Stanford’s President

Far be it for me to recommend to David Kennedy which books should be on the required reading list for Stanford’s freshman classes (“Stanford President Retains His Humor and His Job,3 Part A, May 8).

Given the “enormous respect (Kennedy’s) human qualities” engender in at least one member of his senior staff, I would like to recommend that he read and take to heart a statement by a Western author he must surely find important that his young charges know:

“Public money ought to be touched with the most scrupulous conscientiousness of honor. It is not the produce of riches only, but the hard earnings of labor and poverty. It is drawn even from the bitterness of want and misery. Not a begger passes, or perishes in the streets, whose mite is not in that mass.”-- Thomas Paine

HENRY CERVANTES, Marina del Rey