West Virginia Humanities Council Statement of Values
The West Virginia Humanities Council’s mission is to promote a vigorous program in the humanities statewide in West Virginia.
The humanities are important to our shared social and civic health because they engage us in the most meaningful questions about our humanity—who we are, what we believe, and what we value.
The humanities take many forms. They include history, literature, civics, law and jurisprudence, religious and philosophical studies, archaeology, ethics, arts criticism, and many other fields of study. What binds these disciplines is their capacity to help us express and understand our human experiences, whether individual or shared.
Our work is nonpartisan and, by its nature, holds itself outside the realm of political or policy debate. Our goal is to foster clearer thinking and a better understanding of relevant issues, not to promote a particular viewpoint or endorse a course of action.
Our programs, and the projects we support through grantmaking, allow participants and audiences to express different points of view civilly and respectfully, and do not advocate for a single solution to a problem, or present a single resolution to an issue.
Still—again, by their nature—the humanities do advocate certain general values, which form the basis of all our work. These include the importance of individuals, the intrinsic worth of open conversation, a commitment to civil discussion even in disagreement, and the broad usefulness of understanding what many different cultures and people think and believe, now and throughout history.
The West Virginia Humanities Council delivers and supports projects that share such values. We are in the business of promoting programs that bring the best of the world to West Virginia, and that represent the true, rich, and diverse culture of West Virginia to the world.
We do so with a commitment to civility and nonpartisanship, and the faith that the humanities, in all their forms, create conditions in which the best aspects of our shared humanity can be encouraged and acted upon.
