A lecture on “Solitude and Leadership: If you want others to follow, learn to be alone with your thoughts,” was delivered by William Deresiewicz to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in October 2009.
“We need to begin by talking about what leadership really means,” said Deresiewicz. “I just spent 10 years teaching at another institution that, like West Point, liked to talk a lot about leadership, Yale University. These (top academic) institutions, like West Point, also see their role as the training of leaders, constantly encourage their students, like West Point, to regard themselves as leaders among their peers and future leaders of society. Indeed, when we look around at the American elite, the people in charge of government, business, academia, and all our other major institutions—senators, judges, CEOs, college presidents, and so forth—we find that they come overwhelmingly either from the Ivy League and its peer institutions or from the service academies, especially West Point.