with NHA to document the impact of the program, we were able to highlight that 82 percent of participants in the “Freedom Stories” program agreed that they “feel more confident taking part in thoughtful discussions about race” as a result of the program, and 93 percent felt motivated to “listen to the stories of people whose backgrounds are different from [their] own.” 

After a long year of advocacy and several continuing resolutions that kept government funding at FY 21 levels past the beginning of FY 22, we were particularly pleased to see Congress approve a $12.5 million funding increase for the NEH in March, bringing its FY 22 budget to $180 million.  

Our other priorities also saw increases. These included an increase of $2.5 million for Title VI, which brought its funding to $71.9 million, and an increase of $1 million for Fulbright-Hays, which brought its funding to $9.8 million. The Institute of Museum and Library Services received $268 million, an $11 million increase for the agency overall. While there was an increase for both the Office of Museum Services and the administration budget, the funding to carry out the Library Services and Technology Act remained level. The National Archives and Records Administration received $388 million, an $11 million increase. And NHPRC received $7 million, a half a million dollar increase. 

There was one disappointment that came with these numbers. Nearly across the board, these final numbers were significantly lower than the numbers that the House and Senate originally proposed for our priorities. This was, however, the case for nearly all domestic spending.  

As we turn our attention to FY 2023, we are hopeful we can build on the level of support we saw in the initial FY 2022 bills to secure additional increases in the coming year. The FY 23 process is off to a good start with the administration proposing another round of robust increases for several humanities priorities, which we will be working to make a reality as Congress drafts its yearly appropriations bills.   

CAA has signed on to the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) statement in opposition to banning scholars based on citizenship. CAA stands by its previous condemnation of Russia’s colonialist aggression and oppression of Ukraine. At the same time, we share concerns about calls for blanket bans on the participation of individual Russians and Belarusians in scholarly events and scholarly exchange. CAA believes that banning Russians and Belarusians based solely on their citizenship goes against our fundamental principles of scholarship, open communication, and dialogue. To read the statement in full, please visit their page.

CAA has signed on to the African Studies Association’s statement against Discriminatory Treatment meted out to
Africans, including Scholars and Students, fleeing the war in Ukraine. The Association has received reports that Africans in Ukraine have been turned away from borders and prevented from traveling. They join the African Union and several African leaders in calling for the equal treatment of refugees. To read the statement in full, please visit their page.