Rebecca Schuman
Education
“Demoralizing but Informative”For job-seeking academics, December is the least wonderful time of the year. The academic wikis are why.
Education
College Students Want to Kill Foreign Language RequirementsUniversities should tell them nein.
Brow Beat
Trader Joe’s German Brother Aldi Is Getting Some Stiff Competition on the U.S. Supermarket Scene
Culturebox
Why Americans Are So Bloody Awful at British AccentsIf British actors’ American accents are “bang on,” why are Americans’ British accents such rubbish?
Education
Whatever You Do, Don’t Say This to a ProfessorCollege students often believe they’re helping themselves when they make one particular appeal. They’re not.
Five-ring Circus
Why Isn’t Gabby Douglas Smiling?How a champion gymnast became the Olympics’ easiest target.
Five-ring Circus
The Greatest Gymnast of All TimeWhen Simone Biles grows up, she wants to be like Kohei Uchimura.
Five-ring Circus
The Savior of Gymnastics Dance Is a 16-Year-Old From New JerseyHow Laurie Hernandez can save the floor exercise from horrible pirouettes and herky-jerky poses.
Books
A Perfect 16.223Dvora Meyers explains why gymnastics’ perfect 10 went away—and why it’s not coming back.
Education
Stop Problematizing Academic JargonIt’s easy to mock specialized vocabulary. In these anti-intellectual times, we need it more than ever.
Education
Student Journalists Are Under ThreatUniversities are increasingly cracking down on their speech. That’s bad news for them and very bad news for democracy.
Education
Oh Good, a “Professor Watch List”The timing of a new website meant to identify liberal academics is grotesque.
Culturebox
Just in Time for Our Impending Nuclear Holocaust … It’s Nena!The “99 Luftballons” singer on Trump, playing the U.S. for the first time, and the Americans who butcher her song at karaoke.
The XX Factor
That Sexist Job-Search Advice About Engagement Rings? Female Academics Have Heard It for Years.
Music
How Olympic Gymnasts Choose the Perfect Tacky Songs for Their Floor RoutinesFrom the Sex and the City theme to Madama Butterfly to Queen Bey.
Five-ring Circus
Why Do Gymnasts Have Such Strange, Elaborate Hairdos?An investigation of 50 years of gymnastics hair trends.
Brow Beat
Maybe Melania Trump Wasn’t Plagiarizing. Perhaps She Was Doing Scholarship “European-Style.”