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
February 25th, 2010 at 8:55AM
Sigh…
So why doesn’t the prof politely request that people not use laptops for things other than class, i.e. taking notes on the lecture, or perhaps looking up something relevant.
And it is possible to go out into the studio audience once in a while, while lecturing, for a little inspection. And folks doing what has been described could be, politely, asked to stop it or leave.
The fact that faculty don’t do something about this contributes to the problem.
February 25th, 2010 at 9:05AM
There are reasons why some professors prefer rooms full of nonentities, Bill.
If you, for instance, don’t want to be interrupted while reading PowerPoints aloud for fifty minutes, what the Tufts student is describing is the best possible arrangement.
February 25th, 2010 at 10:59AM
[…] * My nightmare. […]
February 25th, 2010 at 12:44PM
Faculty, Bill?
As an adjunct, I was barely considered faculty.
When I told students to shut off the screens, they wrote lies in the course evals that made me look like a bad teacher. The pushback from net-addicted hedonists can be overwhelming, especially when they are tacitly supported by administration.
At most schools, the vast majority of courses are not taught by regularly contracted employees. When you can be not re-hired for ANY reason, it’s easy to see how some instructors have little choice but to appease the hoi poloi and their obsessive-compulsion to Facebook, text message, and watch porn in class.
I do not advocate this policy of non-aggression. But then again, I am unemployed after not being re-hired, so it’s moot for me.
February 25th, 2010 at 1:42PM
I understand Cassandra, believe me. I was once in the same situation.
All the more reason for those who are in a position to do something about this – those with tenure – to squeak up.
Bill
February 25th, 2010 at 6:35PM
Sorry Bill, I have to disagree. This in not solely a faculty problem. My wife tells me that she sees people doing the exact same things at work during meetings. This is not simply a matter of a permissive faculty member not doing their job.
I have a policy that explicitly tells students to leave the laptop in their bag and not to text in class. I still have two or three students who text in class. When I catch one I chew them out, tell them to behave like an adult and that stops it, for a week. I have thrown people out of class. I have walked out of classes when the texting and laptop usage got out of hand.
Is it too much to ask students to behave like the adult learners they said they wanted to be when they enrolled in college? It really does come down to the students and whether they showed up to learn or be entertained/babysat. Right now, a lot of college is about babysitting. If you want that to change, then that is something society is going to have to have a discussion about and pay for.
February 25th, 2010 at 8:23PM
I never said that it was solely a faculty problem…
February 25th, 2010 at 9:45PM
Why do students attend lectures they spend wasting time on laptops?
At technical conferences I’ve seen the occasional attendee browsing, for example, the World of Warcraft discussion forums. This happens at sparsely attended, boring sessions that immediately precede interesting, room-filling sessions: some people attend just to reserve a seat.
Is this possible at a university? Does someone take attendance? Or is there some other reason for attendance without attention?