In “Excuse My French,” the NYTimes charts the contemporary trajectory of the French language–which now has more than twice as many speakers outside the country as within, many of whom have an ambivalent relationship to the metropolitan. As one Algerian writer put it, he uses French “to tell the French that I am not French.”

And in more local news, in today’s Chronicle you can find a profile I wrote of visiting Haitian scholar Jean Casimir, who is teaching a course this semester with Professor Dubois.

Happy reading and happy weekend.