National Humanities Center

The National Humanities Center (NHC) is an independent institute for advanced study in the humanities. It is located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, United States. The NHC is a privately incorporated nonprofit and is not part of any university or federal agency.

The Center was planned under the auspices of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which saw a need for substantial support for academic research in the humanities. It began operations in 1978. The National Humanities Center is one of the ten members of the Some Institutes for Advanced Study consortium–which are modeled after the Princeton, New Jersey, Institute for Advanced Study.

Programs

The National Humanities Center offers special programs to help people study and learn about important ideas. Each year, it invites about forty scholars from all over the world to work on their own research projects. These scholars come from many different fields, such as history, literature, and environmental studies. They meet to share their ideas and get help from libraries at nearby universities.

The Center also helps teachers improve their lessons. It creates online materials and activities that teachers can use in their classrooms. These materials help teachers explain topics like Vietnam and how to use digital mapping in lessons. The Center holds public events with famous authors and thinkers to talk about important issues, such as rock and roll and addressing climate change. These events aim to show how studying the humanities can help everyone understand the world better.

Leadership

Since 1978, the National Humanities Center has had eight directors: Charles Frankel, William Bennett, Charles Blitzer, W. Robert Connor, Geoffrey G. Harpham, Robert D. Newman, J. Porter Durham, and Blair LM Kelley.

The center is guided by a board of trustees with members from schools, businesses, and public service. Many important scholars have been part of this board over the years, including the center’s founders Meyer Abrams, Morton W. Bloomfield, Frederick Burkhardt, Robert F. Goheen, Steven Marcus, Henry Nash Smith, Gregory Vlastos, John Voss, and founding director Charles Frankel. Other notable members have been historian John Hope Franklin, educator William C. Friday, and philanthropists Archie K. Davis and Stephen H. Weiss.