NCC News, January 1986

President’s Nominee to Head NEH Defeated

On November 19 the Senate Labor and Human Re­sources Committee voted 8-8 on a mo­tion to recommend to the Senate the nomination of Edward Curran as Chair­man of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Without sufficient votes for an endorsement, the Committee then defeated an effort to send the nomina­tion to the Senate floor without a recom­mendation. Noting that Edward Curran was a bad choice for the position, the Committee sent the nomination back to the President. Those voting against the Curran nomination were: Kennedy (D­ MA), Pell (D-RI), Metzenbaum (D-OH), Matsunaga (D-HI), Dodd (D-CT), Kerry (D-MA), Simon (D-IL), and Stafford (R­-VT). Weicker (R-CT), who had ex­pressed serious reservations about the nomination, voted for Curran. During the confirmation hearing on October 2, Curran had faced tough questions about his credibility, commitment, and qualifications. Curran’s limited experi­ence with the higher education commu­nity, having served for fifteen years as the Headmaster of National Cathedral School, a private secondary school for girls in Washington, and his controver­sial efforts as the Director of the Nation­al Institute of Education to abolish the agency, were the two primary areas of questioning and concern.

Theodore J. Ziolkowski, President of the Modern Language Association, tes­tified in opposition to Curran, stressing that the leadership of NEH should be in the hands of someone who has experi­ence in the humanities, who has earned the respect of the humanities communi­ty, who can speak to the American peo­ple on behalf of the humanities, and who can provide the broadest kind of intellectual leadership for the human­ities. It is unclear if the White House will move quickly or wait before sending another nominee to the Senate for the chairmanship of NEH.

TVA Plans Publication of Applied Research Journal

The Tennessee Valley Authority has announced publication of a new jour­nal, The Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy. The journal will focus on policy issues related to resource, eco­ nomic and energy development, and conservation. The first issue will be published in the spring of 1986. The editors are currently soliciting manuscripts for review and consideration. For further information please contact Alanson Van Fleet or Daniel Schaffer, The Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy, Ten­nessee Valley Authority, 400 West Sum­mit Hill Drive, Knoxville, TN 37902.

OTA Begins Assessment of Technologies for Cultural Resource Management

The Office of Technology Assessment, an arm of the Congress, will conduct a major assessment of technologies for cultural resource management. OTA is inviting teams of experts for a series of two-day working sessions. “This is the first assessment of its kind,” said Repre­sentative John F. Seiberling (D-Ohio), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Pub­lic Lands who initially requested OTA to undertake the project. “The  study will identify and discuss the most effec­tive current technologies for prehistoric and historic preservation,” and he add­ed “evaluate the most promising new technologies that could be applied to these programs and suggest areas for further research and development.”

On-December 3 and 4 the first of the working groups gathered to consider the technologies for identifying, analyzing, and preserving below-ground re­sources. Four recurring themes in the two day discussion were: the need for archival research prior to field work, the importance of interdisciplinary work, the need for sharpening the focus and scope of federal agency “requests for proposals,” and the realization that when contextual knowledge is missing, high technology is unable to produce satisfactory results. Jannelle Warren Findley, a contract historian in Wash­ington, represented historians’ concerns in this first phase of the OTA project.

State Archives Face Preservation Problems  

In mid-Decem­ber the National Association of State Archives and Records Administrators completed and presented for review a systematic study of the preservation needs of state archives. The study high­ lights the fact that state archives face reductions in funds, increases in work loads, and many difficult new conserva­tion problems. Without a comprehen­sive preservation program for state ar­chives, the survival of permanently valu­able information cannot be assured. Various recommendations for both short- and long-term actions are cur­rently under consideration by con­cerned historians and archivists.

NEH Reauthorization Bill Awaits President’s Signa­ture­

During the first week of Decem­ber, Congress passed and sent to the President a bill reauthorizing appropri­ations for the National Endowment for the Humanities for the next five years. Congressional hearings held during the spring and summer definitely influ­enced the final version of the bill. In July, Marjorie Lightman, Executive Di­rector of the Institute for Research in History, testified before the House Sub­committee on Select Education. Light­man spoke specifically to the need for both the peer review process and the grants awarded to “mirror the vitality and variety of the working scholarly community.” Describing the dramatic growth in women’s studies, she noted that there “are now more than 30,000 women’s studies courses” compared with none in 1965 when the Endowment was created. Lightman then asserted that “there is no other single area of research in the humanities that has grown so rapidly, has so widespread a constituency, and so significant a poten­tial for altering the disciplines.” Yet she pointed out that the very small percent­age of NEH support for gender-related research does not begin to mirror “the large size of the scholarly community interested in research about  women. . . .”

The final bill passed by Congress au­thorizes the “Chairperson of the Na­tional Endowment for the  Humanities to initiate and support programs and research that have substantial scholarly and cultural significance and that reach or reflect the diversity and richness of our American heritage.” Furthermore the legislation authorizes NEH “to give particular regard to scholars and educa­tional and cultural institutions that have traditionally been underrepresented.” Provisions on the peer review process were also included. The conferees stat­ed that they hoped the changes would “ensure the representativeness, exper­tise, openness, and objectiveness which Congress demands.” The ceilings for appropriations established by this reau­thorization bill are: $139.878 million for FY 1986; $145.067  million for 1987; $150.869 million for 1988; and “such sums” as needed for 1989 and 1990.