Up in Boston for Easter, La Kid…

… embraces her cousin while waiting to chomp down on mazurek.

Photo Joanna Soltan.

I wondered when our cartoonists might start drawing dead children floating in their own blood.

I guess that time is now.

Though of course this body is left far more intact than the AR-15 must have left the real ones in Nashville.

What’s the Matter with Wharton?

I told you it’s hard to keep up.

Even if, like UD, you really try.

Asked for a reaction, one Wharton insider said: “We clearly need to search our soul. But we haven’t got a soul.”

Not sure why it took so long, but…

… better late, etc.

‘”[It’s] worth [it] to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths … so that we can have the Second Amendment,” Charlie Kirk said at a recent Faith event.’

But in announcing the launch of his new organization – Gunning for Granny – Kirk went on to say that there’s something we can all do right away to stem the tide of school massacres.

“With the support of the NRA, we are today rolling out Gunning for Granny, a grassroots movement aimed at redirecting shooters’ rage from elementary school settings to assisted living communities. We all mourn the senseless shattering of little ones just beginning their life journey, whereas the massacre of the elderly – just as easily accomplished within the confined and concentrated setting of dementia care facilities – is a far more tolerable, rational, and achievable event. If we can make the case – via PSAs, viral memes, and interviews with thought leaders – that the effect of assault weapons on an eighty year old body can be every bit as satisfying as their effect on an eight year old body, we can, to quote Shakespeare’s play about the senile, “show the heavens more just.” Gunning for Granny will use humor and humanity to target the most burdensome among us, while at the same time rescuing that most precious gift of all: our children.”

Performative Demagogues at Oberlin and Stanford…

… have gotten those schools into plenty of trouble. Hired to think and act in terms of social justice, some of these people turn out to be bullies who like to lead Children’s Crusades against perceived enemies.

For Oberlin’s demagogue, the enemy was a bakery. Her vicious crusade against its blameless owners ended up costing that school $36 million.

Stanford’s person led a group of law students in shouting down and forcing out of the room a visiting judge.

Stanford’s dean is not only appalled by this inane and ignorant behavior; she has put the demagogue on leave and apologized to the judge. She has also condemned, in a lengthy letter, the idiots who followed the fool’s lead, and she has mandated, for all current law students, a seminar in free speech.

Meanwhile, some conservative judges are planning to boycott all Stanford law grads if they apply for internships in their offices. Some of those applicants from Stanford will of course be conservatives, which is just too damn bad for them.

So … we can expect smart conservative law school applicants to decide not to apply to Stanford.

‘So far this year, Luque has published 58 studies at a rate of one every 37 hours.’

Professor Rafael Luque: A model for us all.

Pro-Life vs. Pro-Tasiewicz:

The result shouldn’t surprise anyone. Just ask most Americans, and they’ll tell you.

‘”Despite being on probation for a prior shooting, the defendant was walking around in a park for children with a loaded gun. He has a history of convictions for violent offenses and clearly continues to be a significant danger to the community. I’m pleased this case was resolved very quickly and that the defendant will be off the street for up to fifteen years,” District Attorney Quinn said.’

How quickly will he again be released on probation, so he and his “9mm pistol, loaded with 12 rounds of ammunition in a 13 round magazine” can once more visit Funz Trampoline Park?

Vile rich old farts on the decline.

Trump, Berlusconi, Murdoch: An era is closing. Ave atque vale.

Paging Dr

Freud.

Totally madly insanely blooming viburnum, spicing the air…

… already in early April. In UD‘s garden.

“I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of massacre, and to face in the smithy of my soul the yet-uncreated school shooters of my race…”

As Stephen Dedalus might have put it if he lived in the United States of America in the twenty-first century.

In virtually every case of our prolific young demented mass killers, neighbors, friends, and family members eventually emerge to testify to their obvious mental illness, their obvious violent tendencies, the guns their fucked up parents left lying around the house. They encountered it, they faced it — they did everything but tell anyone about it.

[Ethan Crumbley’s mass killing] weighs heavily on [one of his neighbors] now because she wonders what she could have done differently to help her young neighbor-turned-school-shooter.

“This haunts me, big time,” she said. “I will always wonder, ‘What else could we have done?'”

This woman recognized Crumbley was nuts and his parents gunned and ginned up degenerates, but she didn’t contact family services or the police. She tried talking to the Crumbleys and got screamed at for her trouble, and then she shrank away. She’s probably lucky the family didn’t shoot her.

So I understand. Going to the authorities would make drunk, violent people even angrier at her. Yes. I understand.

‘He was never, ever OK … They would go out and drink and leave him home alone. … He was scared. He would come over to my house and say, ‘I can’t be here because I’m going to get into trouble.’

She never spoke to Jennifer Crumbley again after that argument. …

‘Ethan didn’t have a prayer …’

His school, just as aware of the threat he posed, tried feebly to get his parents to take him away, but in the event administrators failed to stand their ground against the scary Crumbleys.

Scripted by Nabokov

Trump’s defense lawyer is Todd Blanche: Mr. Dead White.

Black Veil Blackmail

[A] police officer who came to my workplace [in Tehran], which is a public place – and many women were not wearing hijab there – just asked me for a bribe and went away. So these laws have turned into an income source for the police.

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UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte