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
November 29th, 2017 at 10:22AM
There are several things going on here. Football has inherent problems; “big-time” college athletics has endemic problems; TV money based on football traps Power 5 programs; etc. Berkeley, for 50 years, has been running what looks in some ways like an Ivy-type athletic program – lots of sports, championships in some minor ones, a few individual stars, last Rose Bowl win before WWII – but isn’t (and can’t be) really. The stadium rebuild, “necessitated” by seismic issues, was a catastrophic decision with adverse impact on academic units as well as the athletic department. To top it all off, the university has different names in sports (Cal) and academics (Berkeley), so even the supposed benefits of athletics are weakened. Now that the USMA teams are styled “Army West Point,” this is pretty much unique.
November 29th, 2017 at 12:03PM
Mr Punch: Yes. I think the crucial catastrophe was the stadium rebuild.
November 29th, 2017 at 12:11PM
Excellent analysis, Mr. Punch. The football stadium buildout was delayed because protestors sat in ancient trees which were destroyed during construction. Those tree sitters were depicted as typical Bay Area nutjobs. But if anyone bothered to listen, they stated the project was a financial boondoggle. But the B School Boys looked better, so this bullshit got done. Shoulda left the trees live out their lives, kidees, your uni is in serious trouble…..
November 29th, 2017 at 8:12PM
To be fair, not all of the $445 million of debt is due to the $321 million stadium renovation. There was also the $153 million Student-Athlete High Performance Center.
As to why stadium renovation required that kind of money when Cal’s friendly rival across the bay was able to completely demolish and rebuild Stanford Stadium 5 years previous for a total budget of $90 million, well that’s another question entirely.
You would also think $445 million would include restrooms for all, but you would be wrong. The west side of Memorial Stadium remains serviced by porta-potties, not as a nostalgic carryover from the predecessor facility, but due to constraints of the site. It is a lovely setting though.