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 28th, 2010 at 10:16AM
I suppose it’s possible that the lawyer in charge of writing that proposal was British? They tend to use “scheme” in a non-pejorative sense.
October 28th, 2010 at 10:31AM
what an odd thing to say. it’s like suggesting that the Art Institute of Chicago get rid of its Monets because he was just some French dude who never came to Illinois. Is Fisk’s mission that narrow?
October 28th, 2010 at 11:43AM
Eric: Would they hire anyone not from Nashville?
October 28th, 2010 at 12:53PM
That just seems bizarre to me.
It’s as bfa said about Monet: are we really only going to care about stuff made by people just like us? That seems very small and very sad.
October 28th, 2010 at 1:35PM
I don’t agree with Fisk, but I see their point. The school is basically broke, and there’s this huge asset that they aren’t allowed to sell (a share of) – and while I deplore their arguments, they never really intended to run an art museum. (It’s not like this is the Barnes Foundation, either.)
October 28th, 2010 at 2:28PM
Margaret: I haven’t a clue; it sure seems unlikely Fisk would hire someone who wasn’t Southern… maybe they were from Southern England?
October 28th, 2010 at 3:14PM
There is a German saying “Reisende soll man nicht aufhalten” (Loosely translated “Don’t stop travelers”). So if Fisk is for some good or bad reasons becoming more narrow-minded, don’t try to reason with them: Its a waste of time.
With the proposed arrangement, it is guaranteed that people can enjoy the art – the people in Arkansas win, people in Tennessee loose. So the utility for the society as a whole remains the same.
October 28th, 2010 at 8:07PM
re: econprof
well, sort of. in the long term, this sort of thing weakens the protections around donors’ intentions, which makes future donors less likely to donate, because they don’t know if what they give to universities will stay there. it’s not as though we’re talking about a donation from 300 years ago that no longer has any relevance- this is a relatively recent gift, and the donor’s intentions are clear. I mean, would you say that businesses should be able to break contracts whenever they want as long as there’s an immediate benefit to somebody? it would cause chaos.
October 29th, 2010 at 2:23PM
re: bfa. I concur with you that the principle of “pacta sunt servanda” (even though this idea has an interesting history – and is of medieval, not Roman origins) is a basis for our society. So going back on something one promised is a bad idea.
I think that donors won’t be less intent on giving (what do you want to do with your artwork if you die – take it with you), but that they will be more selective whom to give. It will take more than a charismatic president to persuade donors like o’Keefe. The next donor of a collection will look for a culture of appreciation to her collection: There must be somebody at the university (a department, program) who actively profits from the gift.
I do not think this is a bad thing.
O’Keefe’s decision surely was well intentioned, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Obviously Fisk cannot make good use of the collection. Stupid, narrow minded – yes. The college itself sees its educational mission in another direction (Ok, I love science, in highschool I wanted to be a theoretical physicist, and I lobby for the admission of math, engineering and physics undergrads in our grad program. So I support scientific education.)
But Fisk’s whole policy is tragic: Having one of the best collections of 20th century American arts might be the foundation of a first class art, art history program (the Cranky Professor or somebody else might have a better opinion here).
So I think the original idea underlying the donation is dead. Should the corpse lying around, or should we bury it?
November 11th, 2010 at 1:34PM
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