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
April 23rd, 2011 at 11:56PM
Maybe the professor should ask himself how he manages to make his classes so boring that students prefer to shop online in the meanwhile. It’s always easy to blame lack of interest on the part of the students on technology, bad parents, an evil conspiracy and little green men. It’s a bit harder to recognize that one is a crappy teacher who can’t make his material relevant to the students.
April 23rd, 2011 at 11:59PM
Clarissa: Studies seem to suggest that students will use laptops for non-class activities in all available classes – those taught by brilliant charismatic professors, and those taught by duds.
April 24th, 2011 at 7:13AM
I don’t care how good a professor you are, if you are competing against the entire body of world knowledge and entertainment resources online, you lose.
April 24th, 2011 at 7:14AM
At some point, a forward-thinking (and financially astute) college or university will offer internet-free classrooms. That will be as an inducement to parents who do not want to pay big $$ for their almost-but-not-quite adult children to sit in class and surf the web. I am so, so, so glad that my kids went to college before this issue arose.
April 24th, 2011 at 8:05AM
Ulrich Undertaker, our director of development, assisted by Mr. Malice, our CFO, decided about 6-7 years ago that we needed wireless across the whole campus. A half-mil or so from some poor shlub of trustee was obtained to do the work. The faculty were, of course, not consulted about the desirability of this or even told what was happening. When word did leak out, many faculty protested, their keen minds foreseeing that on-line pornography might appeal more than differential equations and Facebook more than than a discussion of causes underlying the collapse of the Weimar Republic. Today, our science faculty place plastic sheets over their lab equipment to protect it from the rain pouring through the ceilings…the history faculty hold classes in rooms with heaters so old and noisy that EVERYONE NEEDS TO SHOUT IN ORDER TO BE HEARD ABOVE THE DIN…a couple of buildings are literally sinking…but students can play Farmville in every nook and cranny of the campus.
April 24th, 2011 at 5:27PM
I seriously think it’s an addiction, an addictive behavior. That’s the only way I can explain the texting habits of some people I know…they will text their best friend rather than talk to them, even if the friend is sitting five feet from them.
And also, your average “traditional” college student may not have learned the level of self-control a 40 year old prof might have. (I know when I’m in my office, with a stack of grading at my elbow, it’s far, far more appealing to go online and shop for books or visit commentary websites… Which is why I often now take my grading home with me, instead.)