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‘Too many federal entities have become vehicles for ideological grantmaking,’ fiscal watchdog says

While the Trump administration continues to make cuts to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, there is no word yet on the status of a grant awarded to a Northeastern University professor for her book about the “Whiteness” of the violin.

The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the $60,000 grant to Northeastern music Professor Francesca Inglese in early January, just prior to President Donald Trump taking office.

Since then, the Trump administration has been canceling grants through the agency and others that are related to the DEI ideology.

The College Fix could not determine whether Inglese’s grant is one of those being cut, but one fiscal watchdog organization says such cuts are needed.

“Too many federal entities have become vehicles for ideological grantmaking that’s far afield from government’s core responsibilities,” John Hart, CEO of Open The Books, told The Fix in a recent interview.

Inglese is an ethnomusicologist, popular music scholar, and musician. An assistant professor, her bio describes her book project “Dark Angels: Black Violinists and the Race of Musical Instruments” as “refram[ing] the violin by attending to its integral place in the development of Black American popular music genres…”

The book will describe “genre-bending Black violinists whose radical innovations have been critical, but long ignored” and make the case that “musical instruments become richly layered with social signification, continually transformed in the hands of musicians.”

According to the NEH grant description, Inglese’s writings will focus around the themes of African American musicians, race, and American music.

“Despite the long history of the violin in Black American music and the many African American violinists and fiddlers who shaped the instrument, the violin has overwhelmingly been constructed in the popular consciousness as an instrument tied to Whiteness,” the grant description states.

In the book, Inglese (pictured) plans to focus on “the violin as a lens through which to reimagine the history of American music” and “critically” reframe the instrument based on “its integral place in the development of Black music genres.”

She believes “a musical instrument can serve as a powerful conduit of racial epistemology, transformed in the hands of Black musicians,” the description states.

The Fix reached out to Professor Inglese multiple times via email, asking about the status of the grant and her book, but received no reply.

A number of NEH grants are on the chopping block as the Trump administration continues cutting taxpayer-funded DEI programs.

In early April, “state humanities councils and other grant recipients began receiving emails telling them their funding was ended immediately,” the New York Times reported.

One letter from the NEH to historian Natalia Mehlman Petrzela states her “grant’s immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities.” The $60,000 grant funded Petrzela’s book on “the history of conflicts over public education,” including a section on “race.”

The National Endowment for Humanities did not respond to several emails from The Fix over the past two weeks, asking for a list of the grants being cut and if Inglese’s is among them.

Open the Books, a fiscal watchdog non-profit that reports on government spending, believes that citizens should understand how the government uses their money because it influences “how they vote and how they view their government.”

“This award is a case in point: even music, a universal art form, is injected with some element of identity politics using our tax dollars,” Hart told The Fix.

“While there may well be an audience [for] a book on Black violinists, it’s up to the author and publisher to find it, not the public. These are the kinds of grants Open the Books is built to identify and bring to the taxpayer’s attention,” he said.

A recent College Fix analysis found the NEH awarded nearly $2.4 million in DEI-related grants to higher education institutions in early January. Along with Inglese’s grant, others included a book about LGBTQ+ cartoonists and a study on “feminist mapping,”

MORE: Amherst College course will explore ‘history of race, gender’ through comic books

IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A musician plays the violin. Alenavlad/Shutterstock, Northeastern University

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