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
August 10th, 2011 at 6:54AM
You have to admit, UD, that women college presidents have made great strides in recent years towards attaining the same level of jock-sniffery that we take for granted in a man.
August 10th, 2011 at 8:32AM
I think we should have a show trial for whatever PR firms do the feasibility studies for these stadia.
August 10th, 2011 at 8:57AM
UD has a touching regard for winning, for someone who does not find much merit in athletic competition. If they go 11-1 and ruotinely fill the stadium with beautiful displays of physical strength, speed, grace, and courage, will it be worth it then? (Roll Tide)
August 10th, 2011 at 9:30AM
tp: Women presidents seem to have a higher level — I think they’re more easily intimidated by the sports guys on the board of trustees. See the twisted love affair between Mary Sue Coleman and Rich Rodriguez.
Shane: It’s not whether I have a high regard – it’s that everyone else has a high regard. So they stop attending games after a certain number of losses, and the school’s budget implodes.
Alabama, of course, always wins. I take your point on that one.
August 10th, 2011 at 3:01PM
Alabama better keep winning. In fiscal year 2009 it ranked No. 8 in the nation in expenditures on athletics at $81.8 million. See Table 1.1 on p. 18 of Big Time Sports in American Universities by Duke University economics professor Charles Coltfelter.
In 2009 only 14 out of 120 programs from the Football Bowl Subdivision generated more income than expenses. See the August 18, 2010 report in Inside Higher Education at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/18/ncaa.
The University of Minnesota ranked No. 20 in the nation in fiscal year 2009 with $70.3 million in expenditures on athletics. The athletic department receives annual multi-million dollar subsidies from the general fund of the University. Meanwhile,the administration continues to cut courses and faculty positions and to replace professors with part-time instructors without tenure. See Section 1 of $tate of the University–A Parent’s Perspective at http://ptable.blogspot.com/2011/07/tate-of-u-parents-perspective.html#links.
Then there are the continuing direct and indirect costs for the construction of a $288.5 million football stadium that will be used for six games each year. See Section 5 of University Inc. Part II at http://ptable.blogspot.com/2011/02/draft-as-university-transforms-itself.html#links.
August 11th, 2011 at 7:15AM
Thanks for that info, Michael.
Our own athletics dept. does not have a champagne and caviar budget, but they are essentially immune to the cuts that are routinely inflicted on nearly all other areas of our university. It is simply taken for granted that every assistant coach, trainer, and even secretary will be replaced when one leaves. When they run over their budget, they are allowed to keep spending.