Assistant English professor Dan Grausam and associate English professor Marina MacKay met at Wash. U. nine years ago and will leave the University together at the end of the academic year. After issues arising with the University granting tenure, the couple decided to depart Wash. U. and take up positions at Durham University in the U.K.

Icome from a large extended family with a lot of engineers, and when I go home for holidays—aside from the usual queries about boyfriends and jobs—I’m generally asked a lot of questions about why I chose the majors I ended up with.

In my high school, the only teachers who spoke with accents were the foreign language teachers, as they were native speakers of French or Spanish. They had a slight accent but were otherwise fluent in English. At Wash. U., it is common to have non-native English speakers either as professors or teaching assistants. I remember [...]

New York Times columnist and former Nixon speechwriter William Safire passed away this week. I did not begin reading The New York Times until after Safire retired his regular op-ed column, but he continued to contribute frequently to The Times through his “On Language” column and occasionally on the newspaper’s opinion blogs, and so I [...]