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Watch this video at least until twenty-five seconds in, where…

… you get a wonderful shot of the University of Hawaii athletic director leaning comfortably back in his office chair and wearing one of those relaxed Hawaiian shirts and drawling about how firing someone you’re paying more than your state’s governor… firing that person after only a few months… and giving that person a huge buyout to go away… and giving no reason why you’re doing all of that is utterly routine, no biggie, a real yawn. Happens every day in the business world~!

Well, number one, no, it doesn’t happen every day in the business world.

Number two, the University of Hawaii is a public, taxpayer funded, institution.

And while we’re at it, number three: The AD casually mentions that there’s no scandal here because after all the position was budgeted anyway, so why be upset that UH is paying the budgeted money for no one to do anything in the position?

I mean, let me be understood here about exactly what the AD is saying. He is saying that we quickly fired the highest-paid public employee in the state of Hawaii for reasons we’re not sharing (UD‘s been at this game long enough to know that quick secretive firings like this one almost always involve the discovery of an alcohol problem, or criminal misbehavior of some sort), and we’re going to keep paying this person as if he still worked here (I mean, he will physically be here until the end of the year; he just won’t do anything), and that’s your tax money, but nothing in this picture is amiss.

Margaret Soltan, August 27, 2013 6:54AM
Posted in: just plain gross

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UD REVIEWED

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.
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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.
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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...
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Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

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Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

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Roland Greene, Stanford University

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Carlat Psychiatry Blog

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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...
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