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
February 10th, 2009 at 7:26AM
I couldn’t agree more with the lack of intellectual engagement that laptops effect in the classroom. I teach two English classes at Georgetown, and I’ve banned laptops in both.
I’ve never caught anyone surfing the web while I’m holding forth on Twain or Poe, but the possibility of eschewing Huck Finn for Facebook is always there for laptop users. I know that books don’t glow like a computer screen, but I’m trying to show them that studying literature entails more than rote notetaking.
February 10th, 2009 at 10:31AM
I am afraid I have to disagree, or at least point out that it varies from course to course. I remember when electronic calculators received this level of attention, the argument was the calculators would prevent students from learning math. What I’ve seen instead is the addition of multiple years of Calculus in the high school curriculum that were not there in the past.
I post pdf’s of my notes to Blackboard before every lecture. I find that the students open up the pdf on 1/2 of their screen and a their notes on the other half. Rather then becoming stenographers, the students jot down what I say that is not already reflected on their provided notes. It seems to me they get a more complete set of notes with less stenography, and hence there is more interaction with me and the rest of the class.
We also have to accept a future where our students are constantly plugged in. Banning laptops will not prevent the creation of smaller and more intimately integrated wireless devices. Rather then protest this, we should probably consider how to use this to our advantages.
February 10th, 2009 at 10:44AM
I agree in this regard: The laptop/technology/plugged-in issue definitely variers from course to course, or between subjects. With literature (at least with my courses), students seldom need more than the book, a pen or pencil, and their ideas. I teach very discussion-heavy courses, which demands further engagement.
I also agree that, barring some technological backslide, future generations will be increasingly plugged-in. Considering the potential advantages of this is certainly a good idea, although I’m still concerned about students’ abuse of being plugged-in during class time.
This issue definitely isn’t going away any time soon, if ever.
February 10th, 2009 at 10:45AM
Correction: should be "varies" in the second line, not "variers".
February 10th, 2009 at 11:34AM
I disagree with Professor Cole. When I was a student without a laptop, I too could become a stenographer. And when my hand was tired and I was bored, I daydreamed. Quietly surfing the net in class is no different than daydreaming or staring out the window. – TL
February 10th, 2009 at 1:09PM
Of course it depends on the discipline and the way the course is being taught.
It also depends on the particular student. As long as people are not distracting others in the class – this would be web surfing among other things – couldn’t we just treat them like adults? Real classrooms do not have to be like Paper Chase episodes.
Who is to judge whether stenographers are extracting the most benefit from their class attendance? In the end it matters what is in the brain, not how it got there.