One July evening in 2022, amidst dwindling mask mandates and growing sense of new prospects, one of those “now or never” feelings arose, and Keeley and I began *The Pierian*. We knew the market for lit mags was crowded, but we had a unique vision—not a classically-themed literary magazine, but a literary magazine that reconnects to the classics. We were grateful to be founding a journal in Vermont. With a concentration of creative and liberal arts colleges in the immediate area, we felt well-resourced: Goddard College; Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA); the University of Vermont (UVM); and Saint Michael’s College. Those of literary ambition and their fellow-travellers were thick on the ground. Since that time, Goddard collapsed and shuttered; VCFA announced a joint-partnership with CalArts and sold off a chunk of its campus; UVM closed its Classics, Religion and Geology departments; and St. Mike’s slashed its language and humanities programs. And it’s not just here in Vermont. Across the US, the many long and storied departments that once served as the cornerstone of a rigorous education—antiquities, languages, history, philosophy, theology—are gone or going fast. Now we enter the second Trump presidency and the attacks go far beyond curricula to take aim at the independence of American intellectual life. Colleges and universities can no longer count on the federal government to make good on awarded grant dollars, let alone future monies for scholarships, research, and other programs. Scientists, long accustomed to being celebrated for their world-leading research, now face a new reality, their fields pitted against one another in a kind of funding Hunger Games. #@callout The humanities, not the sciences, are where the bounds of academic inquiry are most frequently contested Trump and his thugs are also targeting the most vulnerable—non-citizen scholars. For now, they are picking off supposed Hamas sympathizers. But the result is an undermining of any remaining trust in academic freedom and the institutions that once safeguarded it. The humanities, not the sciences, are where the bounds of academic inquiry are most frequently contested, because the humanities involve proposals about the human condition, be they geographical, historical, philosophical, religious, cultural, or aesthetic. One would assume America, so long a loud champion of universal liberties, cannot be so readily tilted toward fascism. But our aspiring dictator and his enablers have set about denigrating everything that’s run for the common good, from public schools to libraries to the performing arts right on down to the open inquiry into our own history. As our cultural and educational leaders are stained by repeated accusations of corruption and bias, it becomes easier to replace them with those who already are both corrupted and biased. Simultaneously, the Trumpian right seeks to humiliate faculty and terrorize the US student body. It’s too early to say how this plays out, but the New College of Florida was a [canary in the coalmine](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/us/new-college-florida-desantis.html). Then came the Kennedy Center. Now it’s The Smithsonian and Columbia University. But this strategy only works when we are divided and cowed. That summer day nearly three years ago, *The Pierian* took up the mantle of connecting contemporary literary practice with its roots. We founded the journal because poetry depends on classics as flowers depend on bees. Now, in this moment, scholars, scientists, poets, and artists all depend on one another. Now is the time for solidarity. #@callout we would ask you to raise your voice As a member of this ecosystem of readers and writers, we would ask you to raise your voice against the recent cuts to two major institutes funding humanities education, expression and preservation in the United States: the [National Endowment for the Humanities](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/05/trump-administration-cancels-humanities-grants/82865816007/) and the [Institute of Museum and Library Services](https://www.wired.com/story/institute-museum-library-services-layoffs/), each of which has been senselessly attacked by DOGE. These organizations expend a minuscule proportion of the federal budget in order to provide Americans with access to information and culture which they would otherwise lack, especially in rural areas. Please call or write your Congressional representatives to express the importance of fulfilling the existing commitments of these groups and extending their mandates. (For our non-US readers—advocate for culture in your own community and wish us the best!)