Absolutely best quote so far from the Dorian Abbott story. But I’ll bet someone will top it. Stay tuned.
Absolutely best quote so far from the Dorian Abbott story. But I’ll bet someone will top it. Stay tuned.
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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
October 22nd, 2021 at 5:17AM
Yes, that quote captures excellently how imprisoning it is to force all aspects of human life to be viewed primarily through immutable physical characteristics.
However, I find the unrelenting, unchallenged racism at the heart of all these cancellations to be the most pernicious aspect. The MIT leadership asserts the public nature of the speech is what made the cancellation necessary: “Dr. van der Hilst speculated that Black students might well have been repelled if they learned of Dr. Abbot’s views on affirmative action.”
The racism inherent here, and throughout all similar justifications, is of two kinds:
1. Black individuals think with one mind on the issues of DEI and affirmative action. Because some Black people say they will be offended, the entire “community” of Black people will be. Contrarian views held by Black individuals must reflect internalized white supremacy, etc.
2. Black people are too fragile to tolerate hearing views they find disagreeable (or in this case, simply being in the presence of someone giving a scientific lecture unrelated to DEI) –their emotional resilience is simply too flimsy to withstand such an “assault.” Consequently, their minds must be protected by those who know what’s best for them.
These are the unspoken, unchallenged assumptions underlying so much of these cancelleations, and they are simply infantilizing, even dehumanizing, of Black people.
October 22nd, 2021 at 6:36AM
ProtoSomething: Yes. John McWhorter is terrific on the self-defeating nature of the repressed culture you’re evoking.
November 1st, 2021 at 5:00PM
That “pinnacle of intellectualism” gets the recognition it so richly deserves.
November 1st, 2021 at 7:56PM
Stephen: Hilarious, and well-written. And indeed what a richly deserved award.