Post by Thomas Kahle

I hope this email finds you well and that your semester is proceeding smoothly and productively. Thank you sincerely for taking the time to reach out, and for the care and consideration that so clearly went into composing such a thorough, well-structured, and professionally formatted message. It is genuinely a pleasure to receive correspondence of this level of polish, and I want to assure you that I have read every word of it with the full attention it deserves.

Having said that, and I trust you will forgive me for moving directly to the heart of the matter rather than circling it at length, I find myself compelled to reflect on the position your message asks me to occupy. It is a position I am, I confess, somewhat at a loss to understand.

Let us enumerate, for the sake of clarity, what has actually occurred. A complete stranger, with whom I have no prior connection whatsoever, no shared collaborators, no previous correspondence, no geographic proximity, and no verifiable record of work in my particular research area, has reached out to me via an unsolicited email. That email, to all appearances, was produced with the assistance of a language model, and it requests nothing less than an online discussion, a research visit of one to three weeks at my institution at the height of summer 2027, and, by way of a modest additional inquiry, information regarding the financial assistance my department might be in a position to offer for your travel, accommodation, and living expenses.

I want to be very deliberate about this. You are asking me, a complete stranger to you, to invest my time, the time of my group, my institutional resources, and, presumably, a not-inconsiderable sum of money in hosting a person with whom I have never had a single meaningful interaction, on the sole basis of a cold email. I ask you, with all the candour at my disposal: why would I do that? On what evidence would I conclude that such an arrangement would be mutually productive, rather than a net drain on the time and energy of my group? Your message offers me no named problem to work on, no concrete result to study, no particular overlap that is specific to my group as opposed to any other group in the field, and no track record that I can independently assess. It simply asserts that my work is 'valuable,' a courtesy I appreciate but which does not, I fear, constitute a research plan.

1/2

Now, I do not wish to be unkind. I am not insinuating that you are not a talented and motivated researcher, nor that your doctoral work is without merit. I have no basis to judge the former, and no desire to be unfair about the latter. My point is far more mundane, and far more unremarkable than the disappointment you may feel on reading this. Academic relationships of the kind you are proposing are not initiated by template-shaped cold outreach. They grow out of genuine overlapping research agendas, out of conferences and collaborations and long conversations, out of a demonstrated ability to contribute to an ongoing programme of work. They are earned and sustained, not requested, and they certainly are not requested by a stranger who has assumed, without a single shred of evidence, that a host would welcome them, house them, and fund them.

I trust this provides you with the frankly non-negotiable clarity you were seeking. I understand this may not be the response you were hoping for, and I would be the last person to fault you for trying. But I also believe that honesty of this kind is a far greater service to you than a mealy-mouthed, unhelpful non-answer would have been, and I hope that in the years to come you will find the answer to your search in a relationship that is built on the solid ground I have described, rather than on the thin ice of assumption.

Please know that I wish you every success in your doctoral research and in your professional career. I am genuinely grateful for your interest, even if I must, with respect, decline the specific venture you have set out. If, in the future, you have a concrete research question or a tangible mathematical problem with which my group is genuinely well placed to assist, I would be happy to reconsider. That, however, is the door I can open; the one you knocked on leads, I am afraid, nowhere.

I remain, with every best wish,

Thomas Kahle

2/2

@tomkalei can I use this as a template for the ~5 PhD and visiting scholar applications I am getting now per week pretty please? My standard reply template is now a 4-liner, but I prefer the eloquence of yours ☺️. (How many prompts did it take to get that nice reply?)