Over at the Justice Everywhere blog, Anca Gheaus (Sheffield) takes up the question of whether the practice of asking for, reading, and giving weight to reference letters as part of our hiring decisions is on balance good or bad. She says bad, looking at the ways in which the practice of soliciting and relying on letters of recommendation reinforces the influence of pedigree, favors those who have networked with famous philosophers, provides incentives for corruption, and how the letters may fail to reliably track merit, may embed various biases, and often take a lot of time to compose. Read it and discuss it there.