March 1, 2002

The Random Insanity of Letters of Recommendation

By DEIRDRE McCLOSKEY

Every autumn brings The Letters. Thousands of deans, mostly sane, call for The Letters to be written, receive them in bulk, pass them from hand to hand, interpret them, and pronounce them Good or Bad. "She's got Good Letters," says a member of the dean's promotion and tenure committee, meaning: The department chair has begged N professors at other colleges to make N inscriptions claiming the candidate is superbly, wonderfully, perfectly, incredibly qualified for her first job or tenure or a

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