It’s the end of the first quarter of 2026, the final year of our current three-year NEH grant. We remain on track to finish all our scoped work by the end of the year, although one element has been delayed.

First, Whitehead’s correspondence continues to be transcribed for the eventual publication of two correspondence volumes. We have had a bit of trouble finding grad students who can read cursive handwriting, since it’s not generally taught these days, and have secured outside help for the final nine months of work.

Second, the editing of the third volume of Harvard Lectures (HL3) continues, but has taken us longer than we’d hoped. It will be completed before the end of the year, but we aren’t yet sure exactly when the manuscript will be submitted to Edinburgh University Press. The delay in manuscript submission means that HL3 will very likely now be published sometime in 2027, rather than in 2026, as we’d originally hoped.

Third, we have begun editing in earnest on the volume of Whitehead’s monographs containing Science and the Modern World, Religion in the Making, and Symbolism. One big aspect of the editing that is now finished is a full comparison of all editions published within Whitehead’s lifetime (five in the case of SMW), looking for changes and discrepancies. But we still have our hands full making corrections and adding relevant notes.

As a final bit of news, the New York Times recently had some reporting on the NEH cuts made by Elon Musk’s DOGE that we discussed a year ago. According to the Times, a 28-year-old DOGE staffer used Chat GPT to identify any NEH grants that “relate at all to D.E.I.” In the end, almost all NEH grants approved during the Biden administration were cut: 1,477 out of 1,519. Ours was one of the 42 that survived… less than 3%.

That our project was one of the very few to survive does leave us somewhat hopeful that our application for a second three-year NEH grant will be received favorably, though we will not know until July. On the other hand, the current administration leaves little reason to be hopeful for humanities funding generally, and the NEH has never been closer to being shuttered than it is now.

If the Whitehead Research Project is to continue, it will be because of the generosity of private donors. With four volumes published and another thirteen still to go, the Critical Edition will still need at least another decade to complete its work.

The work of searching for, transcribing, and editing archival materials is time-consuming and costly. If you are able to support our work with a donation, it would be much appreciated. Just follow this link.