Federal agencies like the National Endowment for the Arts have been funding politically-charged arts projects at universities that teach inaccurate, “progressive, revisionist history” and “promote obscenity,” according to a new report by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
“The report adds to concerns some scholars have expressed about government funding putting political pressure on artists to create art with a specific message,” notes The College Fix:
The National Endowment for the Humanities … is the leading organization funding arts projects favoring a leftist political agenda, according to the ISI report.
For example, the NEH gave a $50,000 grant to a Duke University professor for the book, “Democracy in Chains,” which “attacks economists who advocate for smaller government,” the report states.
The book by Professor Nancy Maclean caused some uproar within the academic community, with some scholars saying it was “poorly researched,” according to the report.
“Democracy in Chains” is chock full of conspiracy theories, and it falsely accuses free-market economists and pro-free-market scholars who were outspoken critics of segregation of being segregationists. Moreover, “Other academic institutions also have received money from the NEH for projects that further ‘progressive smear campaigns’ and ‘tribalist visions of American culture,’ according to the report, such as a $270,000 grant to the University of California at Riverside to teach about things such as “Latinx history” from a leftist perspective.
John Burtka, president of the ISI, notes that four agencies, such as National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, have been subsidizing “a litany of projects that relate to … race or gender-related studies.” These four agencies have an “outsized impact” on the ideological slant of the art sector and the humanities since each spends roughly $1 billion annually, augmented by state matching grants. “The federal government should not be funding … art or … scholars in the humanities that are specifically using that money to advocate for highly ideological projects that most Americans wouldn’t agree with and … undermine the core foundations of American society,” Burtka says. Burtka believes that federal agencies should get rid of ideological criteria, and instead promote a “cultural renaissance” and encourage a return to “true, artistic beauty.”
Federal funding for ideological art has a negative impact on our culture and “shapes the entire cultural ecosystem,” he said. The ISI report notes that the NEA has a “terrible track record of using hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to support obscene and/or simply idiotic art.” On example is how the NEA awarded a grant that supported artist Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ,” which was nothing more than a “crucifix submerged in a jar of the artist’s urine.”
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