The LSA has now raised in excess of $50,000 in donations to the recently established charitable contribution fund in memory of Ivan Sag. This fund was created in consultation with Ivan’s family, and is to be used to support a named student fellowship at the LSA's biennial Linguistic Institute.

As many linguists have remarked, Ivan was one of the driving forces behind modern Linguistic Institutes, seeing them rightly as a setting where formal academic activity and informal interaction converge happily -- where conversations over food and drink help generate new ideas, and break down disciplinary and status boundaries. He was an active organizer already at the 1974 Amherst Institute, co-directed the 1987 Stanford Institute, and was a formal Associate Director or informal guru at most Institutes in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

The goal for the Ivan Sag Fund is to raise sufficient donations to support endowed student fellowship(s) at the Institute. An endowment relies on the earnings rather than the principal to generate the financial award. In order to support a biennial fellowship that covers tuition, room and board, plus travel, the LSA has succerssfully raised in excess of $50,000. The first fellowship award will be made at the 2015 Institute in Chicago. New contributions will be used to support additional fellowships in future years.

Read a letter on behalf of the fund signed by all of the former directors of the Linguistic Institute (1986-2013).

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