Formation Continue du Supérieur

Par Anaïs Grockowiak. A l'origine, l'université de Nanterre a été pensée suite à la hausse du nombre d'étudiants, dans les années 1950. Mais, bien qu'étant implantée dans une zone déshéritée, elle est rapidement devenue un lieu stratégique de l'ouest parisien. En avance sur son temps, l'établissement a toujours su prendre les bons virages au bon moment… Décryptage d'une université qui a quantité de projets pour continuer de bien exister dans le paysage universitaire français.
Le 5 novembre 1963, la première pierre de l'université de Nanterre était posée. Cinquante ans plus tard jour pour jour, Paris X, l'université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, a fait du chemin ! Mais l'établissement qui a notamment vu passer Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Valérie Trierweiler, Jeanne Mas ou encore David Guetta ne compte pas en rester là. Suite...

By Ben Yagoda. For some time, I have been planning to write a Lingua Franca post on Somebody Said Something Stupid Syndrome. SSSSS (as I abbreviate it) begins when an individual writes or is recorded as saying something strikingly venal, inhumane, and/or dumb. The quote is then taken up and derided—in social media or blogs—by thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of other individuals. And then it spreads from there. More...

By Geoffrey Pullum. A significant body of press coverage suggests that the Conservative-led government of Britain recently recommended wearing jumpers (sweaters) as a response to increases in heating costs, and later did a U-turn. None of this is true; yet somehow the British press managed to create a mini-scandal dubbed Jumpergate out of it. Jumpergate was spawned mostly by quotational inaccuracy verging on mendacity. But it was helped along by certain facts about pragmatic strengthening of specificity of negation. Let me explain. With verbs and adjectives having certain weakly modal meanings (mainly relating to desire, perception, likelihood, opinion, and advice; see The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Pages 838-843), negation is subject to pragmatic strengthening: It is liable to be understood more specifically than the grammar dictates. More...

By David Yaffe. We’ve been hearing these stories for years. Humanities majors are declining. Tenure-track jobs are dwindling. No one cares about books by English professors anymore, at least not this year. The Chronicle has run many articles on this, and Thursday’s New York Times offers a reprise. More...