Why haven’t the Dershowitzes staged an intervention?
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At the very least, Dershowitz should “get his ass into the neurologist’s office STAT.”
Why haven’t the Dershowitzes staged an intervention?
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At the very least, Dershowitz should “get his ass into the neurologist’s office STAT.”
Michelle Goldberg calls it “plutocratic rot,” yet another instance (didn’t we just finish washing the taste of Paul Manafort out of our mouths?) of “a deep corruption among mostly male elites across parties, and the way the very rich can often purchase impunity for even the most loathsome of crimes.” (Cue The Great Gatsby.) Speaking of which, we “can expect the feds to add child-pornography charges” to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking indictment. Great.
As longtime readers know, UD‘s go-to international source of truly madly deeply necrotically fulminating all-male plutocratic putrescence is FIFA, world’s most gangrenous gang; but there’s so much more (can you imagine what underage orgies are like in female-slave-state Saudi Arabia)? “Epstein successfully wielded his nearly incomprehensible money and power to influence the decision at the highest levels,” and the Saudis and the soccer boys are similarly financially incomprehensible.
So now all the bad boys go crying to the wings, Acosta, Dershowitz, Mountbatten-Windsor, Clinton (the title of Christopher Hitchens’ book about Clinton – No One Left to Lie To – turns out to have been premature. Plenty more people to lie to!), etc., etc.
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Keep your mind in hell and do not despair, says St. Silouan, and these are fuckin wise words, okay? OKAY????
… b – b – b – but… how do we live them, UD?
Oh, stop blubbering. It’s different for everyone. I can tell you what works for me, but it might not work for you.
Fifty minutes of brisk aqua jogging per day, immediately followed by v. hot whirlpool and then sauna; obsessively listening to Pavarotti singing A Te, O Cara; careful perusal of The Onion; daily readings from the Gospel of Cioran.

The Auschwitz Memorial and Museum gets it said. Little shocks ol’ UD, but she must say she is shocked by this.
He has said his efforts have been driven by the losses of the Holocaust…
A remarkable new form of victimhood.
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And… yeeeeecccchhhh. UD was entirely unaware of this eugenics movement. Gross me out. Handmaid’s Tale city.
The origin of this country’s university admissions scandal is as sweet and fresh-smelling as the scandal itself.
Yesterday the highest ranking priest in Australia; today the highest ranking in France. Whether sexually attacking children or protecting the sexual attackers of children, the Catholic church, at its highest levels, looks debauched – like something out of de Sade.
… The President of the United States.
When I say conman, I’m talking about a man who declares himself brilliant but directed me to threaten his high school, his colleges, and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores.
As I mentioned, I’m giving the Committee today copies of a letter I sent at Mr. Trump’s direction threatening these schools with civil and criminal actions if Mr. Trump’s grades or SAT scores were ever disclosed without his permission.
The irony wasn’t lost on me at the time that Mr. Trump in 2011 had strongly criticized President Obama for not releasing his grades. As you can see in Exhibit 7, Mr. Trump declared “Let him show his records” after calling President Obama “a terrible student.”
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It’s fine to be embarrassed or just want to be private about your grades; other presidents have refused to release theirs. Our current president has threatened legal action.
Hoda Muthana to US gov’t: Off with your head!
.. and you can go to school there! The last time this blog glanced at the University of Louisiana Monroe, in 2010, it quoted a member of the campus community complaining that “We spend a disproportionate amount of money on academics.” At the expense of…? Hey whaddaya think… Athletics adds so much to the… ambiance… of Monroe:
[ULM football player] Kerry Starks, 21, grabbed Abriona Kirt, 26, by the throat with both hands and attempted to drag her out of Hammers nightclub in Monroe by the hair. He also allegedly caused an estimated $400 in property damage by punching out the rear windshield of Kirt’s vehicle with both hands.
Kirt was also placed into custody by Monroe Police after police say she pepper sprayed Starks in the back of the head while he was in handcuffs. Both subjects appeared to be intoxicated …
Corey O’Hern, director of Undergraduate Programs for the Sackler Institute and a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, emphasized the importance of the Institute in fostering collaboration between departments at Yale. According to O’Hern, there is a lack of grants supporting such research on the national level. “The funding, independent where it’s from, has been crucial to developing this interdisciplinary research and training,” said O’Hern. “The thought of it going away is scary, stressful and sad.”
Corey? Do you know what Yale’s currently hoarding in its endowment? Do you know that your university sits on thirty billion dollars? If you don’t realize that Yale doesn’t need Sackler money, I find that scary, stressful and sad. Just ask Andrew Kolodny:
Despite benefits from the Sackler Institute, Kolodny maintained that Yale has a moral impetus to rename the program. “Yale University, if they are taking money from the Sacklers, they are taking blood money,” Kolodny argued. “That money came from the marketing of the Sackler family’s activities which led to millions of people becoming addicted and thousands of people dying.”
“I think Yale University can afford to give the Sacklers back their money,” he added.
‘… David Blight, a history professor and a member of the committee … said the Sackler program is just one of many potentially unsavory names at Yale. The renaming of Yale Commons as the Schwarzman Center following a donation from Stephen Schwarzman ’69, a private equity manager who served briefly on one of President Donald Trump’s business advisory councils, also spurred contention on campus this year. [UD wouldn’t take his name off a building for that reason; but surely Yale could find gross shit out about Schwarzman unrelated to Trump…]
“The reality is, as you know, this is how major universities function. Almost everything here has someone’s name on it,” said Blight. “My first reaction, I’m afraid, is skepticism, because behind great wealth there is always going to be an awkward story. Behind great wealth there will be a crooked path of some type, whether that wealth was made in fossil fuels, pharmaceuticals, real estate or finance.”’
Yes, it’s icing on the cake that the guy’s name is Blight.
He doth speak the truth. Almost all the major moneybags – David Rockefeller comes to mind as one of the highest-profile, at Harvard – are unsavory, and plenty of them go beyond that, well in the direction of Sackler criminality. I mean, Steven Cohen? Pretty much anyone at Yeshiva University? Don’t get me started. Blight’s right that going down that road means noisy incessant sandblasting.
When it’s a way of life in two communities, you get these amusing outcomes.
Controversy swirling around the [amnesty] program [offered to the welfare-fraud-ridden Orthodox Lakewood New Jersey community] has not waned in the last year.
In October, the Asbury Park Press revealed that despite [New Jersey Comptroller Philip J.] Degnan’s public statements that the program would recover all benefits wrongly paid to residents, it recouped less than half and left $2.6 million on the table.
Degnan said he did not know until the final days of the amnesty offer that a rogue employee was offering discounted repayment terms to residents.
But confidential documents obtained by the Press say at least four employees and top-level managers in the office knew and signed off on the negotiated settlements.
The employee who led the amnesty program, Andrew Poulos Jr., claims in an ongoing lawsuit he was fired last year and made a scapegoat for the program while his superiors, who also knew about the deal making, were allowed to continue working. The superiors denied knowing about the discounts, the comptroller’s office has said.
What can UD say? It’s Jersey.
… turns out to be quite something.
But get a load of the Greek system.
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