Oregon Humanities
@oregonhumanities.org
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Oregon Humanities connects people and communities through conversation, storytelling, and participatory programs to inspire understanding and collaborative change.
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Late last night, we received notice that an NEH grant intended to support our work through 2027 has been terminated in its entirety, along with grants for all other state and jurisdictional humanities councils.

Here's how you can help:
oregonhumanities.org/who/advocacy
Oregon Humanities needs your help: Last night our operating grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities was abruptly canceled, along with grants to all 55 other humanities councils—presumably under order from DOGE. This loss of federal support will have a devastating effect on our ability to serve our communities. Here's what you can do... Call your reps: Contact your US senators and representatives to protect the NEH and humanities councils. (See the link in bio for a script.)
Share widely: Post to social media and ask friends, colleagues, and family members to do the same. 
Give: Donate to help keep our programs and publications available—now and in the future.

      oregonhumanities.org/donate Show up: Attend your congressperson’s town hall or other open meetings to voice your support for the NEH.
Speak up: Write a letter to the editor about the role of humanities councils in your community.
oregonhumanities.org
Tomorrow in Corvallis, our executive director Adam Davis will host a panel discussion, The Future of Indigenous Food in the Kalapuya Ilihi, part of the Champinefu Lecture Series at OSU's PRAx.

Free and open to all: prax.oregonstate.edu/events/champ...
oregonhumanities.org
Amar will join us for a live conversation on October 27 to talk about the notion of equality in our laws, history, and self-understanding, from the nation's founding to today.

Learn more and get tickets: oregonhumanities.org/programs/con...

#Beyond250 #Democracy #USConstitution
Consider This: Equality and the Constitution with Akhil Reed Amar
Join us for a conversation with one of the country’s leading thinkers on constitutional law. October 27 at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland.
oregonhumanities.org
oregonhumanities.org
"Our written constitution, though far from perfect, remains the basis of our republic, but that terse text will not save us. Without a national narrative, our republic cannot long endure.”

A recent essay from author and constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar: www.thefp.com/p/the-consti...
The Constitution Can’t Save Us. Only We Can.
Newly minted democracies began to prevail across the globe after 1787, and they did so thanks largely to the political and cultural success of America’s Constitution, writes Akhil Reed Amar. “The mode...
www.thefp.com
oregonhumanities.org
We loved seeing our 2024 Community Storytelling Fellow Sarah Fox and her fellowship project—The Watershed Rock Opera—featured in a recent article for @sierraclub.org magazine!

www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2025-...
SIERRA: The national magazine of the Sierra Club
Sierra
www.sierraclub.org
oregonhumanities.org
We're excited to share several local watch parties for our first Consider This conversation of the season!

On October 27, join folks in La Grande, Clatskanie, and Salem for a live screening of our onstage conversation with Akhil Reed Amar: Details: oregonhumanities.org/programs/con...
oregonhumanities.org
Theater artist and educator Paul Susi spends his evenings and weekends helping people recover lost driver’s licenses and birth certificates.

In the "Real" issue, he writes about what it takes to navigate the bureaucratic maze of legal documentation.
oregonhumanities.org/rll/magazine...
Who We Really Are
Paul Susi writes about the challenges of recovering lost legal ID and what it takes to prove you are who you say you are.
oregonhumanities.org
oregonhumanities.org
"What does it mean to routinely move through the places we live in a machine designed to encourage escapism?"

In the "Real" issue, Meg Wade explains how car culture has led to the erasure of public transit in rural Oregon, disconnecting people in the process.
oregonhumanities.org/rll/magazine...
Uncanny Cars
Meg Wade on seeing beyond the windshield in rural Oregon
oregonhumanities.org
oregonhumanities.org
In 1978, the company-owned logging town of Kinzua closed for good. “It was like your family died,” says Marilyn Garcia, born there in 1939.

In our new issue, Bennett Hall shares how a volunteer-run golf course keeps the memory of this remote community alive. oregonhumanities.org/rll/magazine...
Links to the Past
Bennett Hall writes about how the Kinzua Hills Golf Club helps maintain human connections with Wheeler County’s vanished timber town.
oregonhumanities.org
oregonhumanities.org
In our latest issue, Jamila Osman examines how a 2010 FBI sting operation led to the imprisonment of 19-year-old Mohamed Mohamud and left behind a legacy of grief, suspicion, and fractured trust that still lingers in Oregon’s Somali community—her own—today.

oregonhumanities.org/rll/magazine...
The Terror Plot
Fifteen years after a young man’s arrest, Portland’s Somali community continues to reckon with the impacts. By Jamila Osman
oregonhumanities.org
oregonhumanities.org
"Returning to Russia is impossible; only the past remains there, and it won’t forgive you for trading it in for the future."

In Beyond the Margins, Aleksandr Chernousov writes about identity and conflict in Oregon's Slavic community.

oregonhumanities.org/rll/beyond-t...
One of Them
Aleksandr Chernousov on identity and conflict in Oregon’s Slavic community.
oregonhumanities.org
oregonhumanities.org
Our summer issue is out next week! Whether or not you subscribe, we hope you'll join us at this happy hour celebration in Portland!

#OregonHumanitiesMagazine
oregonhumanities.org
Yesterday a federal district judge in Portland issued a preliminary injunction in our joint lawsuit with the Federation of State Humanities Councils @humfed), finding that NEH’s April termination of grants to humanities councils was unlawful.
oregonhumanities.org
Today we're celebrating a win, while acknowledging it's only a first step in a long, continuing process.

Deep thanks to Anna Sortun and the team at Tonkon Torp for their representation and counsel, and to our partners at the Federation of State Humanities Councils.
npr.org
NPR @npr.org · Aug 7
The ruling deems the government's termination of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities "unlawful" and allows a lawsuit brought by humanities groups to move forward.
Federal judge rules cuts to humanities grants were 'unlawful'
The ruling deems the government's termination of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities "unlawful" and allows a lawsuit brought by humanities groups to move forward.
n.pr
oregonhumanities.org
This week, Oregon Humanities and the Federation of State Humanities Councils appeared in US District Court in Portland to argue for the restoration of congressionally approved funding for humanities work nationwide.

More about the case and Monday's hearing: www.orartswatch.org/oregon-human...
Oregon Humanities’ suit against Trump funding clawbacks has its first day in court • Oregon ArtsWatch
The lawsuit, arguing that the canceling of federal grants previously approved by Congress is illegal, is heard in a Portland U.S. court. A decision might come next week.
www.orartswatch.org
oregonhumanities.org
Our summer issue drops next month! We're excited to share this preview of the cover, featuring work by photographer Celeste Noche

Subscribe for free to get the print issue delivered to your door: oregonhumanities.org/rll/magazine...
oregonhumanities.org
Yesterday Governor Kotek announced a special session of the legislature to address transportation funding. In March, Meg Wade wrote about the fragile transit connections in rural Oregon that will disappear if the state doesn't take action.
www.oregonhumanities.org/rll/beyond-t...
Vanishing Lifelines
Meg Wade writes about how Oregonians rely on transit to stay connected to community.
www.oregonhumanities.org
oregonhumanities.org
For queer feminists in the 70s & 80s, print media was a lifeline for sharing ideas & imagining new ways of living.

Read about how Oregon's lesbian separatist communities used photography to explore queer ecology, feminist art, and alternative futures.
oregonhumanities.org/rll/magazine...
Foremothers of Photography
Raechel Herron Root on how the creative lineage of Southern Oregon’s separatist lesbian lands can help us reimagine the future.
oregonhumanities.org
oregonhumanities.org
In Beyond the Margins, artist, writer, and Community Storytelling Fellow Meech Boakye traces landscapes—from an urban cemetery in São Paulo to an Oregon creek—and the quiet places where life and death converge.

Read the full essay, with audio and photos: oregonhumanities.org/rll/beyond-t...
Groundwork
Meech Boakye traces the quiet convergence of life and death in the landscape.
oregonhumanities.org
oregonhumanities.org
Oregon writers:
Submissions are open for our winter issue! Send us pitches and feature-length stories for "Consume"—about buying, eating, and using—as well as histories, ideas, and cultural practices related to consumption.

Read more: oregonhumanities.org/rll/magazine...