The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the Leo Strauss Foundation $1.1 million on November 1, 2026, under the Promotion of the Humanities Challenge Grants program (CFDA 45.130) to establish an endowment for scholarly editing and education supporting the comprehensive collected works of Leo Strauss.
The Leo Strauss Foundation will produce a definitive 60-volume series published in partnership with the University of Chicago Press, preserving and publishing Strauss's complete legacy across four editorial tracks: critical editions of books with handwritten notes; complete correspondence; unpublished manuscripts including notebooks on Plato and Maimonides; and critical editions of seminar transcripts. The $1.1 million federal award is intended to be matched one-to-one with $1.1 million in non-federal gifts to establish a $2.2 million term endowment generating approximately $88,000 annually to sustain the editorial infrastructure over the 20-year project lifecycle.
Work is performed in Illinois. The period of performance extends through September 30, 2029, during which the recipient must raise and certify the required non-federal matching gifts. Once certified, the endowment income will support ongoing editorial operations to advance this scholarly preservation effort.