This paper argues that mentoring programs in the humanities often serve to strengthen the academic hierarchy, rather than to stimulate the intellectual development of members of the next generation. Having lost an essential component of its traditional meaning, the word mentor often stands for the opposite of what it was intended to mean. Instead of urging mentees to be intellectually independent, the mentor often merely assists in the mentee’s conformity to the apparatuses of the academy. What is needed at universities is less obedience to the apparatus and more critical attention to what younger faculty and students are actually experiencing and producing under its procedures. Anonymous questionnaires should be sent to the mentees in mentoring programs and efforts should be made to allow the mentoring relationship to develop organically, rather than having mentors assigned.