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

Photo Joanna Soltan.

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.
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.”
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.”
… 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.
Professor Rafael Luque: A model for us all.
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?
Trump, Berlusconi, Murdoch: An era is closing. Ave atque vale.
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.
Trump’s defense lawyer is Todd Blanche: Mr. Dead White.
[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.
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