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 7:52PM
“Is technology ruining the social and interpersonal skills of people both young and old?”
Based on the anecdotal evidence I’ve observed, I’d be inclined to say yes.
I teach a morning class. Most of the students are a little older. I teach from the chalkboard. When they walk in and sit down (I am often in the class already), we take a few minutes before class to talk about stuff…they ask questions about how the material we’re covering relates to other classes, they ask my opinion on experimental-design ideas. We talk.
Another class I teach is mostly “traditional” students and is non-majors. People walk in texting and they keep texting until I start class (and some keep texting while class goes on, despite my repeated stink-eyes and comments about it). I don’t feel like I “know” this class nearly as well as the other one. (Oh, there are a few students in the class – mostly they sit up front – who don’t have the gadgets and who do talk with me. But still, a lot of the class seems more anonymous to me).
I also have to say I’ve had people nearly run into me in the halls or even in the grocery store because they were too busy texting-while walking.
I think as a society we’re going to have to make a choice: either hang the gadgets up while in public, or continue down a self-absorbed, isolating path.
October 29th, 2010 at 3:37PM
Were (s)he in computer science, (s)he’d be using LaTeX/Beamer slides, which are great for showing equations to students if, like myself, you are bad at writing on blackboards.
A conference talk or a lecture is a bit of a show, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not quite like hopping around with a Les Paul slung around your neck, but still…
October 29th, 2010 at 5:12PM
It strikes me that today’s communications technology, especially in its wireless form, tends to promote what Chesterton called the “clique” at the expense of what he called the “clan”..
“The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized societies groups come into existence founded upon what is called sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing that is really narrow is the clique….The men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment like that which exists in hell”
October 30th, 2010 at 11:03AM
“Clique” vs. “clan” sums it up very nicely. That’s along the lines of what I was thinking but couldn’t put into words.