Some colleagues and I have been musing lately about the role of external review letters in hiring and promotions and how we approach writing such letters when asked. In particular, one colleague raised the question whether people are now more cautious when writing these letters than they may have been, say, 10 years ago ie in the sense that if you can't write anything positive, you decline the invitation to write. I don't know if this is the case or not, but I'm interested in what we all take into account when invited to write such letters. Time permitting, I will generally write a letter if I can write something positive or at least balanced. And I can't say I've ever been asked to write a letter for someone whose work I didn't know relatively well, so it's never been impossible for me to judge upfront whether I would say something positive or not. In other words, I've never been in the situation of having been asked to write a letter for someone whose work I didn't think was very good. I have declined writing letters when I'm not up to date with someone's work and don't really have time to read recent scholarship. And I've also declined writing (usually for peer reviewed journals) when the article isn't really in my area eg when it's interdisciplinary work and the focus is on the non-law part. However, sometimes I will write for those journals when they assure me that they have at least one other referee who will comment substantively on parts of the article on which I am unable to comment.
And when we do write these letters, who do we feel we are really writing for ie in the P&T or appointments context? Do we feel we are writing to inform the faculty on its vote, or are we really providing a paper trail for the package as it wends its way through central administration? Or a little of both? And how much attention do we generally pay to the individual school's or university's bylaws on promotions and appointments?
Unfortunately, negative review letters are so rare that they are viewed as some sort of oddity rather than a genuine and well-deserved criticism. As a result, review letters are often largely fictional: There is often a huge gap between what the letter says and what the letter's author will actually tell you off the record.
Ditto. My wife (humanities academic) just went through her third year review, and in the 3 years she's been at her school, they've gone from requiring outside letters, to permitting them, to disallowing them for that process. The reason she was told was that they end up being worthless, and it's a hassle to coordinate with the reviewers.
That's interesting. For schools that don't use external review letters, do you ever have trouble with situations where no one else in the relevant department/faculty is an expert in the candidate's area so you arguably can't get any kind of expert critique of the candidate's work?
On the question of who the audience for the letter is — I always think of one audience as the central administration, which will include decision-makers outside the candidate's field. For that reason, I do two things: I describe the work, before analyzing and critiquing it (since folks in the Provost's office will read the letters but not the candidate's work), and I say something about the literature that the work is contributing to.
Some universities require 10 letters for senior promotions and appointments, which strikes me as excessive, but it does mean that you might be more likely to get some variance in the responses.
So, Mary, would you take a different approach to writing a letter for a stand-alone law school where you presumably wouldn't have to worry too much about explaining the scholarship to central administration?
Interestingly, our university used to require about 10 letters for senior promotions and recently dropped it to 6. I don't know if that's good or bad. It's certainly easier to get the letters (but often still a challenge), but you do lose the likelihood that you'll get more of a range of views in the letters.
Yes — and especially in her field (foreign lit), where the department is made up of people who do several languages. They're still required in the tenure process, just disallowed in the thrid year review.
(I think for that particular animal, they just want to see some quantity of publication. They'll worry about how good later.)
Two recent requests I've received have come in the form of (1) "please evaluate the work of X and compare her work to that of A, B, C, & D" and (2) "please evaluate the work of X and compare him to other comparable scholars." Interestingly, both requests expressly indicated that critical comments were entirely welcome (as a comparative format would seem to encourage), but those formats also involve a considerable amount of work, with the resulting letters being 5 full pages.