“I live near Wall Street. The sense of entitlement is beyond quantification,” [Jeffrey] Sachs said. “They could not figure out why anyone might be mad at them for having nearly destroyed the world economy, taken home $30 billion a year of bonuses, gotten bailed out to the tune of another trillion dollars and then lobbied for no regulation afterwards. ‘What do those kids have against us?’ I don’t think they were kidding except themselves. I think they don’t get it.”
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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
April 13th, 2012 at 8:08AM
this is why it’s wrong to think of such attitudes in terms of denial, it’s worse than that as they literally cannot see what the problem is.
April 13th, 2012 at 1:50PM
Sanctimonious Sachs once again makes it up and phones it in.
April 13th, 2012 at 1:52PM
I agree he’s sanctimonious, but there’s no indication that he’s making anything up.
April 13th, 2012 at 8:42PM
“having nearly destroyed the world economy”…I would say that they (Wall Street) had plenty of help…for example, the US real estate industry, which–aided and abetted by the vast majority of the media–encouraged people to think that home prices could go up 10%/year forever. For example, individuals who chose to believe these fantasies and bought houses they couldn’t possibly afford, because they *wanted* it to be true. And let’s not forget those not-quite-private-not-quite-public organizations Fannie and Freddie. Also, spare a thought for the B-schools, which have encouraged the belief that business is more science and less art than is actually the case…an intellectual climate which surely had much to do with the readiness to believe the mathematical models forecasting safe repayment of bundled mortgage obligations.
And “world economy” involves countries other than the US. How about, for starters, the governing class in Greece, which purchased electoral favor by things like classifying *hairdressing* as a “hazardous occupation” deserving of early retirement at high pensions.
“Wall Street nearly destroyed the world economy” is pretty simplistic. And while there are certainly quite a few entitled jerks on Wall Street, I guarantee you can also find some pretty amazing levels of arrogance in government and its surrounding “policy” nonprofits and international organizations.