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
December 12th, 2012 at 12:42PM
I love how the Globe article says “No one responsible for investing millions of public dollars to upgrade the University of Massachusetts Amherst football program and move the team’s home games to Gillette Stadium saw this coming.” Evidently they didn’t read the UMass student newspaper:
dailycollegian.com/2011/09/07/change-of-future-home-for-minutemen-disappoints-student-fan-base/
December 12th, 2012 at 12:52PM
Dave: That article is dated September 07, 2011. Students gave the fools a year’s warning.
December 12th, 2012 at 2:02PM
Not only students. There were plenty of faculty, myself included, who could see this coming. Some of them said so to the administration, at the Faculty Senate meetings of May 5, 2011, and September 15, 2011 (see especially the comments by Michael Sugerman and the question by Steven Brewer).
http://www.umass.edu/senate/fs/Minutes/2011-2012/708TH_MINUTES_09-15-11.pdf
It came up again at our Faculty Senate meeting yesterday, though parliamentary maneuvering and low attendance by faculty senators prevented the introduction of a motion to withdraw from FBS football. And it will come up again.
December 12th, 2012 at 2:26PM
Brian: Many thanks for those details!
December 12th, 2012 at 9:14PM
To gain revenue, Massachusetts will be playing those away games at two major powers, Kansas State and Wisconsin. There might be a good visitor’s guarantee for the accountants, there may also be some injured players for the athletic trainers.
Later in their season, Jordan Lynch and the Bowl Crashing Huskies will be playing at Foxboro. There probably aren’t a lot of Northern Illinois alumni in the Boston area. When Northern Illinois plays a game at Chicago’s Soldier Field, usually hosting a Big Ten team, the fans of the visiting team often outnumber the fans of the putative home team.
It’s all amateur sport, though. It has nothing to do with money.
December 13th, 2012 at 9:56AM
I don’t understand. Division IA (FBS) schools are required to maintain average home attendance of 15,000 to stay in IA. Where is the NCAA to enforce that rule?
December 13th, 2012 at 10:14AM
Crystal: Exactly. This is the first year U Mass has done this clever thing. I think the NCAA will probably give it another year. See this post:
http://blogs.bostonmagazine.com/boston_daily/2012/12/12/umass-football-foxboro-holes-attendance/
December 13th, 2012 at 2:16PM
This is a really good point, Crystal. (The abomination that is) UAB football, for example, only survives in Div I because the (nearly bankrupt) city of Birmingham buys the tickets. This results in all sorts of political chicanery: http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2010/08/birmingham_city_council_holds_2.html
I wonder how common this arrangement is? It certainly doesn’t pass the smell test, but it does not violate any rules.
December 13th, 2012 at 7:15PM
Crystal, I’m not sure if it’s average home attendance, or average attendance. If it’s the latter, that explains the mid-majors selling wins to the big name schools by consenting only to play at the big name stadium, or hiring the use of a professional stadium for a home game in name only (see Bowling Green hosting Ohio State in Cleveland and Northern Illinois hosting Iowa in Chicago).