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
October 26th, 2009 at 7:02AM
It appears that there is plenty of dysfunctionality to go around there.
October 26th, 2009 at 8:15AM
Just be careful of RYP. I know of professors who pump up their own evals by submitting phony data and others who submit false information about colleagues. There’s no way of verifying that the information in there is actually submitted by a student.
October 26th, 2009 at 8:27AM
True, GTWMA. In writing about RMP, I’ve said that only professors who have at least two pages worth of comments and scores should be considered.
October 26th, 2009 at 1:45PM
I wouldn’t even trust that, UD. There’s no way to verify a single bit of that data. I could go in today, and post 2-3 pages of glowing comments about myself or 2-3 pages trashing an enemy. No one would be the wiser. While we all would hope that our colleagues wouldn’t behave in that way, your blog makes us all too familiar with the depths to which some will sink.
October 26th, 2009 at 2:10PM
Point taken, GTWMA. I still think students should consult RMP.
October 26th, 2009 at 4:21PM
Although there’s no way to verify a single datum, RMP would cease to exist if the data in aggregate were not trustworthy. Go figure. It reminds me of the site intrade.com, where anyone can place bets on various social issues. Recently, the betting was against health care legislation being passed. Economists are interested in the site because there’s pretty graphs and the betting is fairly accurate. Outside of the bettors and economists, I don’t think anyone is too interested in the site. If the Administration wanted to influence the graphs so they said that health care legislation would be passed this session, they could bet too, I suppose.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:25PM
Actually, Brad, during the last election there was quite a lot of evidence that individuals and groups were succeeding to manipulate intrade markets. Freakonomics, Five Thirty Eight and Marginal Revolution all blogged about it.
RMP will exist whether or not the information is trustworthy. It’s about entertainment.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:52PM
I like the way that a customer (?) review on Amazon says that a death sentence was "was rendered unto him."
Still turning the implications of that over in my mind.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:25PM
Do real college students write as badly as ratemyprofessors.com commenters?
I have difficulty believing someone who claims to have taken a third-year college course, but misspells “sentance.”
October 26th, 2009 at 6:50PM
Yeah, sentance hurts… A statement uttered during a seance….
October 26th, 2009 at 7:50PM
"Dr Gleason is too synical."
October 27th, 2009 at 12:23AM
Hey UD, here’s a guy close to home whose ratings are on par with Alexander’s:
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1230684
Fortunately, he’s an adjunct who, to the best of my knowledge, has only taught one class at GW, but I’m told he’s a walking nightmare in the classroom.
October 27th, 2009 at 6:12PM
At my previous institution a couple of colleagues were waging war against me (at the time a very junior faculty member) for reasons that still baffle the imagination, I went down to the main office for the department, which also housed the most senior faculty, and in the printer I found a comment about me in a Rate Your Profs sort of forum — it was negative and it was about me. The itty bitty problem — it was printed in the dialogue box, before it had been submitted. Yes, as in: "Get out! The call is coming from inside the house." Sorry, but anyone who gives even one teeny tiny scintilla of merit to RYP and its ilk ought never to be allowed to be on any sort of committee that hires, grants tenure to, or fires anyone, ever or to have an opinion on such hiring, firing, or promotion.
dcat