Scholar Derides Elite Education

Harvard students may think they’re getting the best education in the world. Last night, 150 of them were told otherwise.

A standing-room-only crowd packed the Tsai Auditorium in the Center for Government and International Studies yesterday to hear former Yale professor William Deresiewicz debate two undergraduates on the merits of “elite education.”

The discussion panel, titled “The (dis)Advantages of an Elite Education,” was based on Deresiewicz’s controversial article of the same name, published in The American Scholar magazine, which focused on the flaws in liberal arts education in prestigious universities—what Deresiewicz called “Ivy retardation.”

The two main disadvantages of elite education, Deresiewicz wrote in the article, are that it makes students incapable of interacting with people unlike them, and that it instills a false sense of self-worth in them.

He wrote that the biggest failure of elite education is that it is self-perpetuating, preventing the American intelligentsia from evolving.

Despite being promoted as a debate, after briefly introducing themselves, the two undergraduates—Elise X. Liu ’11 and Jeffrey J. Phaneuf ’10—ceded the floor to Deresiewicz, who spoke for around 40 minutes on the shortcomings of elite education.

“I’m not against the existence of the elite,” Deresiewicz said. “We want the best people to be leading the country.”

But, he said, “Elite education has become anti-intellectual. The purpose of Yale College is to manufacture Yale alumni.”

Deresiewicz left Yale earlier this year, according to Elsa S. Kim ’08-’09, who helped organize the event.

Deresiewicz said that being a thinker is very different from being a leader.

“I am telling you to be counter-cultural,” he said. “Forget about Harvard. Forget about all the other prestigious institutions you have gone through.”

The discussion panel was organized by the Humanities Center’s undergraduate committee.

Kim said that the purpose of the discussion panel was not to start an argument between students and Deresiewicz, but instead to “talk about what the purpose of elite education should really be.”

“I just really hope that this becomes a forum that inspires more discussions,” Kim said. “We are at Harvard. We have to know why we are here.”

The Undergraduate Committee of the Humanities Center at Harvard hosts two undergraduate discussion panels annually, with the goal of inspiring interdisciplinary discussion in the community.