Writing about the value of the humanities as a field of study, Leslie Epstein offers important material for reflection. This Boston University professor has a reputation not only for his teaching but for several favorably received novels. Another of his credits comes from being the father of Theo Epstein, the erstwhile general manager of the Boston Red Sox.

Here I quote from three parts of a letter Leslie wrote to the New York Times:

“Everywhere, at every level of the American educational system, students have been cut off — or have cut themselves off — from the best that those who have come before them have thought and created.”

‘What the obsession with keeping one’s eyes on the prize has led to, I fear, is a certain coldness of heart.”

“In short, the lack of beauty in one’s life has consequences: the coarsening of one’s sensibility, the shrinking of imagination and the loss of feeling for what might be possible in the world. That is why, at bottom, one studies the humanities.”