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Is Interfolio Protecting the Confidentiality of Letters of Recommendation?

Brian Leiter

A philosopher elsewhere writes:

There is something going on that might be worth discussing. I think it might be fairly common–at least, I suspect it is fairly easy to do–to see one's letters of recommendation if you use interfolio. All you have to do is have them sent to a friend or set up a dummy recipient address. Candidates have an interest in seeing their letters, and I would be amazed, unless there are controls I don't know about, if people weren't doing this. *As far as I can tell*, there are no controls on Interfolio of the usual sort that a department would normally impose if it were the entity sending out the letters, ie only sending it out to advertised job addresses, etc. 

Is this right?  Have readers heard of this happening?  Signed comments preferred, but all comments must include a valid e-mail address at least.

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15 responses to “Is Interfolio Protecting the Confidentiality of Letters of Recommendation?”

  1. anonymous

    I can report of an instance where someone did send his/her confidential letters to a friend. However, Interfolio realized what had happened after the fact and contacted the individual's graduate institution.

    Reply
  2. Brian Weatherson

    I'm not using Interfolio, and know nothing about it, but I would be interested in knowing whether anyone thinks Academic Jobs Online has the same security hole.

    Reply
  3. Neil Easterbrook

    I imagine it's a common practice among those using Interfolio, but the technique isn't new. It was commonplace for those students of my generation (the 1980s) to have full credential files sent from their university career offices to dummy addresses or to friends, primarily, tho not exclusively, to check letters of reference. In my case, I show my doctoral students the letters I've written; I also never promise to write a letter of reference when I have serious reservations about a student; in such cases, I discuss with the student the kind of letter I could write, and leave them with the option to include or exclude a letter from me. I think full disclosure and full transparency the right pedagogical and professional obligation.

    Reply
  4. Nate Sharadin

    @Brian: It would be in principle possible to create a fake job and perform the same kind of maneuver on Academic Jobs Online, but in practice much much harder. You would have to convince the staff that you (the intended fake recipient) were a real department. My guess is this would not be easy. (They say: "We will verify your information before we can open an account and it might take some time."). You'd also have to pay $500 to open a "hiring line." Further, letter writers are able to see who has access to their letters, which jobs the applicant has applied to, which of these letters those jobs can view, and when the expiration date for that viewing is.

    Some of the security advantages of AcademicJobsOnline come from the fact that everyone logs into the system to use it. No messy 'sending' the various materials (including letters) here and there.

    And, as I'm sure you already know, but it's worth mentioning again, AcademicJobsOnline is *free* for applicants.

    Reply
  5. L. A. Paul

    The possibility of a security problem like this brings out why we need a centralized jobs list such as the JFP. Perhaps what could happen is that Interfolio, working with the APA, agrees to only send letters/dossiers to addresses for jobs listed in the JFP or jobs listed in other publications that the APA officially recognizes (for example, the CHE). For the much smaller number of positions that are not widely advertised, the advertiser could ask the APA to officially "recognize" the job for Interfolio, or the candidate could ask letter writers to send letters directly.

    Reply
  6. Michael

    I agree with Neil in comment 3. That's what happened to me: I asked my supervisor and he told me he would rather not, and told me why, then left it open to me whether I still wanted him to go ahead and write it. (I have no axe to grind – I still asked, he still wrote, I still got an interview.)

    I've almost certainly no idea what I'm talking about from the reference-writing point of view, as I haven't done this (I'm not a lecturer). But purely from the student-applicant point of view i.e. the lowest rung on the academic ladder, it seems odd if so much fuss is made in a recent thread about how refereeing articles should be transparent and sent unaltered to those who submit articles in the name of morality/ethics/courtesy/obligation/expectation/improvement/the whole point of the process etc. if such a thing does not apply to candidates who aren't paid for the privilege of doing philosophy but rather struggling (and often paying) for the privilege.

    That's not to say the issues in the article referee thread are not all to the good, but let's throw a bone to students here too no? And I think this applies anyway also to those who already have university jobs in philosophy and are trying to move.

    An application with a stunning piece of writing could still be destroyed by an awful reference. And a great reference with an explanation of mitigating factors might do a lot for an otherwise mediocre application.

    Why would we – by which I mean anyone applying for a position, whether a student or lecturer – not want to know what it is that is written about us when applications, like articles, take lots of time and sometimes money, and the reference content might help us improve in areas, or address them in our application etc. Writing a letter for a student/colleague may be uncomfortable if you can't be all positive. But it is not like writing an honest appraisal of your boss: the balance of power is probably even, or in the favour of the letter writer.

    And if you are worried about offending the person who asks, either by content or not writing, then like comment three says, just be honest and talk it through. Don't reject with no comments for improvement or smile then write bad things.

    But as I said, and meant, I have no idea about this from the letter-writer's point of view.

    Reply
  7. Michael Kremer

    Michael: you seem to consider this only from the point of view of the letter-writer and the person for whom the letter is being written. But the obvious point of view to consider is that of the hiring department. They might worry that letter-writers who do not expect their letters to be confidential will not write candidly about their students, especially when making comparisons with their peers, or their elders (as noted in an earlier thread many departments see such comparisons as important).

    One solution that can allay some of your fears is to have a placement officer in the applicant's department who vets all the letters. But the fact is, not all letters are going to be equally strong, nor should they be if they are to serve any purpose at all. And hiring departments might worry that if letters are not confidential, they will become indistinguishable from one another, in their evaluative aspect.

    Reply
  8. Zed

    Dr. Kremer,

    Surely after advising an applicant a recommendation will be less than stellar, a tenured professor needn't worry that the letter is less than stellar. If so, why would the department receiving the letter take a letter as less than candid?

    While a less than glowing letter may result in a bad reaction, surely a letter can stop short of outright slander while communicating a clear message to the applicant and the anticipated reader that a candidate is simply not in the author's opinion ready. A non-confidential letter might provide an applicant an idea of her own academic weakness or perhaps an opportunity to clarify a misunderstanding.

    A secret letter about you, surely fills even the least paranoid person with angst, and the practice is subject to abuse. Why should a student be forced to decipher that the weakest part of her application was a secret letter about her? Isn't there a concern that the most subjective part of an application is the most subject to abuses that would be remedied if the letter were disclosed? If Prof. Smith has otherwise great relationships with students but believes females should not be in the profession, wouldn't he be able to abuse a confidential letter in the worst way?

    Reply
  9. Donald Bruckner

    The interfolio FAQs address this at https://www.interfolio.com/helpcenter/index.cfm/210 under the question "Can I deliver my confidential letters to myself?":

    "Interfolio monitors all deliveries to ensure that members do not send confidential letters to themselves. We take the confidentiality of letters very seriously and have put technical and manual safeguards into place to ensure that confidential letters are sent to appropriate and verified receivers who have requested letters as part of an academic or professional application."

    I think it makes sense to attribute to them a desire not to violate FERPA, so it seems reasonable to believe that they do have the stated safeguards in place. This isn't to say no one could defeat the safeguards, nor to assess the relative true confidentiality of interfolio letters in comparison to paper copies handled by a department secretary, or Academic Jobs Online, or whatever.

    Reply
  10. John Gardner

    To continue the digression concerning who one owes an obligation to in writing a reference. The culture of reference-writing in the UK is different, but I always consider my primary obligation to be to the recipient of the reference. I tell my student if I will not be a good choice of referee, but beyond that I write the account that, so far as I can do it, will lead to the hiring institution making an academically sound decision, just as if they had consulted me independently. I sometimes have to explain this when I write to US institutions, who assume that I am writing not a reference but a 'recommendation'. I also have to insist to hiring institutions in the UK or Europe that they must not release a letter to anyone under data protection or privacy legislation without referring back to me so that I may decide whether to enforce my right of strict confidentiality. If they will not make an undertaking to do this, I will not write.

    Reply
  11. John

    It should be said that even if letter-writers DID have some sort of obligation to reveal their letters to job applicants, still it would obviously be wrong for applicants to use Interfolio to send these letters to themselves or their friends, or for Interfolio not to have in place safeguards against this sort of thing. When a letter is requested on Interfolio, it is up to the one requesting it to choose whether it is confidential (i.e., unavailable to the one requesting it) or not: to signal to one's letter-writers that their letters are confidential and then go behind their backs to see what they've written would be appalling behavior, and if I learned that someone had done this with one of my letters I would promptly withdraw it. If someone ASKED to see a letter I had written about them, that would obviously be different.

    Reply
  12. Zed

    Please revise 8 to read (shows me for writing late in the evening):

    "Dr. Kremer,

    Surely after advising an applicant her recommendation will be less than stellar, a tenured professor needn't worry about the consequences of providing a less than stellar letter. If that is the case, why would the department receiving the letter take an open letter as being less candid than a confidential one?

    While a less than glowing letter may result in a poor reaction from the subject of the letter, surely a tenured professor should be able to explain why she was unable to write a stronger letter. The tenured professor is clearly the more powerful party, and perhaps revealing the reasons for the poor poor letter might lead to clarification of a misunderstanding or a candidate to reconsider her goals.

    As it is, the practice of a secret letter is unnerving, and unfair. It is reasonable for even the least paranoid person to have some angst about the content of a confidential letter about herself. If the letter is particularly important, as it is here, all the more reason to be paranoid. Further, if an application is rejected, the applicant is left to guess as to which part of her application was weakest. Rejection is a heart wrenching process in itself, and a devastating one where the applicant is unable to even guess which part of the application is most in need of improvement.

    Finally, isn't making the most subjective part of an application confidential, subjecting the entire system to the possibility of abuse? What is to stop a letter writer who harbor a secret belief that females should not be professional philosophers, from never writing a strong recommendation for a female candidate. While I doubt most people are deceitful enough to intentionally mislead a candidate as to the quality of a letter, an implicit bias could lead to the same result.

    What is wrong, then, with ensuring a candidate is afforded every opportunity to present the best possible letter she can? If a professor writes a poor letters, why not allow the candidate to try and find a better letter? Is such secrecy really required or just a way to avoid the unpleasantness of being required to explain oneself?"

    I realize that isn't much better… Anyway, thanks for posting.

    Reply
  13. Timmy

    These are genuine concerns worth addressing — but I'd also like to note that with a job market that forces students to sometimes apply to 10, 20, 30 schools, Interfolio is a valuable service for meeting letter deadlines, especially to students whose advisor may be department chair or often travelling.

    Reply
  14. Charles Nicholz

    I was on the market in fall of 2008. I had one letter of recommendation on Interfolio that I was a little worried about, because the author of the letter was notorious for being unorganized — I thought he might have just dashed off a few lines and left it at that. So…. I had a copy of it sent to a friend at another university, which she then forwarded to me. It turned out that the letter was perfectly fine, and I got a job. I still feel bad about having compromised the integrity of the process, but it was very easy to accomplish. Maybe things have changed since 2008?

    Reply
  15. Robert

    It seems that Charles Nicholz is a pseudonym — apparently he recognizes the error in his strategy, despite the justification in the final lines. Perhaps rather than encouraging such behavior of our current students, candidates can ask their department chairs, graduate director, or their dissertation sponsor to review the letters for suitability before delivery. Or maybe he could have just asked the author.

    Reply

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