September 30th, 2011
Sadly, these stories of gunmen spotted on university campuses are quite common lately.

Here’s one in UD‘s neighborhood – a couple of hours ago, police announced that a man with a rifle was seen on the campus of Georgetown University Law Center.

Many of these stories turn out to be false. People saw something, but it turned out not to be a person with a weapon. Some, of course, turn out to be all too true.

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

They’ve already called off the search.

On the other hand, here’s a nice urban detail for you:

In the process of their search, the police did find a gun near a tree close to campus, but they determined it was unconnected with the incident.

September 28th, 2011
Headline of the Day

BISHOP SYMPOSIUM ATTRACKS SCHOLARS, POET’S DEVOTEES

From the Vassar student paper. They’ll probably correct it soon, but go there now and enjoy this wonderful word, which folds into itself both hate and love …

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

Rats. They fixed it. A commenter called them on it.

September 20th, 2011
Headline of the Day

HARVARD CONNECTION COULD AID, HINDER WARREN

Boston Globe

September 15th, 2011
Headline of the Day

UTAH RESEARCHER TEACHING SHEEP TO SELF-MEDICATE

August 23rd, 2011
Headline of the Day

UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS VOW TO STOP
IMPROPRIETIES
IN COLLEGE SPORTS

Yes my little brothers and sisters in sports, this our summer retreat has now come to an end.

All please raise your right hand and repeat after me.

On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country to obey the Scout Law to help other people at all times to keep myself physically strong mentally awake and morally straight I vow if I see any improprieties and I mean any I vow to stop them pronto amen.

August 21st, 2011
Things seem to have broken…

…in Libya. Here’s Al Jazeera live.

August 7th, 2011
These photos just in from a friend of UD’s sister…

… the Morrissey fanatic. Morrissey gave a London concert tonight, during which a riot broke out in Brixton, which was near the venue.

While escaping the mayhem, my sister’s friend took pictures.

Up to the minute details here.

August 4th, 2011
With memories of the 2007 massacre there…

… and more recent memories of the shooter in Norway, people are finding events at Virginia Tech – a gunman was spotted on campus this morning – particularly unnerving.

July 21st, 2011
Headline of the Day

Police Search for Ann Arbor Rapist as Annual Art Fair Kicks Off

July 6th, 2011
‘SACRED HEART BACK CHARGED WITH DRUG TRAFFICKING’

I dunno.

I just like the headline.

It has contrast (sacred/profane); it has linguistic ambiguity (If English weren’t your first language, wouldn’t you have a bit of a struggle with HEART BACK?).

And then the story itself – a football player at a Catholic college in Connecticut is a pretty significant oxycodone dealer – has some good elements. He’s from Florida, for instance… And down there – Pill Mill Capital of the Worldlots of folks sell pain pills… So many that universities might want to take special care with applicants from, say, Broward County (pain pill capital of the pain pill capital)…

June 1st, 2011
“His sins trickled from his lips, one by one, trickled in shameful drops from his soul festering and oozing like a sore, a squalid stream of vice. The last sins oozed forth, sluggish, filthy.”

Stephen Dedalus, in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, finally confesses all to a priest.

In the wake of the Strauss-Kahn affair, France, like Dedalus, is letting it all trickle out. Georges Tron has quit; and now Luc Ferry, a former education minister, accuses a former high official of child sex abuse.

May 31st, 2011
DSK…

wannabe.

May 27th, 2011
Dmitriy Nikitin, a University of Central Florida Medical School Professor…

… has been murdered by a gunman who then killed himself. It happened in the parking garage of Florida Hospital. Apparently the gunman was a patient in the hospital.

May 23rd, 2011
Maybe there’s hope for the French…

after all.

May 20th, 2011
Don DeLillo’s White Noise on…

… the end of the world. (Scroll up to page 131; read through page 133.)

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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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