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
March 24th, 2009 at 2:35PM
All but one of my department’s chairs are castaways (needless to say) from various administrative offices or professional school faculty. If we behave, we may get an invitation as to their availability. If they’re feeling mean, they simply put them out into the hall and let the academiproles squabble over them.
March 24th, 2009 at 2:50PM
Why would a mass purchase of chairs, on a university-wide basis, be going on anyhow? Did they all wear out at precisely the same time?
It would be interesting to know how budgeting works at this university. If the Department of Lemming Studies, for example, saves money on chairs, do they get to spend the money on something else? Or does it just disappear?
March 24th, 2009 at 4:56PM
Perhaps as part of a building-wide or college-wide renovation. A few summers ago Northern Illinois purchased new desks and office chairs for all tenants of the social science tower as part of a space rearrangement in the building. That might have been a way to dampen faculty discontent with the revelation of preferences implied by the rearrangment (extra space for deans and advisors, less space for faculty).
March 24th, 2009 at 6:52PM
Someone spent university money on chairs? What about the RedHawks!?
March 25th, 2009 at 7:00AM
Stephen is on the right track. This many and at this cost suggests a new building or wing for a b-school, law school, or other professional area. At least some of their old furniture will be available to trickle down to the social science and humanities types.
Nice stuff can be had for those willing to scrounge. About eight years ago, I scored a big round table, six great office chairs, and a laser printer, all cast off like used Kleenex after less than 18 months by an administrative office–and all still in good condition, including the laser printer, which is apparently indestructible.
March 25th, 2009 at 10:10AM
Ha! I’d wandered away after clicking through to these comments, and came back having forgotten the original UD article. So imagine my amusement as I read theprofessor’s first comment above, misreading "department’s chairs" as "department chairs", and thinking he was referring to the people not the furniture. The picture of squabbling in the halls over them was both confusing and exceedingly funny.
March 25th, 2009 at 10:23AM
Seems to me Miami got a pretty good deal on Aeron chairs, probably because they were buying in bulk. Chairs are outrageously expensive in general. This does sound like a purchase tied to a capital project. They were probably required to blow a lot of money on "public art" while they were at it.