Saturday, August 19, 2017
Why the White House’s Arts and Humanities Committee Decided to Resign All at Once Under Trump
Vanity Fair: On Friday morning, the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities made the startling decision to resign from Donald Trump’s committee all at once. In a joint statement, all of its members—including author Jhumpa Lahiri, artist Chuck Close, actor Kal Penn, and more—explained in very specific terms why they no longer felt comfortable serving the president in the wake of his inflammatory remarks about the Charlottesville tragedy.
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This article and interview highlights the extreme tension between Trump and the Trump administration and the arts. Trump has cut the budget for any semblance of art and humanities programs that the nation formally had, seemingly only because the arts are widely known to be accepting. And because most social conservatives (who have been Trump's greatest fans since the beginning) do not like any program or group that promotes the idea of individual identity and acceptance, Trump has turned against those groups and programs as well. As Kal Penn point out at the end of the interview, "We have no idea what's important to him and what's not, so who knows". And this is true; while we do see that Trump is extremely racist, homophobic, islamaphobic, xenophobic, transphobic, sexist, etc., we do not see anything that hasn't been laid out for him by his fans and voters. He is truly following in his citizens' lead. So when we look at who is defunding the arts and totally going against this country's ideals, we need to also look at the people who do not live in the White House.
At first I was extremely critical of their decision because I worried that if trustworthy people left the administration who would replace them? However, I now understand where they are coming from and why they resigned. Ultimately, I agree with their decision as the committee members could ultimately resist better from the outside. I don't believe that everything will disappear overnight, but I don't think that I can assume that everything will be exactly the same. As artists it is up to us to prove that theater and other arts are worth the money. Honestly, the article scared me because as a BFA student I don't know what the job market for theater will be in five years. This caused me to wonder, if NEA really does disappear what will take its place? How will that change the arts industry as a whole?
Having come from a Humanities Magnet at my high school and seeing what the humanities is about with their own conjunction on art is incredible and an experience that will stay with me forever. The program I was in actually went against education policy and taught what they wanted and felt worked better and it was. There are no funds for the arts, yet I learned about art far more than any other high school kid in my area. They taught very controversial topics but in a way where students would begin to understand - A unit on race in america and a unit on gender in america. They taught me important things and gave me insight into others that I could not gain other ways and to which helped me become just that much more aware. So the fact that an arts and humanities committee left under this presidency really says something about our current situation in our country. It sounds like our president is moving us in the direction of one of those sci-FY movies where everything is dark and its post apocalyptic in a sense. But more so the aftermath of what already happened - like that is our end goal almost. However, that note on the letter stating RESIST is already happening; we have seen it in the mayor of New York's speech when he chose to not go back to racial profiling, we see it in individuals who speak out, and we see it on our very campus with Peter Cooke's speeches. I still have hope, others should too, but its going to be tough i'm sure at some point and especially so being an arts student.
This article does a brilliant job of articulating the tension between the arts community and the Trump administration. The arts community has always been a bastion of diversity and progressivism - antithetical to the nature of this regressive administration. As such the simultaneous resignation of the entire committee demonstrates that the community stands in unity and in solidarity against the oppression of this administration. Doing so after the events of Charlottesville sends a clear message that violence and hatred towards the “Diverse America” will not be tolerated, and that these individuals wanted no place in an administration that equivocated the KKK with people protesting the KKK.
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