Word: besets
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Many graduate schools of education in research universities in the United States have been beset in recent years by perplexing problems of identity. Some have not been sure why they existed, or what they were supposed to be teaching, or on what subjects they should do research, or to what forms of employment their students would go. As their analytical capacities to understand the educational enterprise have grown, their options for programmatic activities have also increased...
With contemporary society beset with ever-increasing obstacles, though, things aren't always quite so formulaic. What happens, for instance, when something fails to go according to plan at the shipyard, and someone questions the sense of the entire system? Worse yet, if the rebel is a member of one's own family? How strongly do unions and brothers bond...
...George Sibbald's play Brothers, the McMillan family artery has been badly ruptured, and the threat of an irreparable clot is imminent. Beset by internal divisiveness, the McMillans quarrel and argue incessantly; the entire second act is an unbroken family battle. Superficially, Brothers seems little more than a soap-opera amalgamation of labor unrest, family feuds, and terminal illness, but fine writing and acting elevate it beyond the level of daytime serial...
...disappeared, leaving fewer than 1.9 million. Low-wage producers in the Far East and Latin America are gobbling up American markets like a Pac-Man run amuck. Hardest hit among U.S. manufacturers is Manhattan's Seventh Avenue, which has the largest share of domestic apparel sales. It is beset by relatively high labor costs, exorbitant rents and a panoply of other problems that come from doing business in the heart of a huge city...
...personality is a deep sense of religious calling. "I'm clearly a product of God's mission for me," he fervently says. "I'm a very ordinary person in my tastes and interests, but I have been used as an instrument in extraordinary ways." Yet he often seems beset by deep personal doubts, as if unable to erase the taunts of his youth. In private he is quiet to the point of being withdrawn. Says a friend: "People who have only seen him in public wouldn't recognize him." Despite his wide experience, he is painfully unworldly. "If you take...