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
August 8th, 2024 at 6:02AM
What options? It’s not clear she ever visited Bangladesh or that the country had any meaning for her. Same goes for the Netherlands. She grew up in the UK. And the golden passport idea is a joke.
This is really harsh. She was 15. A child. Groomed, raped, brainwashed. She’s seen her children die. She’s probably traumatised. Yes, she did an unbelievably stupid thing, and joined a despicable organisation. But. She. Was. A. Child.
Let her stand trial for terrorism offences in the UK, if need be, and let her serve time in prison. But to leave her stateless is disgusting, and reduces us to the same level as the terrorists.
August 8th, 2024 at 8:00AM
Julie: A bit overstated there in your last sentence. Does your position no good.
She has no idea what her options are until she tries them. She has doubled down on her initial stupidity by rejecting some options that she no longer has.
To dismiss the idea of her, or her attorneys/family, approaching other countries about buying citizenship in order to liberate herself from stateless hell as a joke — why?
Given her dire situation, problems like a country having no meaning for her are rather on the trivial side. It’s probably not even true, since her parents certainly spoke of it, perhaps maintained some of its traditions, and lived among other Bangladeshis. The disastrous initial mistake she made – joining ISIS – suggests a stronger sense of affiliation with Islam than, say, Christianity. Certainly the country would have religious meaning for her. Further, Bangladesh always ranks as among the most corrupt countries in the world. What about her parents trying to bribe officials to get her in?
Most 15 year olds have a pretty good sense of right or wrong. She was an honors student – quite smart. No evidence of coercion has been presented, and she herself says ISIS beheading videos excited her and drew her to join. She seems to have made a full hearted ideological decision to join the group, and she certainly behaved in degenerate ways for years as a member of it.
Will you extend the same ‘she was only 15’ defense to the 15, 17 and 19 year olds currently under investigation for the planned Taylor Swift terror attack?
In short, there’s a national security reason that all her attempts to return to England have failed. She is moving on to a higher European court, and we will see if your arguments on her behalf prevail there.