How bad does she think it could get? Matter-of-factly, she says: “My fear is we’re headed to civil war.” She restates a basic truth about the US. “There’s a lot of guns. There’s a lot of gun violence. There’s a habituation to violence that’s very American, that Europeans don’t understand.” Her worry is that the guns are accompanied by a new “permissiveness” that comes from the top, that was typified by Trump’s indulgence of the January 6 rioters, even those who wanted to murder his vice-president. As she puts it: “You can feel that brewing.” …
[W]e talk about those US citizens who put Trump back in the White House, even though, as she puts it, they knew who he was. “Nothing was hidden. People had plenty of time to think about it, and they chose this. And that disgust, I couldn’t shake that. I thought: ‘People wanted this – and I don’t want to have anything to do with this.’”
… Wisconsin Public Radio. After all, the fact that this person chairs an English department is as much of a news story as the fact that he’s violent with students.
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UPDATE: Good call. For your upcoming search, focus on someone with basic literacy skills.
The UW-Eau Claire College Republicans identified the faculty member [who pushed over their information table promoting a conservative candidate for the state Supreme Court] as English Department Chair José Felipe Alvergue.*
“The faculty member involved has been placed on administrative leave pending [an] investigation,” [said the provost].
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Tatiana Bobrowicz, chair of the UWEC College Republicans, told Newsweek in a written statement on Tuesday that the man came up to the table about 8:30 a.m. and asked why they were so close to the polls. She said she began to explain to him that the table had been approved by the university and was in compliance with requirements, when he said, “the time for this is over,” and flipped the table.
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He has a May 7 court date for disorderly conduct. Having read his web page, I pity the judge who tries to get one coherent sentence out of the dude.
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* My project is of knowing, and in knowing––or returning sentience to the decolonialized––engaging with the ongoing care work of the self in the era of its sublimation into the expansive, polluted power of supremacist monopoly capitalism.
He got his favorite student evaluation … for a course, billed as offering a “superficial overview” of nuclear physics. The comment read: “This physics course was not superficial enough for me.”
… Early on, he joined several Manhattan Project alums at MIT in their concern about the consequences of nuclear bombs. In Vietnam-era 1969, Grodzins co-founded the Union of Concerned Scientists, which calls for scientific research to be directed away from military technologies and toward solving pressing environmental and social problems.
… In 1999, Grodzins founded the nonprofit Cornerstones in Science, a public library initiative to improve public engagement with science. Based originally at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick, Maine, Cornerstones now partners with libraries in Maine, Arizona, Texas, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and California. Among their initiatives was one that has helped supply telescopes to libraries and astronomy clubs around the country.
[A University of Connecticut professor’s] travel expenses include three Disney trips. A travel request described the purpose of one such trip as visiting the Central Florida State Archives.
[The professor] later confirmed that she did not go to the archives, investigators say.
Instead, … she visited the park [with her children] to look at the experience of Disney and how it sanitizes American history…
[The professor] also used school money on a trip to Northern Ireland in November of 2023. [She] got married there, but claimed the entire trip was work-related, according to the compliance report.
She told university staff that she was married at 9:30 in the morning at city hall in Belfast, and that it only took 20 minutes …
[M]any of the trips took place when [she] was supposed to be teaching classes.
Senior Lecturer Alexis Jetter has an impressive journalism background, and Dartmouth seems to have hired her off the tenure track to teach the trade. But lately she’s been a bit on the loose wig:
Jetter wrote that she had lost her temper and cursed at two male students in the WGSS departmental lounge. She alleged that the students had refused to leave the lounge when asked.
Lots of filling in needed here. How dramatically did she lose her temper? Does ‘cursed’ mean you fucking assholes at the top of her lungs, or damn fellas wish to hell you’d leave sotto voce? What hideous behaviors warranted her response – if it was warranted? Dartmouth’s thick with pissoff-artist frat boys; was one such group staging an antifeminist intervention?
But even if it were – You don’t engage. If they’re really bothering you, you leave. Maybe you ask a colleague what you should do. Maybe you call security. A shouting match is a truly bad idea.
As for the rat-as-late-stage-capitalism-icon — oy. Again, we need to fill in a lot of blanks here, but she herself writes that the lesson was about Trump as capitalism’s noxious end stage, which again you might want to be careful… Aside from the fact that you can’t take for granted every student’s agreement that Trump’s a rat, there’s the silliness of insisting – because you wish it so – that he’s the last gasp of capitalism.
Anyway, ol’ UD can’t blame her for saying fuck it when the school began coming at her with formal grievance procedures. She wisely resigned before being subjected to that shit.
From a Nebraska professor’s obit. Since he died at 85, this would make his parents at least 110, so UD‘s not sure the writer for Roper & Sons Funeral Home in Lincoln needed to include this.
“He was best known for his work in restructured pork, which led to the development of the McRib.”
[These fields are] intellectually corrupt. You know what I’m talking about. Any fool idea passes muster, no matter how preposterous, as long as it conforms to prevailing theoretical trends and preferred ideological positions. Nobody wants to make waves: to speak up at a conference, to undermine a colleague or colleague’s student, to invite examination of their own research. Data is massaged; texts are squeezed or bound and gagged. Jargon helps to paper over cracks in logic; countervailing evidence is tucked under the cushions. Standards are ignored to the point where no one can even recall what they are anymore. It’s no wonder that the social sciences are suffering a replication crisis. In the humanities, there is no crisis, because there is no replication to begin with, no factual claims to reproduce, only “readings,” “interventions,” “Theory.”
For years, many of this blog’s posts were variations on this observation; and now, with the withering results of the election, we can go further than Deresiewicz and note the historical irony of a ridiculously, coercively, hyper-politicized academy (“ideological positions” trump, as it were, everything, including the aesthetic values that are, after all, the distinguishing characteristic of what we call literature) getting slapped upside the head by none other than the actual politics of this country.
Hence Deresiewicz’s stress on the unreality from which many professors continue to suffer: They just don’t get it that most people have rather conservative and traditional dispositions, and that this reality does not make people shitty reactionaries. The university is supposed to be the place where people’s traditional, inherited perceptions and beliefs are put into question (college is where you read Blake and Nietzsche); but as Todd Gitlin, a man of the left, pointed out in a defense of Allan Bloom, the academy went apeshit radical rather than humanely subversive.
They can agree to have seemingly unbiased articles about – I dunno – the safety of OxyContin go out under their name, even though Sackler-funded ghostwriters would have written the articles.
For doing nothing but agreeing to Purdue’s use of their name, these professors could earn (before the whole Oxy thing collapsed) tens of thousands of dollars, and thereby make their own small contribution to millions of addictions and deaths.
There are plenty of examples like this. An economist earns big bucks by letting a corporation use her name on an article touting … let’s see … the superiority of coal over other forms of energy. The safety of dangerous anti-depressants. This or that hormone.
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There are other ways for professors to trade their reputations for money, and a prof at GW may have availed himself of one of these. Nothing’s been proven, but two affiliated scholars at the Program on Extremism he runs have already resigned in protest against Lorenzo Vidino having reportedly received thousands of dollars for designating certain people terrorists, or terrorist-connected. The money came from rich oil states engaged in convoluted reputational battles with other such states.
Vidino, a dual citizen of Italy and the U.S., argues that even the most moderate Islamist organizations in the West can tilt Muslims toward separatism and violence. [M]any Muslims [think] that he simply dresse[s] up bigotry in academic language. Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative, which studies Islamophobia, has described Vidino as someone who “promotes conspiracy theories about the Muslim Brotherhood” and “is connected to numerous anti-Muslim think tanks.” In 2020, the Austrian Interior Ministry cited a report by Vidino as a basis for carrying out raids on dozens of citizens or organizations suspected of having links to the Muslim Brotherhood. No one targeted in the raids has been arrested, much less convicted of any wrongdoing. An Austrian appellate court ruled the raids unlawful.
UD would love to know if he’s declaring this money on his end of year GW Academic Review form.
I still remember how he proposed and facilitated my first event as a Resident Advisor: a trip to the Library of Congress, where he gave a personal tour of the institution’s collections and architecture (and pointed out the best study spots within the facility). He was also just as detailed in planning for the after-tour meal, finding the group, with a day’s notice, a Capitol Hill establishment that met all of our attendees’ numerous dietary and allergen needs.
Daniel was also instrumental in facilitating my final event as a Resident Advisor: a Friday night baseball game at Nationals Park. It was no secret that I was a huge fan of baseball, and accordingly, I deliberately selected a baseball game with a rather nice giveaway (bobbleheads). The proposed budget for the game exceeded my allotted funds, but Daniel, without hesitation, sponsored the event, even calling the box office personally to select our seats. When I arrived at his office to pitch the event, he handed me an envelope with the tickets and explained, with a mischevous smirk, that he was happy to fund a game against his hometown Colorado Rockies (along with any other activity I proposed). For the remainder of the hour, we instead discussed my studies, with Daniel probing about domestic elections theory, how the Senate works, and a wide range of other topics.
I share these two memories because to me, they epitomize Daniel at his best. He was always a scholar, passionate about sharing his experiences and studies with the world. But he was also a kind soul: he always placed others first, he did his best to make academia seem less intimidating, he always thought about the finer points and worked tirelessly to alleviate any issues, and he had a genuine sense of wit and generosity …
… Daniel DeWispelare, whose untimely death has been a terrible shock to the department. I knew him only a little bit, but was always struck by his sweetness. He was apparently a spectacular teacher and scholar.
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
