Cleaning the inbox: 'ethical' dilemmas edition

Soon, I hope, I'll get back into this blogging business regularly (though Zero is holding down the fort quite well). In the meantime, I have two e-mailed comments/questions that have been burning a hole in my Inbox. The first from true believer Zombie, who points us towards this question sent into the NYT's Ethicist column, which left him "virtually speechless". The offending solicitation for advice:

I am a university professor. Several graduate students I advise are seeking teaching positions during one of the worst job markets in memory. Would it be ethical to discourage those who still have funding from doing so this year or to tone down their letters of recommendation if they insist on entering the work force, in order to give more senior — and more desperate — students a better chance at getting jobs? Some of my colleagues advocate this. NAME WITHHELD

Long story short, the advisor ended up writing rec's "based solely on his view of the students" hopefully of his own accord and without having to receive advice from a columnist with a B.A. in Music. Still. I wonder why the fuck the advisor couldn't just tell the students with one more year of funding not to go on the market this year, since there really isn't an ethical dilemma here. As Zombie quipped, "I hope this professor isn't a philosopher." Me too.

Second, new fellow smoker MH asks:

Does anybody else find it unacceptable that a department that is hiring would list the names of its job candidates on its website? Such lists effectively become lists of the "losers" after the winners' names are posted on Leiter's blog.

Here, MH is referring to the fact that some schools that are hiring post "Job Talk" on their events pages (or something similar) next to those they giving on-campus talks. I'm not sure I have much of a problem with the practice, after all, if you are giving a job talk, you're already a winner in most everyone's book (fuck, you are a winner if you managed an interview; or, so I like to think), but I can see how it might be offensive. Opinions?

--Jaded Dissertator