Please don't

The Straight Times's article today (it's on p. H8) referring to former Harvard President Larry Summers as a don has me rankled, because I've always thought that the appellation, as used within the English-speaking academic world, referred to a British professor whose demesne was a college at Cambridge or Oxford (don is actually a Spanish word which derives from the Latin dominus, or master):

First come I, my name is Jowett;
There's no knowledge but I know it.
I am Master of this college:
What I don't know isn't knowledge.

Harvard, of course, like most American universities, doesn't have a residential college system (Yale does though). You won't find American newspapers calling American university professors dons, and I doubt that even the British broadsheets do so either.

On a related note, I'm equally upset when the ST speaks of students going to Harvard, Yale, or wherever to read Political Science, Women's Studies, or whatever. I majored in History and English at Dartmouth. LKY read Law at Cambridge, etc.
Posted by kungfuzi at 10:52 am |