Letter to the Editor of TLS, in response to the review accessible here.   Sir, In his review of Franklin's Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia (10 June, 2004), David Oderberg puts this gloss on the recent history of philosophy here at Sydney University: David Stove said his years in T&M were the happiest of his life - it was what an academic department should be - yet the end finally came a few years ago when T&M folded. GP remains, but, as Franklin sadly observes, "Sydney is no longer a city where a student can find a respectable course of study in philosophy". Oderberg has been misled here by an omission in Franklin's text. Franklin laments the end of T&M (i.e., Traditional & Modern Philosophy), but fails to inform his readers that GP (General Philosophy) ceased to exist at the same time. Presumably Franklin thought that bad news made better press without the good, but actually it's even-stevens, by his and Oderberg's Stovean lights. By our lights, incidentally, there was no bad news. The abolition of the two departments that resulted from the split of the 1970s was win-win for Sydney philosophy. Whatever the merits of each department individually, the conjunction was in many ways unhappy -- not least, because it encouraged the kind of ill-informed hostility so much in evidence in Franklin's account of the history, and in Oderberg's review. In this respect, in our view, the split produced a two-part toxin, that polluted the atmosphere for a generation. At any rate, philosophy is now thriving, both at Sydney University itself and elsewhere in the city. Sydney is more than ever a centre for outstanding teaching and research in philosophy, in a wide range of areas. Amongst many strengths -- one would never realize this by reading Franklin -- is a concentration in analytic metaphysics and philosophy of mind and science: areas that were the strengths of T&M, in times that Franklin thinks of as a golden age. In these areas, as in others, a contemporary student in Sydney can certainly find "a respectable course of study". Huw Price, ARC Federation Fellow & Challis Professor of Philosophy Rick Benitez, Chair of the Department of Philosophy University of Sydney 24 June, 2004.