ASOR AND THE U.S. GOVERNMENT OMNIBUS APPROPRIATIONS ACT
By Susan Ackerman, ASOR President
On December 18, 2015, the United States Congress passed, and President Obama signed, the Omnibus Appropriations Act, which funds the United States government through September 30, 2016. For ASOR members, both from the United States and elsewhere, the bill contained some very good news.
First, as reported to us by Stephen Kidd, the Executive Director of the National Humanities Alliance (of which ASOR is a proud member!), the Omnibus Appropriations Act boosts funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities “for the first time in six years.” More specifically, “NEH’s funding comes in at $147.9 million, the level the President requested,” “a nearly $2 million bump from its current funding level and from the House and Senate’s draft Interior Appropriations bills earlier this year.”
The Omnibus Appropriations Act “also provides level funding for the severely threatened Title VI program”: this means an allocation of $65.1 million. Title VI funding offers significant support to the various American Overseas Research Centers, including ASOR’s affiliated centers — the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research (AIAR) in Jerusalem, the American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR) in Amman, and the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute (CAARI) in Nicosia. ASOR members may remember that in late September, ASOR passed on an urgent plea from our friends at CAORC — the Council of American Overseas Research Centers — urging the American citizens among us to protest the Senate version of the appropriations act, which would have reduced Title VI funding to $43,445 million. Evidently, these ASOR members (and others) were successful, and all of us — not just Americans — who benefit from the facilities and services of AIAR, ACOR, and CAARI can feel extremely grateful.
Finally, as reported here, the “House report language cutting Geosciences and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences funding at the National Science Foundation is replaced with language maintaining Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences at the FY 2015 level.” Since Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences is the NSF directorate that provides funding for archaeological endeavors, this is very good news indeed for ASOR’s American members — especially since as reported here, the House proposal had cut funding for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences by approximately 16%. Yet while level funding for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences is surely better than a steep cut, Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences did not benefit from the 1.6% increase to the overall NSF budget. So there is more work to do!
Overall, however, ASOR’s U.S. members — and all ASOR members who are in affiliations with U.S. institutions and who benefit from ASOR’s Overseas Research Centers — came out of the appropriations process in good shape.
