Liberal New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof suggested in a new op-ed that if President Trump’s budget proposal, which eliminates funding for federal arts programs, were to pass, fewer people would read and democratic principles would suffer.
In the column, published Thursday morning, Kristof said federal humanities programs may seem “irrelevant,” but they play a role in spreading freedom.
“The world has been transformed over the last 250 years by what might be called a revolution of empathy driven by the humanities,” Kristof wrote. “Previously, almost everyone (except Quakers) accepted slavery and even genocide. Thomas Jefferson justified the ‘extermination’ of Native Americans; whippings continued in American prisons in the 20th century; and at least 15,000 people turned up to watch the last public hanging in the United States, in 1936. What tamed us was, in part, books.”
He went on to cite Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty (1877) as examples of literature that made Americans more empathetic, though both books were published nearly 100 years before the National Endowment of the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities were established.
The White House shared its budget proposal, dubbed “America First,” this month and it slashed funding for other federal programs by double digits. The proposal, however, is not expected to be passed by Congress.
