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A Visiting Professor in UD’s Department Whines About the Weather.

Howard Jacobson, a British novelist, teaches at GW next semester. As he notes in The Independent, his arrival has been bumpy.

… I am in Washington being a visiting professor. Seemed like a nice gig when I was offered it, but that was before the snow fell. Let’s not be churlish: it still is a nice gig, or it will be if George Washington University ever reopens. The minute we landed, the city’s institutions began to close their doors. You’ve never seen so much snow. Lock yourself in your room and don’t come out is the advice on radio and television. Which is all very well if you’re in your own home and have a freezer stuffed with pizzas, but an apartment hotel with a complimentary sachet of coffee, two tea bags, and a packet of chocolate chip cookies – the difference between civilisation and barbarism is the difference between an English biscuit and an American cookie – is no place to be holed up in for a month.

… Trader Joe’s turns out to be the best grocery store with principles I have ever shopped in, and that isn’t just desperation talking. Yes, you can get your slivered seeds if you want them, but you can also get salamis soaked in red wine, puttanesca sauce made with red wine, excellent red wine vinegars, red wine mustard, and best of all, red wine itself, organised not only by country but by grape. Suddenly I don’t want the siege to end; God willing I won’t have to do an hour’s teaching and can sample every pinot noir the state of Oregon can produce before I fly back home again, assuming a thaw, in March…

Margaret Soltan, February 12, 2010 9:00PM
Posted in: snapshots from home

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UD REVIEWED

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

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Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

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Roland Greene, Stanford University

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Carlat Psychiatry Blog

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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

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Money Law

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Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

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Medical Humanities Blog

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Ducks and Drakes

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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.
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If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
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