I submitted my op-ed to the New York Times as per Dame Eleanor Hull’s desire, so we will see what comes next. If they say nothing by the end of the week, I will be asking where to send it next; it started out as a guest post for a blog. I also have page proofs of the article that started as a guest column for a local newsletter. It will be in the September/October issue of Academe. For a revision of my possible NYT piece, I can consider these concise new remarks by that Tenured Radical.
Meanwhile in the October, 2012 PMLA, there is an article on hit men in the narco-war. Sicarios are “end-point examples of global finance work” (Biron 832). This article is really interesting and I will not have time to seriously read it, but some key phrases are self-erasure and murder as communication or speech.
Also murder and the production of subjectivity, murder as work, the global finance system as extinguisher of life.
There is a truly fascinating article by Margaret Ferguson on letters of recommendation. She thought hard about accepting a a thank-you gift for one of these. I do not think twice. I have been informed that the writing of letters of recommendation cannot be counted as either a teaching, and advising, or a service activity on my very deconstructed annual report. As far as the university is concerned this is something I do recreationally.
I think darkly that I must be the only person who writes letters that get people jobs and fellowships and graduate school admission, so they are disqualifying letter-writing so as to push me further down in the competition for raises. In any case, they insist this is a favor I do off the clock for friends, and not a professional activity. Therefore I have so far accepted $25 in books and $25 in wine.
There is much more in Ferguson’s article, though, and it is very important. And there is an article on Hegel and slavery by Gerard Aching in which I ought to be interested, but I am bored by Hegel. Seeing this article caused me to look up Frederick Douglass, though, once again, who was once a slave on my family’s plantation. He eventually learned to use folklore and magic, protecting himself from that slave-breaker by carrying a certain root.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Chez moi, writing letters of recommendation counts for teaching. It doesn’t count very much, and I think lots of people don’t even bother to put them down because they’re not worth much, but I think if lots of students ask a particular person for a letter, that says something. We also have an advanced composition course in which (under at least one prof) students are required to write letters of application for scholarships, jobs, grad school, etc., and polish them until they are really good; this prof lists the accomplishments of students who used the letters they wrote for this class.
I don’t think I’ve ever been offered a gift after I wrote a letter, but I really appreciate the students who provide me with statements of purpose, information about the job or program, resume or CV, material that makes it easy to write a good letter. That’s a gift in itself.
Anyway, it seems to me not very professional to treat letter-writing as “recreational.”
Yes, but this is just one of the ways in which my university is not very professional and/or has redefined academic work such that much of it does not count. Teaching is hours and number of students taught only, and student evaluation statistics. The standard idea that time – effort spent and quality of total teaching includes contribution to student accomplishments by advising and letter-writing, teaching done outside of class, etc., is not used. At the same time, thank-you cards from students, the kind that say “I loved your class,” are routinely included in tenure files.
I mainly meant to support your sense that this was not professional of your university. Maybe you didn’t need that. Sometimes it seems that you welcome confirmation that your perceptions are correct.
I do — ! 🙂 There is more to trash about the university, including everyone’s servile attitude and that they are not sure what research is. I should be more polite but I am really tired of arguing with people who have information only second and third hand, and so are reporting formulae, as from ALEC or the Koch brothers, etc. Impatient with the institution today…