English vs. French

Edgar Allan Poe first saw in print his poem “The Raven” on January 29, 1845. You might recall from high school literature, that the raven visited the poet on a cold December night and would say only one word, “Nevermore,” a word that rhymed with the poet’s deceased lover, the lost Lenore. The poet shouted at the raven, wanted to know why the bird tormented him, and called it a “Prophet, a thing of evil!” The raven replied, “Nevermore.”

On January 3 this year, Heather MacDonald, a writer for The Wall Street Journal, lamented on an English department’s recent decision to abandon the requirement...