There’s the Ryerson guys; and now
Laurence Thomas, a popular [Syracuse University] philosophy professor whose courses have waiting lists, walked out on his class of nearly 400 students last week when he caught a couple of students fiddling with their phones instead of paying attention to him.
It wasn’t the first time Thomas has cut a class short because a student broke his no-texting rule. To Thomas, texting saps the class of its intellectual energy.
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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
November 26th, 2010 at 2:46PM
“Intellectual energy” in a 400 person lecture? May as well dim the house lights..
November 26th, 2010 at 3:26PM
Texting in my class? Do you really want to go there?…
When I read articles like the one Margaret Soltan linked to about texting in class, I can’t help but be thankful that I once took—and took to heart what I learned in—a course on feminist pedagogy. I’m not going to address whether I consider circling …
November 26th, 2010 at 3:33PM
I text in the classes that I’m teaching (when the students are busy doing group assignments or writing tests), so I don’t mind when students do the same. And I don’t see why any professor would. If the students aren’t interested in what I’m trying to teach them, it’s their problem, not mine.
November 26th, 2010 at 4:45PM
Clarissa,
Talk about living up to your social obligation of engagement. Your narcissistic attitude suggests to me that you still lack the discipline to be anything but a student yourself. But hey, who gives a f#&@ about doing all we can to reach an undisciplined student, someone we hardly talked to ten years ago just sent us a friend twist…just can’t wait another minute to accept!!
November 26th, 2010 at 4:47PM
Request not twist, damn swype messing up my angry rants.
November 27th, 2010 at 12:26AM
Prof. Thomas made Inside Higher Ed two years ago for walking out: If You Text in Class, This Prof Will Leave.
December 2nd, 2010 at 2:09PM
[…] I read articles like the one Margaret Soltan linked to about texting in class, I can’t help but be thankful that I once took—and took to heart […]