In the spring of 2025, the federal government discovered a new humanities critic: ChatGPT. According to U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon’s May 7 ruling this year, officials with DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency associated with Elon Musk’s government-cutting campaign, used the chatbot to help decide whether National Endowment for the Humanities grants “related at all to DEI.” The judge said the government had not meaningfully defined the term and ruled that the resulting mass termination of more than 1,400 humanities grants violated the First Amendment, the equal-protection component of the Fifth Amendment, and the limits on DOGE’s statutory authority.
So much for the idol of efficiency, whatever other achievements DOGE may have had. It appears artificial intelligence does not make the best judge of American civilization, particularly when the enemy is an undefined—though perhaps still all-too real—ideological taboo.
The absurdity had local ductwork. One canceled grant was not a gender-studies symposium, but a $349,000 award to replace the aging HVAC system at the High Point Museum in North Carolina. ChatGPT flagged it as diversity-related because better preservation would make collections accessible to “diverse audiences.” The culture war had finally reached the air conditioner.
So far, so old news. What’s revealing is what happened after Musk’s DOGE took a chain saw to the old grant system, but before the courts finished sweeping up. On January 15 this year, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced $75.1 million for 84 humanities projects, including a $10 million award to the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education, which says it is an independent, non-partisan, grant-making organization, for “Recovering the Humanities in Service of the University.” That one grant was larger than the foundation’s latest available revenue filing of $7.29 million and roughly equal to its expenses of $9.83 million.
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The left sees a purge followed by a restoration project for the right. Inside Higher Ed described the January grants as millions flowing into “conservative-aligned projects,” and reported that civics, Western civilization, American history and Great Books programs were major winners. In a May 10 investigation, the Financial Times reported that the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education had extensive operational ties to Opus Dei-linked figures and campus institutes. Those figures, the foundation, other think-tanks in the network, and the National Endowment for the Humanities did not respond to the outlet’s requests for comment. Inside Higher Ed quoted Princeton professor Katie Chenoweth saying the foundation’s president, Luis Tellez, “basically says we cannot leave society in the hands of secular people,” while the foundation’s operations director Kelly Hanlon told Inside Higher Ed that the Foundation “does not have any political, ideological or religious affiliation, nor does it fund policy work.”
The right sees a long-needed correction. The foundation says the $10 million grant will support new classical humanities programs, course development, seminars, workshops, fellowships, mentorship, graduate scholarships and postdoctoral fellowships. After the award, Tellez said higher education had “an opportunity right now to return to its purpose,” and that the Foundation could be “a voice of reason, reform, and hope.” The American Conservative described the grants as part of an effort to channel money toward civics, the Western canon and Great Books programs, which supporters view as a corrective to liberal dominance on campuses.
The Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education received a $10 million federal humanities grant after reporting $7,290,829 in revenue, $9,825,103 in expenses, $11,723,941 in assets and $4,269,173 in net assets for the fiscal year ending December 2024. One grant was therefore about 137 percent of the Foundation’s prior-year revenue, about 102 percent of its expenses, and about 13 percent of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ entire $75.1 million January award round.
Federal rules allow faith-based organizations to receive direct government grants for secular services, while barring the use of direct federal support for worship, religious instruction or proselytization. The National Endowment for the Humanities’ own grant rules say recipients may not use award funds to promote a particular political, religious or ideological point of view, advocate a social or political program, or support specific public policies or legislation. So the question is not whether religious conservatives may build educational institutions. In America, everyone builds educational institutions. It is whether Trump’s federal government is moving from broad grant-making to civilizational venture capital.
There is some evidence for this. In its August 2025 funding round, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced $34.79 million for 97 projects, including a $10 million University of Virginia award for Founding Era papers projects, which the agency described at the time as the largest grant it had ever awarded. In September 2025, it awarded $10.4 million to Tikvah for a Jewish Civilization Project, calling it the largest grant in its history and saying it would combat antisemitism through education on Jewish history, culture and identity in the context of Western history.
In January 2026, it announced the $75.1 million round that included the $10 million award to the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education, plus a $10 million University of Texas at Austin award for a Great Books and Civic Renewal Initiative, a $5 million Ohio State University award for citizenship education, a $2.07 million award to the Institute on Religion and Public Life for fellowships and writer-in-residence slots at First Things, a $2 million-plus award to the Abigail Adams Institute for humanities programming around Harvard, a $1.73 million award to the University of South Carolina for a Great Books program, a $1.13 million award to Providence College for a Saint Dominic Fellows program rooted in Catholic and Western traditions, and a $1 million award to the University of St. Thomas in Houston for an institution-wide civic education initiative.
There is also a Founding Fathers wing of the story. The January list included four $3 million grants to advance editions of the collected papers of John Adams, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, plus funding for the Museum of the American Revolution to support a conference, podcast, exhibition catalog, digital interactive and educational resources on the Declaration of Independence.
This is not a sprinkler system misting modest grants over museums, archives, scholars, state councils and local exhibitions. It is a model of fewer, bigger, more symbolically charged awards. The University of Virginia grant was about the Founding. The Tikvah grant was about Jewish civilization and antisemitism. The foundation grant was about recovering the humanities at elite universities through classical humanities, civics, economics and civil discourse. Each can be defended. Perhaps even each is essential. Each also fits the Trump-era instinct that culture is downstream from institutions, and institutions are downstream from whoever signs the check.
The old humanities establishment often funded projects in the idiom of diversity, memory, race, gender, local history and marginal voices. The new establishment funds projects in the idiom of founding principles, Western civilization and religious inheritance. Both camps believe the humanities form citizens and that their side is doing good.
DOGE’s actions reveal the limits of anti-woke iconoclasm. Destroying institutions is easy enough, but building their replacements requires the very things populists despise: committees, grants, administrators, fellowships and compliance forms. The Trump culture war has learned that lesson, and not simply the lesson that the future is decided by shouting “diversity, equity and inclusion” into a chatbot.
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