Long after his last lecture, I carried John J. McDermott’s lessons in my heart. His courses ignited my interest in philosophy during graduate school. I was his unofficial TA, his occasional chauffeur, his briefcase carrier, and the keeper of the books in his vast home library. He was my mentor, and I was proud to be associated with him. His determination to help young people find fulfillment and purpose became my mission.

One day, I was adjusting the books in McDermott’s library when I came across a volume of Erich Fromm’s Escape From Freedom. We were reading and discussing it in one of my other classes, so I thought I might impress McDermott with my knowledge and analysis of the book.

“McDermott,” I said, “I see that you have a copy of Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom on the shelf. I’ve been reading it for Mestrovic’s—another professor—class.” I proceeded to spitball everything I could remember from the class, including how the themes of this book were picked up in Fromm’s other works. McDermott nodded along politely, then he dropped a bombshell on me. “Yes, Kainer, I am a long-time admirer of Fromm’s work. I even debated him one time.” Shocked, I asked him, “What did you debate with Fromm?” McDermott cooly replied, “The death of God.”

In that moment, a new world opened for me. I realized all at once that the people I was studying were in contact with the people I was studying with. I loved asking McDermott about his experiences and his connections. I was treated to stories about Cornel West, Allan Bloom, Dorothy Day, Reinhold Niebuhr, and even Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which McDermott saw in person. McDermott became my bridge to the past, and these stories gave new significance to the people and ideas I was studying.

McDermott passed away in September 2018 at the age of 86. I was invited to read a paper I had written on his influence on my teaching at his graveside. Nearly eight years after his death, his influence continues to shape my classroom, my research, and my service. Without his mentorship, my career in academia would have taken a much different—and much worse—trajectory. Such is the value of a great mentor.

Given my experience, mentorship is the one thing rarely discussed when people talk about the problems in higher education. Perhaps mentorship is too much to ask of modern professors. We are tasked with teaching, service to our disciplines, and service to our colleges and departments. We must publish or perish. We attend conferences, trainings, university functions, and the like. It’s an unsustainable model. And as higher ed grapples with shrinking enrollments, university administrators should start asking: what should faculty be doing with their time? In other words, what would be worthwhile for faculty and students alike?

The mentorship of new faculty by “the old guard,” those who possess the longest and richest institutional memory, is of rich value and significance. I took a class with McDermott on philosophical pedagogy, where we discussed how to be a philosophy professor. I will never forget his advice to find the person with the longest institutional memory and ask him about the place that you find yourself in. At each university I have worked at, I have followed his advice. Sitting in offices piled high with books and papers, sipping cups of coffee, the old guard let me in on the history of the university. These lessons radically changed the way I viewed university policy, not as some arbitrary top-down control, but as a living tapestry that testified to the life of a specific institution.

Likewise, the invisible labor of mentorship forges a bond between generations of students and faculty. New students bring fresh experiences and perspectives to classes we have taught dozens of times, while our study and hard-won experience allow us to show how much of the “new” has, in fact, been said before.

This interplay is where most real learning occurs, because it requires sustained attention and engagement—professors and students responding to one another in real time, whether in or out of the classroom. This is the steady rhythm of university life.

As we contemplate the future of higher education, I submit that we should give more attention to the role of mentorship. These personal relationships form a moral bond across the generations. McDermott’s willingness to hear me out encouraged me to share my ideas and instilled a sense of professional duty. I owe my students the same attention I received.

If we wish to increase institutional trust in higher education, mentorship must be prioritized. Professors cannot keep pretending that merely delivering information in the classroom—however expertly—amounts to truly teaching students. If we truly want universities to be places of genuine open inquiry, we need faculty who excel in presenting all sides of an argument to mentor their colleagues. Mentorship is the means by which we create better universities both for ourselves and for future generations.