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
November 9th, 2009 at 1:19PM
So I don’t know French, but what is this petition against? Did someone outlaw this lame book? Or is it just a general letter of solidarity in the face of Western academia’s lock-step fascism?
November 9th, 2009 at 1:57PM
Rita: It protests the discredit and defamation of a book which displays the deep connection between the work of Heidegger and Nazi doctrine. It hopes for the widest possible distribution for the book and finds disgraceful the attacks on it. (I’m paraphrasing the petition’s content.)
November 9th, 2009 at 4:43PM
At least according to legend, there was once a time when writers, academics, etc tended to be *more* absolute in their support of free speech than was the population in general. Now, members of these professions seem rather to often be in the forefront of those who want to criminalize speech.
What changed?
November 9th, 2009 at 4:54PM
Well done. John Stuart Mill gives you a cookie.
November 9th, 2009 at 7:12PM
I agree with David Foster (and apparently I would also be the recipient of a cookie?). What changed is that through a many decades long process of self-selection and promotion, the views of academics have become so uniform, and the holders of these views have become so convinced, to a degree that evokes the most extreme religious conviction, that their views are the only ones to hold and that all other views are wrong (although most times they don’t say wrong, they say intolerant, hateful, anti-multicultural, or blah-phobic.., and then start screaming "hater!" "bigot!") that they take the next logical step: attempting to ban views they disagree with from public presentation or consideration. This only reinforces and advances the process described.
The radical left goes on and on about rights and freedoms – for instance, the tremendous loss of freedom we apparently all suffered under the previous presidential administration. However, I am much more afraid of the loss of freedom and the challenge regarding further loss of freedom that is being directed by that large number of sophisticates who simply know better than the rest of us, and are deciding what we can read and think and say and what we cannot: the true believer academics on college campuses.
The radical left has always had a special place in their hearts for the vilest expressions of totalitarianism (Uncle Joe Stalin, Comrade Fidel. Pol fucking Pot…, after all, it’s all about the mass control of others) and in the absence of any "successful" model of totalitarianism toward which to direct their fond yearnings these days, I suppose this is how they keep themselves occupied.
Americans can take some comfort in the fact that while there are many on college campuses that would outlaw and ban in a second speech and ideas that are contrary to their own perfectly correct views, the American legal system, at least for now, continues to uphold this most basic right of free speech. In our neighboring Dominion to the north, Canadians whose feelings have been hurt by the comments of others, or who disagree with the assertions of others, can take their hurt feelings and disagreements to "human rights tribunals". (Sorry for the quotes, UD, but I just have to – these are what they are actually called, and no one would believe me if the words weren’t emphasized in some way!) These extra-legal star chambers, where the plaintiff is funded by the state and the defendant funds their defense themselves, where the defendant is not permitted to confront his or her accuser, where the public is not allowed to observe, are the next logical evolutionary step in the suppression of free speech. I’m sure a number of readers of this post will imagine that I’m making this up. I challenge them to research, read and learn.
So, we Americans should consider ourselves warned. This is where it could be all heading.
November 9th, 2009 at 9:46PM
And as an emblem of the post-ironic age: Students at Washington University commemorate the fall of Communism, and university officials shut down their commemoration.
November 10th, 2009 at 3:36AM
Hmmm, unsure if it’s not too idealistic to want to mix Martin H. into this “serious liberal arts education”. In between Lacrosse practice and poetry slams our students can assimilate only so much.
What’s wrong with steak and chops what-you-see-is-what-you-get Anglo Saxon philosophers? We can simply assign a few piquant Nietzsche aphorisms if some punk or Goth starts complaining.
Martin is big in France because most students are happy to spend 25 years on a doctorat and then go to work in a nasty village with lots of cheap booze and no running water. Our students are much luckier, they will go on to interesting administrative jobs or do some kind of ironic art project. Unless a student has perfect German and has summered at least once in the vicinity of Todtenauberg I would tell them to just read Bertrand Russell and go do some important stuff.
November 10th, 2009 at 6:49AM
Thank you RJO for bringing that to our attention. The commemoration of the fall of communism (brought on by free people refusing to give in – do we have the stomach for that kind of fight now?) was most likely crowding out the anti-Israel rally (is it Israel Apartheid Week again already?), the pro-Fidel rally, or the "Marines are war criminals" rally. The nerve.
I think Everet Lapel is on to something. I don’t think that Martin H. is necessary. But he shouldn’t be banned either. Isn’t the best remedy for bad ideas a little sunshine?