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
September 26th, 2010 at 9:01AM
I’ve been a professor for over 30 years (yawwwnnnn) and I’m somewhat ambivalent on the issue of laptops in the classroom. When my colleagues and I first saw the excited typing during our class we thought the students were following our material. Then we realized they were excitingly ordering shoes and who-knows-what-else from Amazon and other on-line retailers. I am teaching a Political Campaigning course this semester and overall prefer that students do bring their laptops to class. The students can access their course readings (posted as PDFs) and occasionally research information on the web. When I get a look at their screens I usually see notes from the class. I’m not a total rube and know the students are expert at shifting from one screen to another. Hopefully when not taking notes or reading class assigned PDFs, they are posting messages on Facebook telling their friends important information about politics and campaign 2010. File under “hope springs eternal”.
September 26th, 2010 at 11:56AM
Tobe: Your responses to laptops track the unfolding history of the phenomenon closely.
You were part of the initial How gratifying that they’re typing my thoughts so enthusiastically. stage; you are now part of the Hope springs eternal. stage. If you remain in the classroom long enough, you will almost certainly be part of the Shut your fucking laptops. stage.
September 26th, 2010 at 12:57PM
Some of us find hand writing very painful. I spent years as a student producing notes in pen or pencil which I coudn’t read. Oh the relief of switching to a lap top.
What Christina describes as the *type* of notes is a different issue entirely: I reckon I wasted all my first year transcribing instead of actually thinking and taking notes. As a lecturer I now avoid “lecturing” to first years because I think they need to learn how to listen first and from there learn what to take down, but this is a pedagogic issue and nothing to do with the tools.
With regard to the noise: yes, it’s a pain, but keyboards are getting softer and with the invention of the ipad it isn’t an issue.
For the rest: I had friends who read novels under the desk, I never did know why they bothered coming to lectures.
September 26th, 2010 at 1:14PM
While Christina is working toward her Ph.D., I suggest she review the correct uses of whoever and whomever. ‘Whoever’ is the pronoun she should have used in the following paragraph.
‘In a lecture, you’ll only waste your time and your parents’ money, disrespect your professor and annoy whomever is trying to pay attention around you by spending the whole hour on Facebook.’
September 26th, 2010 at 1:34PM
Daphne: I didn’t notice that. Thanks.
September 26th, 2010 at 2:51PM
I appreciate your kind response, Margaret.