August 30th, 2019
He wasn’t cut. He was just gently nicked.

Large numbers of students boycotted a lecturer at Trinity College who declared that mutilating the genitals of little girls can be, you know, more than fine under the right circumstances. He was denounced by every doctor in Ireland, and by the head of the Muslim community there. A professor of medicine at the school said he’d quit if Trinity didn’t infibulate Mr Calm Down Little Girl It Ain’t So Bad.

Well the dude was an adjunct and easily removed, but of course he’s suing now for back pay or whatever. Apparently he wants to be made intact again.

August 27th, 2019
‘We don’t do that here.’ — Caitlin Flanagan on FGM

There is no room in this country, not one inch, for these gruesome practices. Nothing—not a witless respect for the cultural traditions of others, not a craven impulse to avoid looking intolerant—nothing should stop us from protecting every single American girl from being abused in this manner. Nothing should stop us from unequivocally prohibiting this kind of savagery, least of all the absurd insinuation that to do so would be somehow racist or ethnocentric. We do not reject FGM because it is practiced primarily by dark-skinned people, or because it is often erroneously presented as an Islamic commandment. We reject FGM because it is barbarism.

We have planted every flag we have in the name of civilization, and it is time to plant one now. America is the inheritor of that long tradition that slowly, over centuries, produced John Locke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Abigail Adams, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Luther King Jr. Want to fight the patriarchy? Look no further than Somalia, where women are disbarred from making every major decision, including that most delicate and tender decision of how to manage one’s own fledgling sexuality. The Somalis take that right from 98 percent of their girls when they cut them open and rip away parts of their vagina. But this is America. These are our girls. And we don’t do that here.

August 3rd, 2019
“Child abuse with a sharp object.”

Ilhan Omar’s brushoff of Maryum Saifee’s urgent and pertinent question about female genital mutilation earned Saifee an NPR interview, during which she pointed out that since plenty of children in Omar’s own district suffer this abuse, it’s kind of rich of her to get all huffy and refuse to deal with the issue. Here’s more of what Saifee said:

[We need to be willing to talk about] misogyny within our own community… [N]obody talks about FGM. [It’s a ].. squeamish topic.

[Also problematically,] it is politicized as an anti-Muslim issue. [But this] doesn’t give the community a free pass not to talk about it. [In any case, FGM is not merely a local issue; it is an international] human rights issue. [It is] systematized child sexual abuse with a sharp object… 

[There’s] very low literacy on this issue, [and people need to be educated about it; silence of Omar’s sort is just the opposite of what’s needed].

June 21st, 2019
A Brave Lone Voice For Surgically Removing Little Girls’ Genitals

Pennsylvania is about to become the 34th state to ban female genital mutilation; the law passed unanimously in the Senate and in the “House by a vote of 196-1, with only state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, D-Philadelphia voting against it.”

Yes, Kenyatta alone stood up against the crowd for the right of seven year olds to have their clitorises and vaginal lips chopped off and then to have what’s left bleeding between their legs sewn up by some random person. Every girl deserves the right to sexual numbness and a lifetime of pain and infections, and Representative Kenyatta is working hard every day to make sure that right is protected.

If you’re one of his constituents, be proud. You have voted into office the only politician in Pennsylvania with the guts to go to bat for the forced amputation of female genitals. UD thinks the guy should run for president:

America Needs an Infibulation

Leave No Clit Behind

Yes We Can Cut!

April 17th, 2019
From female genital mutilation to female genitals…

… Alan Dershowitz’s work is never done. Having finished advising for the defense team of a notorious alleged clit-slasher, he now moves on to his own defense in a defamation/sex trafficking case.

February 20th, 2019
‘Young girls around the world are suffering horrendous mutilation because of a deep-rooted cultural fear of female pleasure, and the same fear is preventing us from even articulating the problem.’

[W]hy are we so reticent about the clitoris? Why is … mention of it … deemed too sordid for BBC news?

The big difference here seems to be that while the vagina has an obvious functional utility, the clitoris exists entirely for female pleasure. It seems that the issue stems, not from the provocative nature of a word, but our continued societal taboo regarding women daring to enjoy sex. Sure, we can see depictions of women shrieking with pleasure plastered all over any porn site. But that is exactly the point. Female sexual enjoyment remains exclusively in the realm of the forbidden.

Lucy McCormick, The Guardian

February 13th, 2019
FGM: Another Conviction

Australia this time, with a mother feeling for some reason compelled to lie through her teeth about having arranged a procedure she thinks comes “from God.” The jury found her guilty in a matter of minutes. Send enough mutilators to jail and the baby-slashing rate will go down.

February 1st, 2019
‘A Really Historic Moment.’

Yes. Britain finally sends a child-slasher – make that baby-slasher – to jail.

January 29th, 2019
Slashing your three-year-old’s genitals in the privacy of your home —

— because they’re never too young!

December 20th, 2018
How could words express…

… Your divine appeal?

The feds will continue to go after America’s Super-Clit-Slasher herself, the pride of Johns Hopkins medical school, Jumana Nagarwala. Will she wield her well-trained knife once again, against the joy, integrity, and welfare of our nation’s children? Stay tuned.

December 11th, 2018
“[The U.N. goal of eradicating FGM by 2030 is] very optimistic, but with an herculean effort by all, it may be attainable. That would mean that in the next twelve years, the cultures that have performed this horrific act for more than five thousand years would end their practice. And with an estimated three million new victims per year currently being mutilated, it means we don’t become complacent, we just work harder.”

The first American surgeon to open a reconstructive surgery clinic has called for Super Clit-Slasher Jumana Nagarwala to lose her medical license.  UD has called on Johns Hopkins University, which awarded her the MD degree, to make a public statement condemning her, and to revoke her degree.

November 14th, 2018
‘On Nov 9 (Friday), Malaysian delegates to the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on human rights in Geneva, Switzerland reportedly defended the practice of infant female circumcision as a “cultural obligation” in Malaysia.’

My Country

We’re proud to acknowledge that it’s
A cultural mandate to blitz
The joy of our girls
By taking their pearls
And blasting their pleasure to bits

God sayeth Lo cut off their clits!
Uncastrated woman commits
A sin in my sight!
Under cover of night
Take babies and rip out their slits!

November 9th, 2018
Say it loud and say it proud: Malaysians love to cut off our infants’ clitorises!

We’ll tell it to the UN, we’ll tell it to the world! We’re here, we’re clit-slashers, get used to it.

October 11th, 2018
‘Although the silence has been broken in Somalia – and it is no longer possible to claim that girls do not die from FGM – we are still waiting for the country’s politicians to even investigate these cases, much less prosecute them.’

As UD anticipated, not a thing has been done by whatever they’re calling a government in Somalia these days about the deaths of little girls from mutilated genitals. And of course

It is clear to those of us who have worked on the issue for years that the recent deaths we have heard about in Somalia and elsewhere are not uncommon.

September 23rd, 2018
“As a mother, I can think of nothing I love more than cutting my baby daughters’ genitals.”

‘If you’re like me, contact your local Dawoodi Bohra chapter.’

Sponsored by Twitter.

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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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