Jim Leach seems pretty good. Former collegiate wrestler and an interesting speaker with a good grasp of perspective. But isn't it highly likely that the funding decision is more or less in line with or highly influenced by supreme court cases dealing with free speech and the "content based distinction"? After all the NEH is a state actor, and Jim Leach isn't going to actually be actively regulating with discretion what state level agencies support. In addition isn't this a sort of peer review area?

In addition if the process is peer review, and the discretion happens on a lower level, isn't this almost no longer state action? Is it cultural rot for Tucker Carlson to bid $2500 for such a meal? (even if it is, it isn't state action)

Some state appropriations, a good chunk of private support and about 50% from the federal government. Then you have private non-profit groups receiving funds. I mean the humanities level funding is less than 1% of the funding the hard sciences receive from the federal government.

The NEH budget has been reduced around 7% YOY...

But notice that the words "Ayers-Dohrns" are not independently yet on the level of "Hitler"...that is to say that Ayers-Dohrns is rather blah or not infused with "cultural" significance necessary to qualify as "cultural rot" in the first place. If it were not for a tie-in to Obama, or a plausible ability to find "state action" or as it were the concept of intertwinement itself Tucker Carlson would never have bid $2500 for a meal with "Ayers-Dohrns".

So that is the question... without the NEH (or more importantly in this context Obama) in what sense is "history" not a tree that fell in a woods without observers?