The Brief

California colleges and universities are still missing over $5 million worth of humanities grants, despite one federal district court order to return funds to University of California campuses. For at least 19 other campuses, the money remains out of reach as lawsuits continue to challenge the Trump administration's abrupt halt of promised funding in April, when the National Endowment for the Humanities canceled over $10.2 million to already-awarded projects in California.

Now campuses must scramble for limited, alternative funding if they want to keep their projects alive.

For students like Kathleen Boswell, a teaching credential student at Cal State San Bernardino, the loss affects their professional advancement. Boswell and fellow teaching credential students were ready to participate in the first cohort of the “Inland Empire Project,” originally to launch this fall. This project would have provided training and curriculum for current and prospective K-12 teachers to use local history to talk about national topics, such as world wars. Boswell especially looked forward to testing new approaches to connect students with American history.

“Kids get really excited when history is in their grasp,” she said. “If they can connect to local history, they can connect to the broader scope of history. It's a domino effect.”

Student Kathleen Boswell stands in front of the John M. Pfau Library at Cal State San Bernardino on Sept. 8, 2025.

(

Elisa Ferrari

/

CalMatters

)

President Trump announced plans to gut the National Endowment for the Humanities in his most-recent budget, starting with cutting two-thirds of the agency’s staff. The agency is the largest public funder of the humanities nationwide, created alongside the National Endowment for the Arts after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act into law in 1965. The law asserts that the arts are vital to democracy. Ever since, NEH awards represent a coveted prize in the humanities field.

Earlier this year, the agency announced major ideological shifts for the types of projects it would support to comply with the president’s executive orders. Those orders aim to eliminate federal funding for programs that promote such ideals as diversity, gender equity, and environmental justice.

During the first three days of April, letters went out to most NEH grant recipients stating that their funding was terminated. A letter sent on April 2 to Cal State San Bernardino states that, “NEH has reasonable cause to terminate your grant in light of the fact that the NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President’s agenda.” The termination was effective immediately.

CalMatters reached out to all 29 California campuses that had ongoing NEH-funded projects at that time, as listed on the federal grant tracker USA Spending. CalMatters found that every California campus but one had their funding cut by confirming with public information officers at each college and checking the American Historical Association’s database of terminated NEH grants.

The only campus spared, the California Institute of Technology, confirmed its funding for the Einstein Papers Project remained intact. The collection houses more than 90,000 of Albert Einstein’s written records.

Terminated projects covered a wide variety of topics, from digitizing the history of Catherine the Great at the University of Southern California to the creation of a minor in human rights and border studies at San Diego State University. Some colleges were in the midst of their project spending when they received the news, while others were slated to start in the upcoming months. Canceled grants ranged from about $23,000 to over $500,000. USC’s canceled projects totaled over $1.2 million.

UC researchers then sued federal agencies. In that case, Thakur v. Trump, a federal district court issued a preliminary injunction in June ordering the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Endowment for the Humanities to reinstate grants to the UCs that were not given a grant-specific explanation as to why they were chosen for termination. That case is still ongoing.

Two other lawsuits over the grant cancellations have been filed by humanities groups on behalf of thousands of individual and institutional members. One lawsuit is led by The Author’s Guild and the other by the American Council of Learned Societies. Although the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York consolidated the two cases, the federal judge in both cases granted a preliminary injunction against the NEH in July only for The Author’s Guild case. However, the judge did not order the grants be returned, but instead be held until the case is tried.

As for the other lawsuit led by the American Council of Learned Societies, along with the American Historical Association and Modern Language Association of America, the same judge denied a preliminary injunction, stating they lack standing to sue the NEH for making such institutional cuts as firing employees and discontinuing programs. A hearing in the case is scheduled for today.

Over 40 universities and research institutions in California are members of the American Historical Association, including Cal State Bakersfield, which had to cancel its “California Dreamin’” project.

Jennifer Self, the university spokesperson, told CalMatters in an email that “at this point, the money is on pause and has not been reinstated and everyone is waiting for how this will play out.” Cal State Bakersfield had been awarded $183,000 for a partnership with Bakersfield College to bring high school teachers from around the country to visit historic sites and learn about the history of immigration and agriculture in the Central Valley. Teachers had already been sent their acceptance letters for the workshop when the funding was cut and the project had to be canceled.

Humanities projects take a huge hit

When Michelle Lorimer, the historian and professor at Cal State San Bernardino leading the Inland Empire Project, received the termination notice, she was devastated. For Lorimer, this award represented several months of research, gathering educators and establishing specific programming and curriculum goals. She says the experience has changed the way she looks at federally funded grants.

“I'm not going to apply for federal funding right now for the work that we're doing. That would be a waste of time,” Lorimer stated. “ It's really time-consuming writing these applications, so honestly it would need to be something that I'd feel confident that we'd have a shot at — not something I'm trying to pigeonhole our work into.”

The NEH initially approved the Inland Empire Project for nearly $150,000 to roll out over a period of three years. The project was to create a framework of teaching that uses local history as a method to demonstrate broader U.S. historical topics, such as segregation, redlining and environmental injustice. Teachers in local schools, as well as aspiring history teachers from Cal State San Bernardino, would have received this curriculum and tools to use in classrooms.

Lecturer Michelle Lorimer stands in front of the John M. Pfau Library at Cal State San Bernardino on Sept. 8, 2025.

(

Elisa Ferrari

/

CalMatters

)

Lorimer has looked for alternative funding, but grants of this size are rare and she anticipates that private grants will only get more competitive. Certain private grants are by invite only. Lorimer said that although her college is a member of the American Historical Association, she is not getting her hopes up that the funds might be returned.

Michael Kerp, an assistant professor at Cal State San Bernardino, had planned to create curriculum about the Salton Sea, focusing on environmental and civil rights. He said that the cuts don’t just hurt the university, but the surrounding community.

“There are thousands of high school students who would have benefited from learning about their communities, understanding how to make change in their communities and working closely with their teachers and local leaders in the region,” Kerp said. “Underserved school districts had this opportunity, and now it's gone.”

Kerp plans on helping Lorimer downsize the project, and has been able to secure some smaller philanthropic funding through the university. He agrees that applying for future federal funding under the current administration is likely a waste of time.

Other projects halted include $171,000 for an institute at San Jose State open to K-12 teachers, librarians, and administrators highlighting the immigrant experience through history and literature. Another project was awarded to Saint Mary’s for over $50,000 for an architectural and engineering assessment of the Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art building with the goal of someday making it the first carbon-neutral building on campus while preserving their collections. Cal State Dominguez Hills was to receive $141,000 to conduct an ethnographic study of Chat GPT’s influence in California and Hawaiian classrooms.

Three California private universities receive new NEH grants

Despite Trump's calls to dismantle the NEH, the organization announced on Sept. 15 it is awarding $10.4 million, the largest single grant it has ever awarded, to the New York-based Jewish organization Tikvah to “examine Jewish history, culture and identity in the broader context of Western history,” according to a NEH press release. In August, the NEH also announced that it merged seven grantmaking offices into four divisions and appointed new heads to those divisions.

Since May, the agency has also allocated over $44 million in grants to universities and organizations for research and preservation projects, including for an initiative called “A More Perfect Union,” which celebrates the upcoming 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. Three California private universities have received these new grants.

Two awards were given to the University of Southern California — $60,000 for the development of a book on the history of Jerusalem from 1099–1187 and over $249,000 to process and digitize historical archives relating to Southern California’s first African American Baptist church. The university had four NEH projects spanning over $1 million cut in the spring for programs including a history project that would have created an augmented reality of a long-lost Chinatown area of Los Angeles. Another project would have funded 18 academic conversations between humanities experts and the public regarding the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and reframing the conversation in a way that is inclusive of underrepresented groups like Native Americans.

A single award was given to National University, a private nonprofit university located in San Diego, in the amount of $100,000 for a project titled, “Legacies of War: Memorials and Memories of the American Civil War & the Vietnam War.” Pepperdine University, a private Christian university located in Malibu, also received $30,000 for a project focused on the role of Christianity and the bible in the “American founding.”

Given the new executive orders limiting the scope of what is now acceptable for a federally funded grant, the NEH website gives the following advice to prospective applicants: “We encourage you to read the relevant Executive Orders and consider whether your project’s topic — jointly with its goals, methodology, activities, and intended audience — seems allowable.”

Lylah Schmedel-Permanna is a contributor with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

On Friday, Southern California Edison filed lawsuits against Los Angeles County and several other agencies over their alleged roles in the Eaton Fire.

Two lawsuits were filed.

In one suit, the utility company alleges Southern California Gas delayed shutting off gas in the burn area for several days after the fire, making the blaze worse.

“SoCalGas’ design and actions caused gas leaks, gas fires, reignition of fires, gas explosions and secondary ignitions during the critical early stages of the Eaton Fire,” according to the suit.

The claim goes on to say this contributed to the spread of the fire and made firefighting and evacuation efforts more difficult.

In the second suit, the utility company alleges the Eaton Fire was made worse by the local government response, “including due to the failures of LASD, LACoFD, OEM and GENASYS in issuing timely evacuation alerts and notifications,” the claim reads.

The same filing says L.A. County was to blame for vegetation and overgrown brush in the Eaton Canyon area that fueled the blaze.

It also named the city of Pasadena and its utility system, Pasadena Water and Power, the city of Sierra Madre, Kinneloa Irrigation District, Rubio Cañon Land & Water Association, Las Flores Water Company and Lincoln Avenue Water Company as parties responsible for water systems running dry in Altadena as the fire broke out.

Edison says hydrants running dry compounded the extent of the disaster.

Those claims will be heard in the L.A. County Superior Court, which is also handling L.A. County’s lawsuit against SoCal Edison.

Edison itself is the subject of hundreds of lawsuits from survivors of the Eaton Fire, which could cost the company billions of dollars in settlements.

Edison has said its equipment likely sparked the Eaton Fire and filed these suits, in part, because it believes these various entities should share some of the blame for the disaster, which resulted in the destruction of thousands of buildings and the deaths of 19 people.

A compensation program Edison established for fire survivors who forgo suing the company has made settlement offers to more than 80 of those who applied.

A new organization is taking over production of the MLK Day Parade, almost 40 years after the first parade was held in South L.A. to commemorate the civil rights leader.

Bakewell Media, publisher of the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper (a partner of The LA Local), was granted the permit in September to organize the parade for the first time by the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners. Formerly called the Kingdom Day Parade, the parade has been rebranded as the Los Angeles Official Martin Luther King Day Parade. The parade was previously produced and organized by Adrian Dove and the L.A. chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality California (CORE-CA).

With less than a week before the parade kicks off, LA Local reporter LaMonica Peters sat down with Danny Bakewell Jr., president and executive editor of the LA Sentinel, to discuss the details and what attendees should expect.

This Jan. 12 interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Why did you decide to produce the MLK Day Parade this year?

Bakewell: It all started because Adrian Dove, who was the previous promoter, had announced that he was retiring. When he announced he was retiring, LAPD, city council offices and other people said, “Hey, we still want to do the MLK Day parade. Would you guys be interested? You have the infrastructure to put it together.” And we said yes.

What’s different about this year’s production?

We’re going to start the parade with a singer performing “Lift Every Voice.” We’re going to play the message from Bernice King at the start of the show. Obviously, we have Cedric the Entertainer as our grand marshal to add the entertainment value, but the community has always been and will continue to be a major part of this parade.

Is ABC 7 covering the parade this year? 

It’s still going to be televised by ABC. We’re working diligently on how the show is going to be, but ABC has been a great partner.

What was the preparation for this parade?

Thanks to our corporate sponsors, we have a number of bands. The truth is, particularly in LAUSD at this time, and other school districts, they don’t have the funding to just get a bus and get here. I can’t say enough about Airbnb to Bank of America, all of our corporate sponsors, who are supporting all of the youth organizations.

Were there any unexpected challenges while preparing for this parade? 

This [The LA Sentinel office on Crenshaw Blvd.] is usually our command center during The Taste of Soul. It dawned on me last week that we’re going to be a mile away [from the parade route]. So, we made the decision to bring in a trailer to be our office at the corner of King and Crenshaw boulevards.

Any special guests this year besides the grand marshal?

I’m working on a surprise guest to be the singer for the national anthem. No matter what, we will give tribute to the Black national anthem “Lift Every Voice” as loud as we can next Monday.

What’s the long-term vision for this parade, if Bakewell Media continues to produce it?

We see the MLK Day Parade, and we want the world to see and expect to see this parade, the same way they see the Macy’s Parade, the Hollywood Parade or the Rose Parade. BET has come in this year as a partner. So there’s an opportunity to possibly do a national broadcast on BET. Not that we would lose our local television, but we see this as a major parade in this community and in the national African American community, celebrating the great work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. So, we are very excited.

Bits of conversation drift out of Aladdin Used Books as people lined up at the register with stacks of books.

The bustle of activity is bittersweet as the Koreatown bookstore will close its doors at the end of January after 13 years in the neighborhood.

Jina Lee, store manager, said declining sales at the Koreatown branch led to the decision to close the store. In recent years, staffing at the 5,000-square-foot store on the third floor of Madang Mall dropped from six to two, Lee said.

“This was a happy place for everyone,” she said, “but we were struggling.”

On a recent January afternoon, the shop looked lively as customers took advantage of the clearance sale on Korean and English books, CDs, DVDs and other media.

Koreatown resident Jin Lee wishes he visited the bookstore more often.

“It would have been great if it had been this crowded all the time,” Lee said. “But nowadays, people don’t read paper books and prefer devices, so it’s hard for all bookstores.”

Some customers traveled from as far as Orange County and the Inland Empire to visit one last time.

Minjung Kim, who moved from Koreatown to Fullerton five years ago, still made trips to the bookstore after she moved away.

“It’s the only place that sells this many new and used Korean books,” she said.

Each visit to the bookstore was important to David Artiga of Pomona, because it gave him a chance to connect with friends over literature.

“I feel like this is really negative for the community,” he said. “The importance of having a well-versed society, keeping in touch with literature and art is so important. And now this place is just going to be gone.”

South Korea-based Aladdin Used Books opened its first U.S. brick-and-mortar store in Los Angeles in 2013. The store carries around 50,000 new and used books, with a majority in Korean.

Customers will still be able to order books through Aladdin’s website after the store closes.

Ken Derick, a Koreatown resident, walked around the store aisles with a stack of books.

“It’s like we’re kind of moving towards a new technology, like everything’s virtual and online,” he said.

Longtime customer Anthony Kim said he’s enjoyed looking for gems in the English-language shelves.

“My Korean ability is rather limited but I’ve always enjoyed browsing their English language sections,” he said. “And now that I have a niece and nephew, their children’s book section has always been a great place to pick up new books for them.”

Valerie Laguna perused the shop’s CD section, a bygone experience in the era of streaming.

“I really like their CD collection and their literature collection they have in English,” she said.

“I was so sad about it, I immediately texted my friend,” she said. “I’ve gotten so many of my favorite books and my favorite CDs from this place. I feel like losing a place like this is just so sad and makes a huge dent in the community and culture.”

Less than a mile away on Western Avenue, Happy Bookstore owner Jung Jae-seung said it has been difficult for bookstores for some time now. His Korean-language bookstore is also struggling in an era when so many people have abandoned print media.

“It’s really about how long printed books can survive,” Jung said. “From that point of view, it’s hard to be optimistic.”

South L.A. or South Central? More than 20 years ago, that question came with high emotions for some residents who were sick of the stereotypes they saw in media coverage of their neighborhoods.

So in 2003, the Los Angeles City Council renamed the collection of communities south of the 10 freeway in an attempt to cut ties with the connotations of poverty and crime that some believe came to represent South Central after the turbulence of the 1980s and ‘90s. Today, you see South L.A. on official documents, maps and even historical and cultural districts.

Even though city officials moved to wipe away the old name, some locals never stopped calling the area South Central — a name that for them represents history, resilience and Black and Latino culture.

“I think it will always be South Central for its residents and for the people that were born and raised here,” said Evelyn Alfaro-Macias, a social worker who was raised in Historic South Central and whose office is on Hoover Street. “It means home. It means culture. People should respect the name South Central.”

What and where is South LA, anyway?

By the early 2000s, television news and pop culture had given South Central a reputation for violence and chaos that some were eager to shake.

Helen Johnson, a resident of Vermont Square, helped lead the campaign to change the name.

“I think the media can make you or either break you,” 72-year-old Johnson told reporters in 2003 after the city council approved the name change, according to the L.A. Times. “This is what you’ve done to us. You’ve broke us.”

Supporters of the change included then-Councilmember Janice Hahn, who is now a county supervisor and said at the time that the South Central name had become “mostly derogatory.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who was working then as executive director of the nonprofit Community Coalition, said the area’s image problem wasn’t just about its name.

“If the media paid a little more attention to covering positive things in the community, that will also help,” Bass said, according to an L.A. Times report.

The LA Local has reached out Bass and Hahn’s offices, as well as L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson.

The exact borders of South Los Angeles, or the area formerly known as South Central, are fuzzy.

The South Central name originally only applied to the neighborhood around Central Avenue south of downtown Los Angeles, but it spread west as populations grew.

City planning documents today designate a strip of neighborhoods between Interstate 110 and Arlington Avenue as South Los Angeles and tag the Central Avenue neighborhood as Historic South Central. Others, including academics and the city tourism board, use a map of South Los Angeles that stretches to the border of Culver City.

This is what the community told us

Some businesses in the area adopted the South L.A. name, notably South LA Cafe, the coffee shop that has grown to five locations and become a local institution.

More recently, some groups have made a concerted effort to embrace South Central, like the South Central Run Club or South Central Clips, an Instagram-based group that sells skatewear-inspired “South Central” apparel. (Even South LA Cafe today sells some merch with the South Central name.)

Several locals told The LA Local the official designation never changed anything for them.

“It’s South Central for me. That’s where my roots are,” April Brown said. “When you go anywhere across the country, across the world and you say South Central, they know exactly what you’re talking about.”

To Emily Amador, the name change erases the history of South Central, including “the Black migration that occurred, redlining that created what we know today to be South Central and the demographics, which are here today, which is Black and brown and undocumented.”

Ulysses Alfaro, who was born and raised in the Historic South Central neighborhood, said he uses South L.A. with people from out of town but South Central with locals.

South L.A. is a geographic designator, he said, but he considers South Central to be an identity: “That’s where the grinders are, the hard-working people that work their butts off, their asses off. The ones that keep the city running.”