Literary Justice: A Reprisal

In July, we covered the necessity of writing as a tool for change - an effective and powerful means of uplifting voices otherwise left to the margins. Now, with the advent of recent developments, it’s become clear that access to both writing and the humanities at large is simultaneously more important and more vulnerable than ever before. 

Throughout the course of the summer, the new administration’s Department of Government Efficiency made a trio of institutions the target of several far-less-known budget slashes. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, DOGE cut funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Services - or IMLS, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). For around 150 years in total, all three have served completely unique roles among other federal grantmaking agencies, providing direct support for local centers of humanities and the arts, among them museums, libraries, and nonprofit educational programs. 

The cuts have already had drastic effects. More than 1,400 grant awards that had gone to creatives such as countless writers, were terminated earlier in the year, as well as, more importantly, 80% of staff temporarily undergoing frozen wages. The executive now is attempting to dismantle the organizations entirely, with no true opposition by the Supreme Court taking place to stop it. 

It’s a very clear message that the statuses of both writing and other related fields are being denigrated as “not useful,” a development that has in truth gone on for a long time. With rapid development in STEM-based fields, especially the advancement of generative AI, many, including the federal government, have decided that roles such as writers fundamentally lack comparative societal value. The growth of such a mentality, along with actual abandonment of humanities institutions, are undeniably pressing issues for the future of all those invested in the craft. 

Writing, is of course, no such thing. The capacity to write is by itself a truly integral part of human expression and understanding, and will always continue to be. But beyond just philosophical value, creative writing serves practical purposes - as a tool for learning, a strengthening mechanism in the building of communities and values, and as mentioned, for providing the capacity to enact change. Such a threat towards writing is not just dangerous to writers but in turn towards systems that it provides for, a far more universal problem. 

As writers ourselves, there is increasingly limited capacity to act. But awareness alone cannot bring about better outcomes, however, and there remains much that can be done. 

Perhaps the first step we can take is simply applying writing’s capabilities where it can. Write to Right is committed to serving one facet of such a mission - the providing of access to creative writing to students at a young age. Although it may not be a measure of sweeping change, it is, nonetheless, a deeply important one, as accessibility, pure recognition of the humanities’ importance, is certainly one step taken to valuation. 

While little control may be had over issues of a societal scale, we should not fall into futility and pessimism. Instead, as writers, we should instead do all we can - write, and by that means, help all those in need with it.