I believe we are in agreement that the humanities illuminate the values underlying important personal, social, and national questions raised in our society by its multiple links to and increasing dependence on technology, and by the diverse heritage of our many regions and ethnic groups.  The humanities cast light on the broad issue of the role in a society of men and women of imagination and energy—­those individuals who through their own example define “the spirit of the age,” and in so doing move nations.  Our Government’s support for the humanities, within the framework laid down by the Congress, is a recognition of their essential nourishment of the life of the mind and vital enrichment of our national life.

I will be proposing an increase in funding this year sufficient to enable the Endowment to maintain the same level of support offered our citizens in Fiscal Year 1981.

In the allocation of this funding, special emphasis will be given to: 

—­Humanities education in the nation’s schools, in response to the great needs that have arisen in this area;

—­Scholarly research designed to increase our understanding of the cultures, traditions, and historical forces at work in other nations and in our own;

—­Drawing attention to the physical disintegration of the raw material of our cultural heritage—­books, manuscripts, periodicals, and other documents—­and to the development of techniques to prevent the destruction and to preserve those materials; and

—­The dissemination of quality programming in the humanities to increasingly large American audiences through the use of radio and television.

The dominant effort in the Endowment’s expenditures will be a commitment to strengthen and promulgate scholarly excellence and achievement in work in the humanities in our schools, colleges, universities, libraries, museums and other cultural institutions, as well as in the work of individual scholars or collaborative groups engaged in advanced research in the humanities.

In making its grants the Endowment will increase its emphasis on techniques which stimulate support for the humanities from non-Federal sources, in order to reinforce our tradition of private philanthropy in this field, and to insure and expand the financial viability of our cultural institutions and life.

INSULAR AREAS

I have been firmly committed to self-determination for Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands, and have vigorously supported the realization of whatever political status aspirations are democratically chosen by their peoples.  This principle was the keystone of the comprehensive territorial policy I sent the Congress last year.  I am pleased that most of the legislative elements of that policy were endorsed by the 96th Congress.