September 23rd, 2025
Ah the good old days…

… when all the kids in your town died from viruses for which we now have vaccines.

For many ultraorthodox, the old unvaccinated ways remain the best, which is why a bunch of their kids are currently suffering and dying from the measles. Well done!

*******************

Let’s hear from the rabbis.

[S]ome ultra-Orthodox believe that there is a connection between vaccines and autism, despite the fact that the CDC says there is none. A major Orthodox rabbi has called vaccines a “hoax.” He and two other rabbis who sit on the rabbinnical board that guides Agudath Israel of America, the leading Haredi umbrella group, have cast doubt on the efficacy of vaccines.

On the efficacy of measles at killing children I assume these rabbis are in agreement.

September 22nd, 2025
Children’s charity decides that a servile intimate of a pedophile…

… is not an appropriate patron.

In a different era, the yucky Yorks would long since have been shipped to Australia (or Bermuda), enabling the crown to survive and the Yorks to gorge and cavort along the Gold Coast.

****************

Five other charities have now done the same.

****************

Why doesn’t the crown toss these people? UD figures it’s because Andrew in particular simply knows too much dirt on the royal family, and is blackmailing them by threatening to reveal it.

September 12th, 2025
‘Mr Abaraonye posted a message on Instagram which read “Charlie Kirk got shot loool.”‘

Let this comment, from the incoming president of the Oxford Union (!), stand for all the vile statements many people are making about Kirk’s assassination. The Oxford Union used to be a pretty classy outfit; why they’re handing it over to someone dissolute enough to publish something like this is a mystery.

September 12th, 2025
Multiply-divorced marriage moralist Rep Nancy Mace…

… addresses the Judaism of one of her colleagues.


“I have a good surgeon if you ever want to get your nose done.

September 9th, 2025
‘[Mayor Jacob] Frey’s special meeting was initially planned for three days after the charter school next to [Hamoudi] Sabri’s property [- a homeless encampment -] started classes, but was rescheduled due to the mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and School.’

Commentary from one of the encampment’s residents: “There’s a school right there. It looks bad, people leaving needles all over and there’s people nodded out … like it’s just gross.”

Yeah, looks bad, elementary students walking around syringes and deadheads to get to their school building… Unfortunately, the mass murder of other local schoolchildren meant a delay in a scheduled meeting about the problem…

August 6th, 2025
Skeezy Greece…

… won’t investigate high-ranking government/party thieves cuz … why? Cuz it’s Skeezy Greece! It has a reputation to uphold.

July 30th, 2025
Limerick

Brevard Co.'s Representative Fine
Is so violent and wretched a swine
That even old AIPAC
Takes a startled step way back
When he speaks what is on his foul mind
July 23rd, 2025
Establish the largest private health care system in America. Then steal all its money.

Once all the money’s in your pockets, the system can collapse, and all the people in its hospital beds can go fuck themselves.

July 22nd, 2025
Cloud Nine


Economic inequality has reached a staggering milestone in Silicon Valley: just nine households hold 15% of the region’s wealth, according to new research from San Jose State University. A mere 0.1% of residents hold 71% of the tech hub’s wealth.

July 21st, 2025
No one wants Dan Snyder’s cancerous house.

He got so desperate that he gave it to the … American Cancer Society. The idea is that they sell it and pocket the money – tens of millions, if there’s any justice in the world – for their good works.

But no one wants what is now the ACS’s house, a vast metastasized monument to greed and contempt.

No one has lived there for years.

And as the years go by, the ACS has attempted to solve its problem (taxes, upkeep, security?) through surgery. It has cut and cut and cut and cut the asking price for this diseased thing.

Today they did more cutting. It’s all the way down to $25 million.

July 19th, 2025
Deadbeat.

[H]e paid late nearly every month since moving in, missing several months entirely.

July 8th, 2025
Bounced…

Czech.

July 2nd, 2025
‘Kelley targeted law enforcement because of their anticipated role in the civil war that Kelley hoped to initiate.’

True-blue American terrorist gets life in prison. Good.

June 28th, 2025
‘By some measures, wealth concentration in America today is greater than in fourteenth-century Europe, even though America is democratic and fourteenth-century Europe was, you know, feudal.’

lol

Final paragraph:

We have the power to stop, through more sensible tax and regulatory policies and a resurgence of union organizing, the torrent of wealth flowing upward to billionaires. I worry a lot about what will happen if we don’t act soon. Many people fear an abrupt end to democracy under Trump. I don’t, especially. What I do fear, though, is that unless we find a way to correct the wealth-based power imbalance that gave us Trump in the first place, our democracy will flicker out more gradually. To paraphrase Louis Brandeis: We can keep our democracy, or we can hatch our first trillionaire.

June 27th, 2025
Wow, look at that. They made the dudes resign.

Background here. Thieving agriculture ministers were found out, and then they were both promoted. This is Greece, after all.

But okay now the government is dumping them, which is the sort of clean hands gesture one doesn’t expect of Greece...

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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

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