William Deresiewicz

William Deresiewicz (/dəˈrɛzəwɪts/ də-REZ-əwits) is an American author, essayist, and literary critic. Born in 1964 in Englewood, New Jersey, Deresiewicz attended Columbia University before teaching English at Yale University from 1998-2008. He is the author of A Jane Austen Education, How Six Novels Taught me About Love, Friendship, and the Things that Really Matter (Penguin Press, 2011) and Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life (Free Press, 2014). His All Points blog appeared on the American Scholar website from March 2011 to September 2013.

His criticism directed at a popular audience appears in The Nation, The American Scholar, The New Republic, The New York Times, and Harper's.

Early life and education

Deresiewicz grew up in a Jewish home and attended a yeshiva high school. He has described himself as being "thrown out" of the high school and has imagined that he might have been charged with "gross insubordination and incipient atheism."

Deresiewicz received his B.A. in biology and psychology (1985), his master's in journalism (1987), and Ph.D. in English (1998) from Columbia University.

Career

Academia

In 1998, Deresiewicz joined the faculty of Yale University. He taught courses in modern British fiction, Great Books, Indian fiction, and writing, among other areas. He left academia in 2008 to become a full-time writer.

Writer

In 2011, Deresiewicz published A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught me About Love, Friendship, and the Things that Really Matter. In it, he divulges that his life was changed and he became a better person after reading Jane Austen for the first time at age 26.

Deresiewicz is a contributing writer for The Nation and a contributing editor for The New Republic. His writings span such topics as books, higher education, culture, and politics. His article "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education," along with his speech "Solitude and Leadership," have gone viral on the internet.

Works

A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter

In this memoir of a sort, Deresiewicz admits that he was initially resistant to reading 19th-century British fiction. Soon, though, he discovered that Austen’s novels are valuable tools in the journey towards becoming an adult.

Deresiewicz juxtaposes his reading of Jane Austen with insight into his own life. For example, the reader learns about his controlling father, a series of girlfriends that come and go, and the struggles of being raised in a religious household.

"The Disadvantages of an Elite Education"

In the summer of 2008, Deresiewicz published a controversial essay for The American Scholar titled The Disadvantages of an Elite Education. In it, he criticizes the Ivy League and other elite colleges and universities for supposedly coddling their students and discouraging independent thought. He claims that elite institutions produce students who are unable to communicate with people who don't have the same background as themselves, using his own inability to talk to his plumber as his first example. Deresiewicz uses Al Gore and George W. Bush, graduates of Harvard and Yale respectively, as examples of politicians that are out of touch with the lives of most Americans.

"The Disadvantages of an Elite Higher Education" went viral, receiving more than 40,000 shares on Facebook. Many readers had mixed reactions to the article, with plenty of criticism coming directly from the Ivy League, its peer institutions, and many others who claimed that he had cherry-picked examples. The IvyGate blog published a facetious rebuttal, "Isn't Harvard Just the Worst?", telling the Class of 2012 to "enjoy these last few months of innocence, because soon you'll join the ranks of an organization whose sole purpose is to destroy the world."

Deresiewicz transformed this and other articles into a book, Excellent Sheep: Thinking for Yourself, Inventing Your Life, and Other Things the Ivy League Won't Teach You, published by Simon & Schuster in 2014.

"Solitude and Leadership"

In October 2009, Deresiewicz delivered a speech titled "Solitude and Leadership" to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point. It was later published in The American Scholar and went viral online. In it, he makes the case that leadership entails more than just success and accomplishment. Citing observations he made of students at Yale and Columbia, Deresiewicz discusses the ubiquity of “world-class hoop jumpers” who “can climb the greasy pole of whatever hierarchy they decide to attach themselves to.” Instead, he argues, true leaders (such as General David Petraeus) are those who are able to step outside the cycle of achievement and hoop jumping in order to think for themselves. Deresiewicz claims that solitude is essential to becoming a leader.

Awards

As a writer, Deresiewicz has won or been nominated for several awards.

• Nominated for National Magazine Awards (2008, 2009, 2011)
• Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle's Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing (2009, 2010, 2011)
• Awarded a Sidney Award by David Brooks (2010) for "Solitude and Leadership"
• Awarded the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing of the National Book Critics Circle (2012)
• Awarded the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture's Hiett Prize in the Humanities (2013)

Personal life

Deresiewicz lives in Portland, Oregon.

External links

• Official site
• The Nation profile of Deresiewicz
• Video discussion with William Deresiewicz and Mark Edmundson on Bloggingheads.tv
• Appearances on C-SPAN

Online articles

• Solitude and Leadership at West Point in 2009