Juneau Arts and Humanities Council director resigns after organization cuts DEI language from its website
The executive director of the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council will resign following the board’s decision to cut diversity, equity and inclusion language from its website.
The organization announced Monday that Phil Huebschen is leaving the nonprofit after two years.
“I found myself unable to authentically engage in implementing the decision of the board,” Huebschen told KTOO.
The board says its February decision to cut DEI language from the website is temporary, in the hopes that it would help the JAHC continue to receive federal grants. It comes in response to the Trump administration’s threat to cut funding to organizations that use DEI language in their programming.
The board plans to rearticulate and restore the language at a later date.
Several local arts and culture organizations have been impacted by canceled federal grant funding unrelated to DEI language.
Huebschen said they understand the board’s decision.
“Both options it was faced with were poor options, frankly,” Huebschen said. “One of them was to potentially lose critical funding for programs that are very strategically important for the JAHC, and the other was to just completely comply with federal directives, which is very much against our mission, our vision, our values, all of it.”
The JAHC board released a statement Wednesday that explained its reason for removing the language, and said the decision wasn’t unanimous.
“The very purpose of these directives from a federal level is to create lateral conflict,” the statement reads. “We understand experiencing anger surrounding these decisions, but do not want this to pit the JAHC against the communities we serve.”
Huebschen said that the federal grant funding in question makes up about 15% of the JAHC’s budget, and it’s not money that can be easily replaced.
“I’ve heard people comparing the JAHC to Harvard – the JAHC does not have a $53.2 billion endowment,” they said. “We do not have a pillow of funding, flexible operational funding that can fill in that gap. So if that money were to go away, those programs disappear. And we cannot fund them.”
As of Wednesday, Huebschen said they don’t know if the nonprofit will get the grants anyway. Their last day as executive director will be May 14.