UWM Humanities Resilient Through Crisis of Identity and Funding 

UW-Milwaukee’s humanities department is in a “crisis of the humanities” after losing nearly half a million in federal financial support due to cuts, according to a dean of the humanities at the university.  

UWM’s Center for 21^st Century Studies (C21) hosted a State of the Humanities panel on Oct. 30, which explored how Milwaukee citizens and organizations can support humanities studies across the city as they face a lack of federal support. 

The panel was moderated by Dr. Jennifer Johung, who is a professor and the director of the Center for 21^st Century Studies at UWM. 

Panelists featured were local professionals in the humanities, including Art Derse (Medical College of Wisconsin), Jodi Eastberg (Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design), Maggie Nettesheim Hoffmann (Marquette University) and Michael Carriere (Milwaukee School of Engineering). 

C21 is a humanities research center supporting a community of scholars through collaborative efforts and innovative research projects related to the arts and sciences. 

Johung was interested in discussing how to define the humanities and package them in a way that highlights their importance. 

In a recent study from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, people on the street were asked to define the humanities and give their opinion on the discipline. 

Most people responded by confusing it with humanitarian work and saying it’s like giving blood, according to Johung. 

“So, I think we are in this moment where we are fighting for our funding, but also for what the humanities are for,” Johung said, “What is it about the humanities that is worth sustaining, fighting for?” 

Jason Puskar, Associate Dean of the Humanities at UWM, gave introductory remarks at the event. 

“It is very hard to say words about the state of the humanities at UWM without reflecting a little bit on the nation and what’s happened, because we’ve had a pretty extraordinary last nine or 10 months,” Puskar said. 

In the speech, Puskar thanked C21, the panelists and all attendees for their interest in this conversation. 

Puskar shared reflections on what the humanities have been through and how they have come out of it. 

Challenges the Humanities at UWM has faced in the past year, according to Puskar: 

• In April, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) cancelled many grants, including funds to individual researchers at UWM and C21. 

• NEH cuts for state humanities councils that fund museums and libraries, many of which have university and community partnerships. 

• The dismantling of the Department of Education, along with the removal of Title VI grants supporting language teaching, two of which were cut at UWM. 

• Calls to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which has similar impacts on the humanities as NEH. 

• The Corporation of Public Broadcasting is shutting down after losing funding. This includes a loss for the university public radio station, WUWM, which is in UWM’s humanities division. “I think of it as UWM’s largest classroom,” Puskar said. 

• An executive order is reevaluating federal museums and monuments to remove “various unpalatable facts, such as references to slavery,” Puskar said. 

According to Puskar, UWM has lost about $500,000 in federal grant support due to the above actions. 

“And that might not be a lot to some disciplines, but it’s a lot to our disciplines,” Puskar said. “So, I think this goes beyond what we’re used to thinking about in the humanities as a kind of the crisis of the humanities.” 

For as long as Puskar has been in the humanities, 30 years so far, he has seen it in a permanent crisis. 

This crisis has become a definitive feature of the discipline for Puskar, as every three years, there seems to be a new crisis. 

“Still, this feels different. The scale of it feels different,” Puskar said, “It’s more material than in previous crises. And I think we must learn how to cope with it a little bit differently as well.” 

Puskar sees a way forward with enrollment increasing in the humanities at UWM and donations from the listeners of WUWM rising. 

“If federal grants and the sciences stop funding a particle accelerator, you’re not going to accelerate too many particles. But in the humanities, if you stop federally funding a thinking accelerator, we’re going to keep finding ways to keep the conversation going, and we might accelerate the thinking even more,” Puskar said.  

The plan is for this night of conversation to lead towards more collaboration in the community, which will help to keep the humanities thriving in Milwaukee. 

“When [Johung] asked me to participate in this panel, I think one of the hopes was that this would inspire future conversations,” Nettesheim Hoffman said. “Conversations not even based in an institution of higher education, but in a community-based organization where we can talk about all types of partnerships.”  

This event was free and open to the public, but was mainly attended by graduate students, professors and other local professionals in the field of humanities. 

One attendee in the audience was respectfully critical of the choice of an all-white panel. 

“It’s hard to say that we’re doing this work with a straight face if we’re not featuring voices of people who are also doing this work, and who don’t look like the people currently on the panel, even though y’all are all great,” the attendee said. 

It was important to this person that if C21 is to represent and engage the greater Milwaukee community in the humanities, that race be considered going forward to foster diverse and accurate conversation. 

After the event, attendees gathered in C21’s space on the ninth floor of Curtin Hall for a reception filled with networking and smaller group discussion-based sessions.  

There were three main topics of discussion for the event and reception: 

1. The importance of the humanities in Milwaukee at this current moment. 

2. An expansion of the care and interest for the humanities in Milwaukee. 

3. Outline the fight for sustainable funding and explain ideas of connecting Milwaukee’s humanities community.