November 25th, 2025
‘The new dimension of ick’ is nice.

That Summers, the university’s former president, cultivated Epstein’s presence and money on the Harvard campus and flew on Epstein’s jet has been in the public record for years, but the new dimension of ick shown in the emails released by a congressional committee has set students and faculty aflame.

January 4th, 2021
The Fart of the Deal

Or at least (in Trump’s favorite formulation), some people are saying…

September 22nd, 2010
A Second Harvard Little Ick

Last week it was the Psych department chair’s triple negative.

This week it’s a dean’s … Well. Couple of things.

She’s responding to a reporter’s question about the man who committed suicide a few days ago on the steps of Memorial Church on Harvard’s quad.

“It’s really sad, it was horrible, and these kinds of incidents affect all of us really negatively,” Dean of the College Evelynn M. Hammonds said in an interview yesterday. “This campus is situated in an urban context, and we can’t control these kinds of things.”

You tell me why there are Little Icks within Little Icks in these statements.

September 15th, 2010
Triple Negative

I would not think there is not a single professor at Harvard who is not ambitious, in the sense of intellectually ambitious,” [says Harvard] Psychology Department Chair Susan Carey.

February 11th, 2010
Some funny stuff from the…

… Georgetown University v. George Washington University snowball fight, in the Georgetown Voice.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm would, though, like to correct the following:

Once GWU began to flood the hill Georgetown students were standing on, the snowball fight digressed rapidly for the Hoyas.

Fights do not digress. People digress when they leave or lose the main point they were making in an argument. The writer might have meant deteriorated… ?

January 26th, 2010
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS

Italy’s firefighters may “tame the flames” but they could have trouble extinguishing a Latin expert’s objections Tuesday to their new motto.

The motto, unveiled with great fanfare in a nationally televised ceremony last month, contains a grammatical error, the punctilious Giuliano Pisani told AFP.

The Latin motto reading “Flammas domamus donamus cordem” — literally, “We tame the flames, give the heart” — contains the masculine ending on the Latin word for heart — “cordem” — which is in fact neuter, he said…

Yes, yes, of course. This be the link.

October 26th, 2009
Sneaky.

Jane Mendillo, chief executive of the Harvard Management Co., eluded to the sale of some of Harvard’s private equity investments in Harvard University’s financial report for fiscal 2009, which was released earlier this month.

Forbes

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

Oh poo. They fixed it.

August 26th, 2009
Do you know how much a subscription to the Wall Street Journal costs?

And what are they doing with that money?

The paper’s headline for its Dominick Dunne obituary:

DOMINICK DUNNE: IN MEMORIUM

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

Update: They fixed it! Took about twelve hours.

August 20th, 2009
Double Little Ick Buried Inside Single Big Ick.

The single big ick is John Calipari, but UD ain’t gonna sully her pages with his latest thing.

What interests her is that a sports columnist writing about Calipari commits two little icks in a row.

Let’s take a look.

Now that Calipari has raised his hind leg and defacated all over the basketball program by causing Memphis to now have the unique distinction of having its Final Four appearance tossed in the trash — all before scampering off to Kentucky — what do Memphis fans and university backers think of him now?

Hm. Now that I look at it again, there are any number of icks in this sentence. But … When’s the last time your dog raised his hind leg to shit? Plus … If you can’t spell defecate, you should write shit, because that’s easier to spell.

May 6th, 2009
UD Keeps Seeing Writers Use …

weary when they mean wary, as in this headline in the Seattle University Spectator:

Professors weary of student Facebook friends

The article’s about how they’re cautious, not tired. It’s a strange mistake to make, if you ask me. Any theories?

May 2nd, 2009
Little Ick.

A student describes the images in Bowdoin College’s yearly Naked Art Show.

Students produce works of art in which they and/or their fellow students appear naked.

They are the bodies of college students invested in the future, determined to shatter the social coordinates of the privileged class’ modes of distinction in a highly choreographed way.

May 1st, 2009
We’re certainly learning a lot…

… about George Zinkhan. From an article in People magazine:

The shocking act of violence [is] alleged to have been committed by the endowed professor

February 23rd, 2009
A Merkin on a Penis

Ezra’s sister Daphne writes a Little Ick in an essay about penises:

Which is not to suggest that Lawrence didn’t, despite what is clearly a complicatedly ambivalent attitude toward women, manage to move the conversation more radically forward than most.

As always, UD leaves it up to her readers to explain why this is a Little Ick.

But here’s a hint. It’s a sentence George Orwell discusses in Politics and the English Language:

I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.

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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