Humanities and Human Ties: reviewing, slowly, the arts that enhance our humanity. From the article:

In a conversation at the Aspen Ideas Festival, co-sponsored by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard University, and the cultural critic Leon Wieseltier agreed that true study and appreciation of the humanities is rooted in slowness—in the kind of deliberate education that can be accrued over a lifetime. While this can seem almost antithetical at times to the pace of modern life, and as subjects like art, philosophy, and literature face steep declines in enrollment at academic institutions in the U.S., both argued that studying the humanities is vital for the ways in which it teaches us how to be human….

The irony of the humanities’ declining prestige is that what they teach seems to be urgently needed in a polarized culture. “The humanities are such an important vehicle for widening the world … for teaching empathy for people outside yourself,” Faust said. “In this time of increasing tribalism, this seems like such a critical role.” History teaches students about the context of choices made in the past. Philosophy forces them to think about morality….”