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
March 14th, 2017 at 10:57AM
You’ve got two arguments here:
Unpopular speakers should NOT be shouted down or roughed up.
Is Charles Murray is worth listening to?
No they shouldn’t on the former, no he isn’t on the latter.
As far as wringing our hands on the end of rational discourse and the celebration of ignorance, OK, although Middlebury College isn’t where I would start worrying about that.
I read this blog nearly everyday. First comment!
March 14th, 2017 at 12:30PM
Matt: Thanks for the comment. For me the question is not whether in some purely intellectual sense Murray is worth listening to, but rather Did a legitimate group of students at Middlebury legitimately invite him?
They did; and Stanger’s willingness to be involved affirms my sense that the invitation was intellectually and pedagogically legit. Of course its legitimacy lies not merely in the fact that a serious group of conservative students wanted to listen to him and question him; it also lies in the fact that Murray’s work is influential; it is taken seriously by serious people, and continues to have an impact.
Some of his ideas are repulsive. Almost all of Ezra Pound’s ideas were repulsive, plus for good measure he was an open fascist and a traitor. And he is generously and uncontroversially represented in Middlebury’s course catalogue.
March 14th, 2017 at 4:58PM
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1994/12/01/the-tainted-sources-of-the-bell-curve
March 15th, 2017 at 9:00AM
dmf, that’s a great article. Thank you for linking. If the Middlebury students who attacked Murray and Stanger had, instead, sponsored a forum that raised up those powerful facts, they would have had a better impact on the public discussion around race and intelligence. Instead, they unwittingly gave ammunition to Trump/Bannon/the alt right.
March 15th, 2017 at 10:16AM
EB: Yes – that’s the saddest part. Plays into the hands of the other side.
March 15th, 2017 at 10:53AM
“unwittingly” is too kind.
March 15th, 2017 at 11:28AM
“raised up those powerful facts, they would have had a better impact on the public discussion around race and intelligence”
EB, that’s the fundamental error that the folks in higher-ed need to come to terms with, the irony being that pointing out this fact to them just sends us back around the backfire effect merrygoround:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds
March 15th, 2017 at 4:54PM
FWIW-I’ve listened to speakers whose views I didn’t like much. They were always personable, and always challenged whatever brain gunk I dragged to the lecture. I’ve listened to speakers with whose views I’m pretty simpatico, and struggled to find a question that might elucidate whatever they were talking about.
Long story short from this non-academic: I’d be okay listening to Dr. Murray. I’m okay with research on intelligence, that brain thingie, which I regard as very severable from policy applications. I’d have no problem asking respectfully of Dr. Murray: “Dr. Murray, a lot of your followers seem to take your thinking as an excuse to bash Black folks about. It’s almost as though they’re taking revenge on the folks who roughed them up in gym class or intimidated them at a bus terminal. Can you respond?”