By Lucy Ferriss. I am not prepared to engage in the Passive Wars. As with any dispute, however, it behooves us to know what the heck it is we’re fighting about. As my colleague Geoffrey Pullum and others have observed, verb constructions described as passive often aren’t any such thing, and the very word passive suggests a kind of prose that lacks get-up-and-go, or whatever it is our sentences ought to have. More...
By Allan Metcalf. Back in the day, the take away we knew was a verb plus adverb combination that had something to do with subtraction — six take away three is three. In the 21st century, however, take away has been compressed into a noun, like carbon into a diamond. More...
By Anne Curzan. The news was forwarded to me over email. “Grammar Police = Female Millennials.” And apparently 46 percent of American adults typically correct family or friends when they mispronounce words. More...
By Geoffrey Pullum. August is gone, and with it the Edinburgh Festival and its fabulous Fringe. The grand orchestral concert with fireworks over the castle was on Monday night, the climax of a perfect summer day. All the most ambitious comedians in the country are now checking out of their rented accommodation and heading for the train station or the airport. And I have promises to keep. More...
By Al Martinich and Tom Palaima. The removal of Jefferson Davis’s statue from its prominent location on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin this week may appear to end the university’s difficult struggle to shake off its historical embrace of racist values and practices. It does not. More...
By Eric Johnson. Like any good bureaucrat, I spend a fair amount of time attending academic conferences or sitting through campus presentations. I’ve even been known to enjoy a good webinar every now and again. More...
By William J. Peace. For the past 37 years, I have routinely been asked, "Can you have sex?" I consider those who ask me that question rude. But more important, the question emphasizes my lowly social status as a paralyzed man. Despite 40 years of progressive legislation designed to empower people with disabilities, negative stereotypes persist. We are considered to be inferior, physically deviant, and asexual. That puzzles me, because I have witnessed the development of a substantial literature on sex and disability. More...
By Eric Kelderman and Mary Ellen McIntire. Two days after faculty members peppered J. Bruce Harreld with questions about his qualifications to run a major research university, Iowa’s statewide Board of Regents named him on Thursday as president of the University of Iowa. More...
By Steve Kolowich. Nuance is revered in higher education. That’s especially true in sociology, where scholars spend their lives digging into the fine grain of human social behavior, often finding even finer grain underneath. More...
By Samuel Lovett. Looking for great university deals? From NUS Extra to UniDays, these are the best places to look for the top student offers. Read more...
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