Davis talks about federal cuts facing state humanities councils, why he believes his organization’s work matters and why he isn’t afraid to speak out.
Lately, Adam Davis, director of Oregon Humanities, a nonprofit that facilitates difficult conversations, has been having lots of them.
Davis learned earlier this month his organization would lose around 40% of its $2.5 million budget as part of President Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to radically alter the federal bureaucracy. The cuts will likely mean layoffs at Oregon Humanities, and cuts to its cultural programming around the state.
Oregon Humanities was established in 1971 to distribute funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. One of 56 similar organizations around the country, until this month, it awarded small grants to groups that host cultural and artistic events around the state, in addition to training others to conduct such events as well as audio and written media intended to promote scholarship and culture.
For the Chicago native and nonprofit veteran, the cuts mean Davis has been faced with the unhappy task of informing program directors around Oregon. He’s even looking at relocating his group’s office from its current no-frills setup in the historic Selling Building in downtown Portland.
Though the NEH is by far its biggest funding source, Oregon Humanities has over the years diversified its fundraising, which means Davis’ organization is in a better position than many of its counterparts in other states. He estimates around one-third of humanities councils around the country are preparing to wind down operations within the next six weeks.
Earlier this week, Davis spoke with Oregon Business about origin stories, difficult conversations and impossible choices.
This interview has been edited for space and clarity.
I don’t envy you right now. How do you decide what to cut?
Well, first we think about the long-term purpose of an organization like ours. And we try to go, “OK, with reduced opportunities and reduced support, what’s most important?”
I think it’s going to be a combination of stuff where we get people in rooms together, and some stuff where we share stories that are lower-barrier encounters. It might be some audio. It might be written, and then some capacity-building, which is training other people to (facilitate conversations).
As one of 56 state humanities councils, we learned a lot from and found our work amplified by the connection to, for instance, Mississippi, Alabama, New York, Illinois — and to see that many of those councils may go away or scale back, is hard. I think it hurts the nation to see that network (of councils) asking questions about survival, instead of doing the work itself, which is so clearly needed right now.
Your organization encourages people to have challenging conversations. Are people these days having fewer challenging conversations?
I don’t think it’s crazy to suggest that we tend to talk more to people we agree with than people we don’t. And I think that is a shift, and that’s been going on for years — there’s a book by Daniel Bishop from many years ago called The Big Sort and that sort is accentuated not only by where people choose to live but also now by media. So if you continue to choose to hear from and speak with people you already know you agree with, it limits the likelihood of a functional democracy and healthy community.
So our goal is to create lots of opportunities for people to connect across differences of background and belief. We know we’re swimming upstream but I also know from experience that once you get people together, if you shape that conversation thoughtfully, people actually do want to hear from each other most of the time. And they do want to recognize each other, not just as the demonized version you get on television news but as another person who is also trying to live their best life in the world.
What about the humanities — do people value the humanities as much today?
It’s funny, because you go on a college campus and the humanities is a set of disciplines, like art history and literature. For me, we’re a public humanities organization and I take the “public” part of that really seriously. I also take the tradition of the humanities seriously.
For me that means asking open-ended questions about how we live together, reflecting together on how we live in community. And I think people do take that seriously. They might not take the disciplinary approach seriously but that matters less to me than that we’re able to think as a community about the hardest questions.
Do you worry about speaking out at this point?
No. You know, we just partnered with Oregon State University on a conversation with [journalist] Nikole Hannah-Jones last week in Corvallis. We talked about history and race, and it may be that some people think that’s a conversation that shouldn’t happen. But I don’t worry about our role in creating space for people to talk about the most serious and abiding and difficult questions about our country and about Oregon and about Portland.
Mostly what we do is ask questions. We’re not trying to persuade people, we’re not set on a certain belief or a certain policy. And it can’t be a bad thing to invite folks to share perspectives, especially about the big hard questions.
I know Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project is pretty controversial, at least with a lot of people on the right. What would those people have learned at the event in Corvallis?
There’s a great question that the 1619 Project raises — whether you agree or disagree with any part of the project — and that is, what are the most important years to pay attention to when understanding this country?
We’re one year from the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Oregon Humanities has been ramping up a whole set of activities to get people all around the state talking to each other about the meaning of the 250th anniversary. To me, that’s part of what Hannah-Jones is doing. She’s getting us thinking about how our country has been shaped and what we want our country to be,and she does that by hanging it on an argument related to an origin story. It’s great to disagree with that and I think she’s all for people disagreeing with it. And Oregon Humanities is all for people disagreeing with each other, but working together on what years to pay attention to, what goals to pay attention to, what our origin is, and what our future might be.
I think prohibition of telling certain stories is probably not the way to do it. Instead, it’s more listening to stories that we don’t initially recognize and trying to understand where those stories come from and what they point to.
One could say, at the root here is a disagreement about the role of government. So tell me, why should the government fund the things you’re talking about: museums, the facilitation of difficult conversations, stuff like that?
I want to give you two answers to what is a very good question. The first answer is,the entire budget for the whole National Endowment for the Humanities, only a tiny part of which goes to Oregon Humanities, is less than $1 a person in the United States per year. Actually, if you think about the money that goes to the state humanities councils, it’s less than 25 cents per person per year. Less than a pack of gum per person per year. So my first argument is, it’s not even a rounding error.
The more important argument is: If we live in a country that thinks of itself as a democracy, And if we recognize that division and polarization are real problems, we should be willing to spend some money — a very small amount of money — creating opportunities for people to work against those trends. For any democracy that wants to continue to function, we ought to be thinking about the conditions that it needs to flourish. And one of those fundamental conditions is that we talk to each other, and we talk especially with people we disagree with in a democracy more than in any other form of government. We have to compromise. Compromise depends on trust, both in each other and in our institutions. And trust doesn’t appear or stay alive by magic. It takes work over time, usually by organizations and people and communities coming together and hashing tough stuff out.
So those are my two first reasons for why it makes sense for the federal government to put a tiny amount of money towards a very consequential set of activities.
A supporter of these cuts might say, what about the private sector? Why don’t we have donors pay for this kind of stuff?
I would say, first of all, we do. And second, I would say private donors are not without their own interests. Again if you go back to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration, there’s going to be a lot of private money put into commercials at the Super Bowl trying to get us to buy things and that private all support comes with certain expectations. I think both private money and public money should go towards supporting something that is so clearly needed, which is efforts to combat polarization and conflict between groups.
The elephant in the room here is MAGA and Trump. This is a four-year presidential term. Is there any talk in your circles of waiting this out and seeing what happens in the next presidential election?
There’s certainly some state humanities councils that are talking about something like “hibernation,” which I think is waiting it out. And we’re not there yet. First of all, we are in really good communication with Congress. And we’re working on contesting this and even potentially bringing litigation against this decision. But we’re also fundraising from the private sector and we’re in conversations with other entities that might support our work, and that I think recognize the value of the work. So our hope is that down the road, Congress — which is, I think, supportive of us — will start doing more of its job in budgeting, which I think is its main job. It’s odd to me that it has ceded that job to a different branch. But in the meantime, we’re going to keep finding ways to do the work.
Is there anything giving you hope?
Lots of things. One is the work itself. Oregon is full of people having really great conversations and doing work across differences. I mean, we see it sometimes around watersheds. We see it even in attempts to reform local government and address homelessness and housing. But sort of yelling at people and pointing at people we disagree with doesn’t get us closer to a solution. What gets us closer is working together, and I see lots and lots of examples of this. I see it all over the state. I also see it on the staff of Oregon Humanities, how people are so deeply committed not to their own ideas, but to creating space for people to hear each other’s ideas.
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