It’s unclear to UD why Sussex University without any consultation has shut down its linguistics program.
Usually UD doesn’t blog about such things, not having the time to explore in depth particular – and perhaps complicated – decisions of this sort at any given university. But in this case she makes an exception, since this seems an uncontroversially strong program in a crucial academic field.
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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.
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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.
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Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
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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.
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[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
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If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte
April 6th, 2009 at 11:29PM
Yes, this is very sad news indeed… Unfortunately, many linguistics departments across Europe are quite small, which often makes administrators want to shut them down (and sometimes bigger departments such as English or German can be behind such moves)….
April 7th, 2009 at 12:42PM
To avoid splitting the pot of students?
April 7th, 2009 at 8:15PM
No, it’s just raw territoriality, as in much of the animal kingdom, and greed for the largest possible share of the available resources. I spent 40 years in the trenches of the humanities at an Ivy-League university, and my wife kept my spirits up when things got really disgusting by reminding me that we share almost all of our DNA with chimpanzees. This biological fact explains Dean Rusk’s trenchant observation that "the reason academic politics are so vicious is because the stakes are so small," as well as many other things about university life (behind the scenes, of course). See also Cornford’s classic little book titled "Microcosmographia Academica." UD hasn’t even scratched the surface of what it’s like inside the whited sepulchures of the Ivy League. (And keep up the good work, UD! Your blog is widely read and widely appreciated. Thank you!)
April 8th, 2009 at 8:41AM
RM: Thank you for those kind words!
April 8th, 2009 at 11:54AM
1. Whoa! You really are from academia–great pharisee reference.
2. How common is face-ripping?