To the Editor:

Re “Did Harold Bloom Win the Canon Wars?,” by Joe Karaganis and David McClure (Sunday Review, Oct. 20):

The “canon wars” involving the literary scholar Harold Bloom and the novelist Toni Morrison constitute little more than a grandiose name for a squabble in American English departments. This is not meant to diminish the achievement of either but simply to reassess their influence.

I served on faculties with both: as a graduate student and assistant professor at Yale along with Mr. Bloom, and as a professor and dean of the Graduate School at Princeton with Ms. Morrison.

In the departments with which I was associated — specifically German and comparative literature, and more generally classics, medieval studies and foreign languages — neither name played a role. With no assistance from Mr. Bloom the Western canon has thrived in those fields, and the additions of Ms. Morrison have had no impact.

If the humanities have declined, it is because the battles over theory and canon have distracted too many colleagues in English departments. As for the STEM subjects, several recent studies have shown that students trained in the humanities have the intellectual flexibility required to adapt when technological change kills jobs in many fields.