Poor Little Lambs

To the Editor:

William Deresiewicz argues in his new book, “Excellent Sheep” (Aug. 24), that Ivy League schools graduate narrow, dissatisfied and purposeless students. But his anecdotal accounts do not jibe with my 20 years of experience on the faculty of Stanford University, where the majority of undergrads are happy, passionate and thriving. These amazingly talented and diverse students are working side by side with our faculty to reinvent the world. All undergraduates who desire a truly “elite” education should be advised to find both a subject they love and a great mentor to help them do it better (great mentors can of course be found at every school).

Based on his unduly negative outlook, I would guess that Deresiewicz feels he was unfairly denied tenure at Yale. But it is time for him to stop whingeing and get back to the teaching and mentoring that he excels at and loves.

BEN BARRES

PALO ALTO, CALIF.

The writer is a professor and the chairman of neurobiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

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To the Editor:

As a professor at Brown, I find statements like Anthony Grafton’s, in his review of “Excellent Sheep” — “Many students at elite universities amble like sheep through four years of parties and extracurriculars, and then head down the ramp to the hedge funds without stopping to think” — dismayingly typical of the sheeplike conformist contempt that many humanities professors have for students who choose careers in finance. If these professors stopped to think, they would realize that some university graduates find careers in finance just as engrossing, stimulating and fulfilling as their teachers find careers in philosophy and literature.