Open letter

For other uses, seeOpen letter (disambiguation).

Anopen letteris aletterthat is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally.

J'Accuse…!is an influential open letter written byÉmile Zolain 1898 over theDreyfus Affair.

Bill Gates's Open Letter to Hobbyists from the Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter, January 1976

Open letters usually take the form of aletteraddressed to an individual but are provided to the public throughnewspapersand other media, such as aletter to the editororblog.Critical open letters addressed to political leaders are especially common.

Two of the most famous and influential open letters areJ'accuse...!byÉmile Zolato the president of France, accusing the French government of wrongfully convictingAlfred Dreyfusfor alleged espionage; andMartin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail",including the famous quotation" Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere ".

Context

In previous centuries,letter writingwas a significant form of communication. Letters were normally kept private between the sender and recipient. Consequently, an open letter, usually published in a newspaper or magazine, was a then-rare opportunity for the general public to see what a public figure was saying to another public figure.Open letters, published in newspapers, became more common in the late 19th century.

In the 21st century, documents labeled open letters are common and similar topress releases,with large volumes of open letters being sent automatically to large volumes of newspapers and other publications.In other cases, blog posts and posts on social media are considered open letters.Another shift in the 21st century is the increasing prevalence of open letters with many signatories (similar to anonline petition).

When academic scientists publish open letters about science, they may use some of the same features that they use in academic writing, such as seeking informalpeer reviewbefore publication or believing that the act of communicating itself is a meritorious scholarly activity.

Motivations for writing

There are a number of reasons why an individual would choose the form of an open letter, including the following reasons:

• To publicly criticize something
• To state the author's opinion
• As an attempt to start, or to end,a wider dialogue around an issue
• As an attempt to focus broad attention on the letter's recipient, prompting them to some action
• As part ofpublic relations crisis communicationor organizationalreputation management
• Forhumorvalue
• To make public a communication that must take place as a letter for reasons offormality

Problems

Eric Kaufmanncharacterizes the authoring of open letters inacademiacalling for the dismissal of academics as a form of "hard authoritarianism" accompanyingpolitical correctnessandcancel culture.Others associate open letters with bullying, divisiveness,safetyism(suppressing ideas to ensure a reader's immediate emotional comfort), and a culture of complaining.Online open letters have some qualities in common withgossip,including the impossibility of un-saying what has been disseminated and its use by marginalized groups to complain about others.

Open letters tend not towin hearts and minds,especially if there is a limited connection between the writers, the subject, and the nominal addressee.A close connection, such as university faculty writing to the university president about their hopes and goals for university students, is more likely to be effective at influencing a decision than an absent or distant connection, such as students writing to the internet at large about the students' beliefs about a political situation in a country that most of the students have never visited.

Signatories may feel pressured to sign an open letter written by someone else instead of writing their own.Even if the letter is badly written or does not fully or accurately reflect each signer's own views, to refuse to endorse it may be taken as complete disagreement with the general concept.In other cases, the signer may not fully understand the contents.

Examples

• "Yorkshire Slavery"by abolitionistRichard Oastlerin 1830, about exploitativechild laborpractices in English textile mills
• J'accuse...!by journalistÉmile Zolain 1898, about theDreyfus affairin France
• "Letter from Birmingham Jail"by civil rights leaderMartin Luther King Jr.in 1963, about racism andcivil rights
• Letter toThe Times,signed by 364 economists in 1981, urging then-ChancellorGeoffrey Howeto adopt a different economic policy (he refused)
• "Stop Coddling the Super Rich"by billionaireWarren Buffettin 2011, which encouraged US politicians totax wealthy people more
• "An Open Letter from Shah Ahmad Shafi to the Government and the Public"byShah Ahmad Shafi,which called on the Bangladesh government to take action against the anti-Islamic activities ofShahbag protests.

See also

• Epistolary poem
• List of open letters by academics
• Persuasive writing
• Polemic
• White paper