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Identifying & ‘cultivating’ letter-writers for tenure?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I'll go up for tenure in a year or so, and I have no idea how I'm supposed to identify who my letter writers ought to be. I've heard that it might be a good idea to start "cultivating" them. People who went through this process, how did you pick your potential letter writers, what did you do/say to them (if anything) before your schools asks them to write about you, and is there any way to know who might be able/willing to write positively for you?

Good questions. Do any readers have any helpful insights or experiences to share?

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7 responses to “Identifying & ‘cultivating’ letter-writers for tenure?”

  1. Chris

    First the usual point: check with the colleagues at your University! Tenure rules are often “local” as they say. In some places, a certain number of letter writers have to come from your suggestions.
    Second: with that in mind, at many Universities, you are not supposed to or allowed to contact your potential letter writers about tenure: at least not at the stage when they’re about to write a letter.
    As far as “cultivating letter writers,” here is what some people have in mind: when you give papers at conferences and such, pay attention to senior philosophers who may come up to you afterwards and say “I really enjoyed your talk” – that’s a person to consider putting on your list.
    Also: pay attention to anyone who cites or discusses your work. This is often a possible candidate.
    A lot can depend on what kind of University you’re at (see first point): if you’re at a big R1, they will often hope (or expect) that many of your letter writers will have at least heard of you, and (even better) be familiar with some of your work). But at less research oriented schools, things may be different.

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  2. anon recently tenured

    You should make VERY sure that it is okay for you to have explicit conversations wiht potential writers about whether they will write you a letter before you do that–I’ve never heard of that being okay before, and it may result in them declining because you’ve violated a rule (if that rule is made explicit to them when they are then formally asked).
    As with most tenure issues, it’s probably too specific to your university to get useful advice here. What will be more helpful is attending meetings that are set up to help guide you through this process, ask questions of your senior colleagues and of recently tenured people at your university, and to carefully read the tenure and promotion guidelines/part of your faculty handbook.

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  3. anon almost tenured

    I had no idea that one should think very hard about this when I went up for tenure. I thought about it for fifteen minutes and then gave a list of people (i) whose work I liked and (ii) who seemed chill based on limited interactions I had with them. In accordance with (ii), I didn’t list people I suspected would be overly critical.
    It worked out, luckily! Supposedly my letter writers were complementary. Maybe ask other junior or recently-tenured people you trust who should be left off of your list. There are rumors about people who are harsh in their tenure letters.

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  4. Don’t ask for letters

    In two cases, I have had junior scholars want to discuss my writing tenure letters for them. One solicited me via email, and another one brought it up during a meeting at a conference. I was unhappy with both conversations and told them that I was not comfortable discussing the issue with them. When subsequently asked by their department chairs to write tenure letters for them, I relayed the conversations to the chairs, and both chairs agreed that they should look elsewhere for letters.
    You should certainly engage with senior scholars in your field whose work overlaps with yours but focus on the scholarship, not on the letter writing.
    Do not ask directly for someone to write for you and certainly do not suggest what they put in their letters, as one junior scholar did to me.

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  5. recently tenured

    Don’t Ask for Letters is exactly right. You should never discuss tenure letters with anyone you think might be asked to write one for you.
    But your local process may involve your submitting a list or a couple of names, or they may give you a chance to approve or at least veto some names. NEVER exceed the input your superiors officially invite you to provide; doing so can look like cheating, and you can’t afford to look that to your department colleagues. I’ve seen this hurt people.
    In providing input, go with people who you believe think well of your work, even if they’re not big shots. Among those who don’t know you, go with people who aren’t jerks, as those tend to be overly critical and untroubled by derailing someone’s career.
    How do you know if someone’s a jerk? If there’s no gossip, an easy shortcut is book reviews. There does not exist the nice person who’s written a mean book review.

    Reply
  6. Recently tenured

    I just finished this process (successfully, yay!). I never contacted anyone because at my university, all writers must be arms-length–i.e., you can have met them before, but never co-authored or worked together, or studied under them. I picked my writers by looking for people working in my area who I knew thought highly of my work (e.g, cited it, invited me to workshops, etc.). In some cases I had met them before, in which case i knew they were fair and not overly critical. In others I’d never met them but took advice from others and excluded some who had a reputation for being unnecessarily harsh.

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  7. B

    At my college, when going up for tenure, candidates are told to ask people in their field to write letters of support for tenure. I know this is highly unusual. But it is how my college does things. So I did need to have some kind of relationship with enough people to feel fine asking them to write a letter for me. There are no impartial, external evaluations at my college. It’s simply not done here. I’m not justifying how we do things. I’m simply reporting in entirely descriptive, non-evaluative terms. I’ve been on the promotion and tenure committee here for many years. The committee members usually seem to think as follows: As long as the candidate has good teaching evaluations, is liked by his or her department, has at least a couple of decent publications, and is able to secure at least three external letters of support, that is good enough for tenure here. We have very poor salaries but are in a sweet location. The poor salaries are often used as a justification for the promotion and tenure committee to be lenient in awarding tenure.

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