Re-reference letter

I had to chase up my second referee because he was disrupting my MRes postgraduate application to an EU uni by ignoring my email a few weeks earlier. Here's my 1st June 2016 email to him:

This is the factually inaccurate, rude, totally inappropriate email response I received back from the referee: 

 

Well, at least I assume it was written and sent by my referee because it was sent from his email account and signed by him. However, it contains information that he should know to be false yet he writes it anyway and shows total ignorance of our previous emails in 2014. On the 13th of February 2014, he emailed:

So here we see that in 2014 I have asked him if he's prepared to be a referee and he's already agreed to be second referee yet in 2016 claims I haven't "followed the conventional route of asking me whether I can provide a reference". So this email is falsely claiming I haven't done something I have! Nobody submits a "reference anonymously" - what is he suggesting? How inappropriate! All references have the referee's name and contact details etc on the reference to ensure that they are identifiable people. Anonymity does not come into it in any way! I cannot enable him to submit his reference himself "through the designated application systems" because this university's application system was a password protected site for prospective students which included a compulsory field for prospective students to upload their two references themselves. I can hardly give him my password to get into my personal profile and upload things himself on it! That would be a breach of password and data security and makes no sense at all. Check this out, a print out of the university's official application system which clearly states to prospective students: "you are required to provide us with" the documents, including two "recommendation letters", which can "be scanned and attached" and uploaded "under 'options below":

 I wasn't invited to apply for the MRes until very shortly before the application deadline so I only had around a week to create two online application profiles (one for the country and one for the uni), fill in the online application form, find and upload documentation and contact referees. 

His bullet point reasons for refusing to write the reference he was obliged to write and email to me directly are total and utter nonsense, disrespectful, inappropriate and factually completely wrong. 

The referees should have been organised enough to have written out at least a general template for their academic references for me back in 2014. So it required very little work from them to simply update their reference in 2016 and email it to me. Hence, his excuse it not being "in a timely fashion" is irrelevant and rude. It wasn't my fault if he hadn't organised how to provide me with references years in advance nor that I was not invited to apply in a timely fashion. And a "research proposal" isn't relevant for an MRes application because it's not an entrance requirement as the first year is only taught so he didn't need to hold up this application or deny a reference for the MRes on these grounds. To claim he is "not best placed to comment on your aptitudes, having had very limited teaching contact with you in the past" and that I should ask someone who is "better acquainted" with my work is plain wrong, especially as only a second referee. As I reminded him back in 2014 by email, he had been my tutorial tutor in my final year for the highest level module option (political philosophy) so knew me through my participation in tutorials, marked two of my politics essays (marks: 69%; 71%) and had lectured to me in my second year on the Ethics module. He is equally placed alongside the other 2 potential second referee lecturers who had the same level of teaching contact as him e.g. one term final year tutorial teaching plus marking and lecturing. He is perfectly eligible to be a second referee and is simply being unprofessional. 

As for the body of his email, I'm not the one being "unreasonable" - it's him who is being unreasonable! Don't label anything I do inappropriate - I am the one with evidence and justification for what I am doing and sticking to the facts! As for "highly unorthodox" - that is a very odd expression, especially given I've just written and presented my paper on Spinoza and I already interpret him as an Orthodox Jew. 

It's part of the job of a lecturer who has marked my work to enable me to continue my education and do postgrad study. That's the university's obligation towards past students. This is why public universities are government funded and why I received a survey one year after graduating to check whether my uni had enabled me to obtain a job or postgraduate study within one year of gaining my degree. I'd already waited 3 years for a postgrad application opportunity so I was overdue for building on my degree. The government part-funded my BA degree to ensure that I could gain employment and further postgraduate qualifications! So he is not entitled to deny me these opportunities and, furthermore, he has no right to do so. Moreover, I'm not paid to waste my time chasing up paid lecturers to make them do their job properly. Let alone deal with their disrespectful, pompous and condescending attitude problems 😠 - that is not how you correspond with any adult. I deserve to be treated with respect! 

This is in the public interest because women need to be aware of the problems and harassment they can encounter when needing a reference to further their career and higher education. I'm not the first, I won't be the last and I know there have been other women to suffer from serious harassment from male referees and some went public with their story. If every woman did that, we might make more progress than creating yet more policies that won't work.