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
September 11th, 2012 at 8:05AM
“Take your typical southern university system ”
Is that your impressionistic finding, or is it supported by statistics showing southern universities are more corrupt than western or northern? Have you asked your colleagues in sociology whether they’re interested in determining the causes of this regional disparity?
🙂
September 11th, 2012 at 9:46AM
Bill: I think it is indeed true that southern state governments generally tend to be more corrupt than most other parts of the country, and that as state institutions, public southern universities tend to be more corrupt, yes. According to a recent list, 3 of the 8 most corrupt states are southern, with Georgia the number one most corrupt state.
Another study names Florida the most corrupt state.
September 11th, 2012 at 1:52PM
For the sake of argument, because I’m not fully convinced, I wonder why the sectional difference, if there is one. Back in the day the football powers were Notre Dame, Syracuse, Army/Navy, then maybe Oklahoma and the Big Ten and SoCal. Then came Alabama and Texas. If the south started off behind, did they try to catch up by bending the rules, setting off a vicious circle/race to the bottom?
Of course, back in TR’s day the Ivies were the big dogs and they cheated too.
September 14th, 2012 at 4:05AM
“[C]rony dumping-ground . . . favor-repayment franchise . . . .” Low-incidence/low-impact cronyism and nepotism don’t break me up too much. You have a brother-in-law on the skids who’s reasonably qualified, so, okay, let’s overlook the dozen other equally qualified applicants for the job.
Aggressive cronyism and nepotism, and outright job-selling put you in a whole ‘nother league. I’m talking about unqualified, inept folks displacing qualified applicants and given substantive responsibility, budget money, evaluating authority over their underlings, etc.
September 14th, 2012 at 11:21AM
“I’m not just taking out the trash. I’m ‘covering’ for a drunk, a no-show ghost employee, and a political hack.” That’s what a low-level worker at a nearby academy said a while back. Trust me–at the level at which I (a non-prof) see things–there’s not a whole lot of improvement when it comes to academic and administrative hiring.
As a guy who grew up partly on his uncle’s used car lot, I’m okay with the values of the souk, the marketplace, whatever you want to call it. But, dudes and dudesses, if you want to set yourselves aside as professors, do better than covering your hindquarters and feathering your own nests.