Federal grants have funded university centers for foreign languages and area studies for 67 years. National Resource Centers began as a Cold War national security initiative after Sputnik and now emphasize scholarship, community outreach, and K-12 collaboration. The Department of Education dissolved the International and Foreign Language Education office and laid off its staff, later transferring Title VI programs to the Office of Higher Education Programs. Funding delivery has been irregular; some centers like Indiana University's REEI received their promised FY2024–25 funds after intermittent payments. NRC directors fear withheld funds for the final year of four-year cycles and potential termination of the program.
For 67 years, the Department of Education has administered grants to universities to create centers devoted to foreign languages and area studies, a field focused on the study of the culture of a particular area or region. Now, those centers are under fire by the Trump administration, which has not released the funding the grantees expected to receive in July.
The grants support what are known as National Resource Centers, which were originally developed as a national security tool to help the U.S. increase its international expertise in the midst of the Cold War and the aftermath of Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik. Since then, their purpose has shifted with the times, now focusing not only on producing scholars but also on community outreach and collaboration with K-12 schools.
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