Jim Leach is an outstanding choice to lead the National Endowment for the Humanities. He’s smart, thoughtful, and brings a combination of openness and good judgment to the job—as well as political connections.

Flourishing humanities fields (including scholarship in fields like cultural anthropology, historical sociology, and human geography) are important in themselves, but also as part of the mix of intellectual perspectives that helps us understand and make sense of science, technology, economic change and social structure. They have a distinctive role not just in academia but also in public knowledge—advanced by museums and films as well as writing and teaching.

In his public comments, Leach has emphasized moving beyond some of the “culture wars” that have dogged the NEH in the past. He is right, for example, to stress both the internal self-understanding of the United States and the understanding of different contexts and connections around the world. Not only is this not an either/or choice, the two necessarily inform each other. And despite publicized clashes, many branches of the humanities have gotten better lately at integrating the national and the international.

Alas, the humanities have declined as a proportion of contemporary universities (and trends in the current fiscal crisis may exacerbate this). The growth has been in professional schools, quasi-professional fields, and parts of scientific and technological research. These are important too, but the humanities play a special role (along with social sciences) in undergraduate teaching, in integrating different branches of intellectual life, and in public communication. Foundation support has dwindled, and not just in art history—partly because many foundations have focused on seeking immediate solutions to practical problems and not broader or deeper understanding. The Mellon Foundation is one of the few that has consistently supported high quality scholarship and creativity in the humanities. Political shifts have made the NEH less consistent, but it is needed now—not just as a general source of financial support, but as an institution that can demonstrate how openness and good judgment can go together, making recognition of quality something distinct from imposition of politically informed taste.

The appointment of Jim Leach suggests that the Obama administration recognizes this. I’m sorry to lose him from the Board of the SSRC (since the President’s conflict of interest rules require him to step down), but he can play a very significant role in this new position.