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
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:15PM
I don’t know the details of this case, but I would like to give a different viewpoint. I have had a modest share of research grants during my time in academic medical science. Earlier in my career there was what I considered a reasonable interpretation of the degree to which an investigator had to do exactly what was specified in the grant. Research is supposed to involve a lot of free, speculative thought and it is virtually impossible to micromanage and predict the eventual costs and opportunities. Twenty years ago, if I had some money in grant left over to buy rats but no equipment money to buy needed equipment in grant A and equipment money but no rat money (to buy needed rats) in grant B, it was just the easiest thing (and no big deal at all) to buy the rats with grant A and equipment with grand B and use them appropriately where they could be useful to finish the research in both grants. Now I supposed I would be charged with a crime for doing so. Yet I think that the "old way" was far superior and allowed us to make more progress with fewer dollars. Likewise, it would be the same thing if I traded $25,000 animal care money from my grant (which I no longer needed for animals) for $25,000 of supply money that my fellow scientist down the hall had but no longer needed for supplies. This was done all the time to great benefit. There actually are some ways of officially reallocating but they have become so cumbersome now that they often are prohibitive.
I do not think that anyone is implying that Weeks put the money into his pocket. I think he simply found a more efficient way of doing the job and then he put what was left over into a different research account. Both the VA and private academic institutions benefit from being able to sponsor research at two different nearby institutions. I suspect that many of the so-called criminal cases are simply systems issues in which the rules are drawn too tightly and, thus, they prohibit innovative approaches to research and discourage cost savings.
Again, I don’t know the facts and maybe he was putting money into his own pocket. But I think there is a good chance that he merely was using the money well for purposes that fell within the aims of the grant or grants and he is being clobbered for doing too good a job of savings costs. A better system would encourage and applaud such behavior.
June 3rd, 2009 at 9:02AM
I take your point, Sigmund, and it’s a good one. But the old ways relied on trust, and when trust begins to fail…
June 14th, 2009 at 12:21PM
Dr. Weeks did not benefit financially from the grant. Even prosecutors state that he did not personally benefit. I agree with sigmund regarding the use of grant money. But you and your readers need to look further than the current publicity. Dr. Weeks has conducted research and published articles that are critical of the VA. Similar public flogging of other researchers and officials have occured. I’m surprised that people let the government manipulate them to do their dirty work.