Letters of Recommendation
Elvin Wyly
You've been sent this link because you've asked me to write a letter of recommendation. I'm happy to help. Even so, it's hard to give you a simple, crystal-clear "yes" or "no," because the many different kinds of institutions that demand letters of recommendation are becoming more Kafka-esque, inefficient, and irrational. This page provides some notes on what I'm able to do for you. To preserve my sanity, I've had to come up with a few simple rules. See the guidelines on the right.
I'm sorry for all the drama -- writing letters of reference should be simple and easy. It used to be. But no more. Many institutions now use sophisticated web-based reference systems, and these systems often wind up taking a lot more time and effort than the old-fashioned approach. Just like you, I'm completely overwhelmed with various forms of electronic harassment. Not long ago, I was asked to write a recommendation letter for one of our talented human geography graduates. I enjoyed writing a strong letter, but then when it came time to upload the letter to the three different systems used by three different universities and contractors and subcontractors paid to slice and dice the student population into all those tiers and tranches and categories, things got much more complicated. One system was down for maintenance, so this means that I can't cross this task off my list, and have to come back and try again in a few days. One won't let me submit a recommendation until the student has completed every part of the online application, so I won't be able to finish that one for an undetermined interval of time. One task on my to-do list -- "write letter of recommendation for x" -- has now morphed into two, or three, or who knows how many items I'll have to deal with in the next few weeks. Alas, finally, I came to the third letter the student asked me to submit. This is for a university, but the email comes from some corporate entity called Apply Yourself, Inc. I go through the motions, click all the buttons, jump through all the digital hurdles, and then, right when I'm asked to submit the letter, I am presented with the 'terms of use' below, and I have to "accept" or else the letter won't go through. I pressed "accept" and submitted the letter, without taking the hour or so it would require to read every line carefully to consider the full legal ramifications. What did I just give up? What was in the fine print that I did not read?
Oh, how I long for the Good Old Days of Five Minutes Ago before the latest innovation of digital torture. In the Good Old Days, professors were asked to refer to students by name, and professors were addressed by name, as if they were real, living human beings. Not long ago, a "University" actually addressed me like this:
Please enter the following information when you upload file(s) for the student.
Program Referee's Unique Identifier: 3284-fef5d14a-5790-11e2-93d6-b59a0448b32
Student's Last Name: [REDACTED]
A Real Example of What Happened When I Submitted a Recommendation Online
Not long ago, when a student applied to a shortsighted "higher" education institution that had outsourced its core missions to a private informational harassment firm, I reluctantly went through all the electronic forms to complete a letter of reference. Then I was asked (i.e., forced) to press the "accept" button before the letter would be accepted. I accepted, and thus agreed to every single line of a terms of use document that runs 4,817 words. I wish I could reproduce the full terms of use here, but one of the terms of use makes it clear that the Copyright Thugs®©™ will chase after me if I do: "All material contained on these Sites, unless otherwise indicated, is protected by law including, but not limited to, United States copyright and trademark law, as well as other state, national, and international laws and regulations. Except as expressly provided herein, Hobsons does not grant any express or implied right(s) to Users of these Sites." Fortunately, one of the last remaining provisions of fair use and fair dealing in copyright laws that has not been entirely gutted permits the use of short quotes and excerpts for the purposes of review and critique. So it is worth noting that the corporation responsible for these terms of use is quite the perfect and unpleasant embodiment of Joel Bakan's insightful metaphor of the corporation as psychopath.
The terms of use consist of a preamble and twenty-five clauses. The preamble informs the user that by visiting any of the sites maintained by the corporate sociopath, "you the User, indicate that you understand these Terms and Conditions and intend them to be the legal equivalent of a signed, written contract and equally binding, and that you accept such Terms and Conditions and agree to be legally bound by them without any limitation or qualification." Really? I was just trying to write a letter of recommendation. Clause 1 grants the user a "personal, revocable, nonexclusive, nontransferable license" to use the site, subject to the restriction that "a User may not modify, copy, distribute, broadcast, transmit, reproduce, publish, license, transfer, sell, scrape, mirror, frame, or otherwise use any information or material obtained from or through" the site. Clause 2 warns users that they must provide proper personal identification, and "You also agree not to ... conceal your identity from Hobsons for any purpose." Clause 3 stipulates that any action you take on the sites is equivalent to a legal agreement -- visiting the site constitutes a legally binding agreement to the terms and conditions. Clause 4 is the Our Thugs are Bigger than Your Thugs provision: we own everything and we'll beat you up if there's profit to be made by enforcing the intellectual property rights we've extracted from you when you visited the site and automatically agreed to those legally binding terms and conditions. Clause 5 deals with Hobsons' privacy policy, which, it now becomes clear, is a prime example of an algorithmically automated, digitized form of what David Harvey has analyzed as accumulation by dispossession. Clause 6 puts the user on the hook for maintaining the security of the user's password, and warns users that they "accept all risks of unauthorized access to the Registration Data and any other information you provide to Hobsons." Clause 7 requires you to fully comply with all applicable federal, state, and local laws.
and this goes on, clause after clause after clause, for twenty-five detailed paragraphs...
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CopyLeft 2017 Elvin K. Wyly. Except where otherwise noted, this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
Main Street, Vancouver, June 2008 (Elvin Wyly)
"It was a saying of an ancient philosopher, which I find some of our writers have ascribed to Queen Elizabeth, who perhaps might have taken occasion to repeat it, that a good face is a letter of recommendation." Joseph Addison (1711), The Spectator, no. 221, 13 November, quoted in Una McGovern, ed. (2005), Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, p. 6.
"Don't you like to write letters? I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something." Ernest Hemingway (1925), Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 23 May, quoted in Una McGovern, ed. (2005), Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, p. 393.
Guidelines for Letters
1. I'm happy to write a letter of recommendation. If at all possible, I prefer to avoid forms, questionnaires, or on-line "reference management systems." Writing letters is much more effective. If you are dealing with an institution that requires people to put check-marks beside boxes like "top 10 percent," or "bottom 40 percent," or to rank you on a scale of one to five on various aspects of academic performance, that's an ominous indicator of how the institution will treat you as a student. Real teaching and learning take place in the context of human interactions that transcend templates, forms, and the other parts of our contemporary informational surveillance infrastructure. The best institutions place a high value on written evaluations and recommendations -- clear statements that narrate and evaluate your achievements, interests, and potential. That requires a letter.
2. I'm happy to send the letter of recommendation. The easiest is if I can send the letter by mail/post, or as an email attachment.
Some institutions now require all letters of reference to be submitted through various online forms, and so they ask you to put the names and email addresses of your referees into a fancy online interface when you apply. Then the institution's automated email harassment systems kick in. For graduate students working under my direct supervision here at UBC, who are required to apply for SSHRC and affiliated fellowships, I have no choice but to follow the various online rat-mazes as they change from year to year -- this has now become a digitally default legal requirement of my job. But for all other requests, I ignore and delete all messages sent by machines. If you need me to write a letter and send a letter, I'm happy to do so. But I've reached my limit on automated correspondence.
3. Help me to craft a useful and accurate letter. Recommendations are ignored when the ratio of adjectives to total words exceeds a critical threshold. In other words, specifics matter. So please prepare a care package for me, that includes
- Complete address and contact information that makes it clear to me where my letter should be sent.
- A transcript of your academic record, and/or a personal resume. The transcript can be an unofficial, non-certified version.
- Your personal essay or letter of application. It's okay if this is just a preliminary version.
- Any items of content you would like me to have in front of my eyes as I compose a letter. Content includes, first and foremost, copies of papers you've written for classes taken with me. Refresh my memory, I'm an absentminded professor! But also include any other papers, projects, maps, or other items that you are particularly proud of, and that help to illustrate the kind of work you like to do and wish to pursue.
If possible, prepare the care package as a single document as a PDF attachment. Several software companies provide freeware that allows you to print multiple documents to a single PDF file. This makes things much easier than sorting through lots and lots of different file attachments.
4. In the cover email you send to me, include this crucial piece of information:
- The precise deadline. If you are applying to more than one institution, provide the earliest deadline. I'll write one letter that will be sent to multiple places. If I have time, I'll make a few changes to try to tailor references to different kinds of communities, but this is a luxury that my schedule may not permit.
I will do my best to meet the deadline, but it's sometimes impossible. There are times when I don't check email regularly. But if you follow the instructions above, I'll do my best to write a letter, send it off, and then send you a short note that says, "Done!"
5. Stay in Touch: if I write one or more letters for you, I ask that you try to stay in touch. Mark down in your calendar: about a year from now, please send me a note to let me know what you've been up to. This request is not just for me; to be sure, one of the mysterious facets of teaching involves the silent echo chamber -- the deafening silence from the large number of students who graduate, move on to bigger and better things, and never find the time to write because they're overwhelmed with the challenges of a world of rising expectations and intensified competition. But beyond the purely selfish motivation of wanting to keep up with students' experiences and achievements, there's something more: if you stay in touch, then it allows today's students to get a glimpse of the possibilities that lie ahead. So don't be shy: send me a photograph, or a map, or a quotable quote, or anything else you're willing to allow me to share with current students (and I promise, no 'Terms and Conditions' with twenty-five clauses!). For examples, see this, or this, or this.
Many thanks for your patience and understanding.
Gonzo Job Application
"...And don't think that my arrogance is unintentional: it's just that I'd rather offend you now than after I started working for you. I didn't make myself clear to the last man I worked for until I took the job. It was as if the Marquis de Sade had suddenly found himself working for Billy Graham. The man despised me, of course, and I had nothing but contempt for him and everything he stood for. If you asked him, he'd tell you that I'm 'not very likable, (that I) hate people, (that I) just want to be left alone, and (that I) feel too superior to mingle with the average person.' (That's a direct quote from a memo he sent to the publisher.) Nothing beats having good references."
Holy. Fucking. Shit.*
When I signed up to become a "Professor," little did I know that this job description is under seige. I am not a Police Officer, a Private Detective, or an Intelligence Service spymaster. But that's what everyone wants me to do...!
From an actual "Letter of Recommendation" form template sent by an employer considering whether to hire a recent graduate:
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*The second and third words are self-directed, accidental utterances committed by keyboard malfunctions, and do not constitute micro-aggressional trigger events that could violate multiple University policies.
More Bureaucracy, More Forms, More Regulations, More Instructions, More Demands for Ever More Invasive Assessments of Criteria Fundamentally at Odds with Genuine, Pure Scholarship and Emancipatory Knowledge Production. "Evaluate the candidate's potential to attract externally funded support?" Translation: "We don't care what the candidate can think or do, unless it brings us MONEY."
From an actual letter of recommendation request/demand/directive:
GUIDE FOR LETTERS OF REFERENCE - 2017
In preparing your letter of reference, please include comments that address the following:
A. Knowledge, Skills and Experience of the Candidate
1. Please indicate in what capacity and during what period you have known the candidate.
2. What is unique or special regarding the knowledge and skills that the candidate demonstrates and brings to our posted position?
3. What are the strong contributions the candidate could make as a faculty member in the School of Planning?
4. Please comment upon the candidate’s teaching approach, commitment, and trajectory.
B. Standard of Work
1. What reputation does the candidate have for productivity and high quality, impactful research and writing?
2. What reputation or potential does the candidate have for effectiveness and innovation in the classroom and working with graduate students?
C. Scholarly or Professional Activities
1. Evaluate the candidate’s potential to attract externally funded support?
2. What attributes does the candidate have that indicate the candidate’s potential to participate effectively in research projects that require teamwork?
3. What attributes and experience does the candidate show that would integrate results of professional research work in the classroom?
4. What is their capacity for the continued energy and original thought necessary to define and pursue new research problems and lead an original research program?
5. Evaluate the candidate’s engagement or potential for engagement with the professional planning community.
D. Personal Qualities
1. Please comment briefly about the following as they apply to the candidate:
• team player and collegiality in an academic setting
• flexibility
• intellectual capacity
• ability to listen to others
• ability to relate to support staff, students, alumni, and members of the profession
• leadership and initiative