Humanities Controlled by Fringe

Cheney, Lynne, St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)

In defense of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, a parade of notables has offered up stirring words and lofty sentiments. Before one congressional committee, author David McCullough talked about transcendent values and quoted John F. Kennedy. Before another, Charlton Heston called art "the bread of the soul" and gave a dramatic reading from Shakespeare.

I thought the same way when I became chairwoman of the NEH. In my confirmation hearings, I talked about excellence and quoted Matthew Arnold, the 19th-century British poet and essayist, about whom I had written my doctoral dissertation. Arnold saw humanistic study as "a …

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Publication information: Article title: Humanities Controlled by Fringe. Contributors: Cheney, Lynne - Author. Newspaper title: St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO). Publication date: March 17, 1995. Page number: 7B. © 2008 St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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