“He was the right kind of aristocrat: a champion by choice, not circumstance, of the common good and our common future and our common dreams, in a long life of grace, generous spirit, kind heart, and determination, right to the very end”

Bill Clinton

• Digitized papers of the Pell archive related to the formation of the NEH & NEA
• Timeline of the formation of the NEH
• See what’s Inside the Archive
• Meet the People Involved
• The Pell NEH Collection
• The Pell Audio Collection
• The Pell Audiovisual Collection

The University of Rhode Island houses 2,500 boxes of Senator Claiborne Pell’s archive covering the 36 years Pell served as senator from Rhode Island. This unique archive is housed at the URI library, Special Collections and Archives.

 

This archive serves as a resource for scholars in fields as diverse as Political Science, Library Science, Oceanography, History, Art History, and Education, and is also available to the larger Rhode Island Community. We welcome and encourage community connections and collaborations. Our initial focus has been to digitize and analyze the 21 boxes of material related to the formation of the Nation Endowment for the Humanities. Senator Pell was instrumental in the formation of the NEH and this year marks its 50^th anniversary. This initiative started with the support of the URI Office of the Provost and the URI College of Arts & Sciences in collaboration with the URI University Libraries.

This project is part of the Pell Humanities Initiative in Rhode Island to celebrate the 50th anniversary of theNational Endowment for the Humanities.