June 22nd, 2016
THIS IS A MAN’S WORLD!

WACO, TEXAS

HOME OF BREASTAURANTS,
BIKER MASSACRES, AND
BAYLOR UNIVERSITY

This is a man’s world, this is a man’s world
But it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl

You see, man made the Harleys to take us to Hooters
Man made John Barley and lots of big shooters
Man made Baylor and its rapin’ recruits
Man made a thousand new Baylor lawsuits

This is a man’s, man’s, man’s world
But it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl

Waco’s lost in the wilderness
It’s lost in bitterness
It’s lost, lost somewhere in this, in loneliness

June 22nd, 2016
Reaping the Girlwind

Having wooed and accommodated the forces of chaos, party leaders now fear that Mr. Trump will not only lose, but that he’ll cost them control of the House and the Senate, too …

Republicans: Making the world safe for Clinton/Warren.

June 22nd, 2016
Update on Mentally Challenged University of North Texas.

The University of North Texas athletic department is paying $90,000 per month to buy out the contracts of three former athletic department employees…

The school hired [a new football coach] heading into the 2011 season and saw him provide the program an immediate boost…

[It] quickly signed [the coach] to a new five-year contract in March 2014.

[He] coached only 17 games under the terms of that contract. [The school] fired him after an embarrassing 66-7 loss to Portland State University left UNT at 0-5 last season…

UNT has been paying out [his] salary since…

And you know what’s interesting?

McCarney hasn’t taken a full-time job since leaving UNT. He recently spoke at a clinic at Iowa State and has spent time visiting his former assistant coaches who now are running their own programs.

Petersen has not returned to a full-time job in college coaching, while Villarreal said he would take time off after leaving UNT to evaluate the next step in his career.

None of the three guys getting full salary for doing nothing is looking for a new job! Weird, huh? They seem content to pull down all that money and not do anything.

Or, I mean, you know … It’s great to see Villarreal slowly chewing on that all-important next step…

It’s like university presidents on corporate boards. Nice work if you can get it.

June 21st, 2016
La Kid…

13501826_3986197413039_2424012051388137507_n

… fashionably freezing
her ass off at a music
festival in Ireland.

June 21st, 2016
Last Speech of Donald …

Trump.

June 21st, 2016
Tweets for English Professors

Tweet from Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist Joel Benenson: “Polls drop. Trump dumps mgr. — S. Beckett: ‘There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.’”

However — UD has long argued that the urtext for the Trump phenom is Ubu.

June 21st, 2016
Donald Trump: First Female President

We are seeing a very serious role reversal in the Clinton-Trump race. The very criticisms that men unfairly hurled at politically ambitious women are now actually true about Trump. The old stereotypes and attack lines for women have suddenly become part and parcel of who Donald Trump really is:

Who is the most emotional, off-the-wall, candidate? Donald Trump.

Who is shrill and flailing at his rallies? Donald Trump

Who has little knowledge or understanding of the issues confronting the country? Easy one, Donald Trump.

Who lacks basic competency in governing? Donald Trump, hands down.

Who routinely makes statements that lack credibility, don’t rely on facts and depend on his “mood” at the time? Yup, Donald Trump.

June 20th, 2016
Secret Ballot

We shouldn’t necessarily believe the polling, [Trump’s] arguing, because Americans who intend to vote for Trump are too embarrassed to admit it when asked for their preference in surveys. Once you account for the fact that Trump supporters feel a sense of shame, and don’t want to acknowledge their true beliefs to pollsters, maybe he’s doing far better than the data suggests.

Is there anything to this? I doubt it – there was some chatter about this during the GOP primaries, but the polls tended to be pretty accurate – though it says quite a bit about Trump’s candidacy that he’s been reduced to reassuring partisans by telling them that he has secret supporters who don’t want to admit they’re voting for him.

June 20th, 2016
“Some Parts of the Brazilian Government Actually Aren’t Corrupt”

Headline of the day.

June 20th, 2016
‘“Where there was a lot of reasons to be concerned about this guy, York University showed no reluctance to name a very high profile new initiative after him,” said Jim Turk, former executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers for 16 years and now a distinguished visiting professor at Ryerson University.’

Look, he hasn’t quite yet actually been convicted of anything… More than enough reason to emblazon his name all over your Institute for Global Health…

June 20th, 2016
“It’s an easy equation: Get the stadium, get better players, build a better team, win games, get into a better league and make more money. Spend that money on making a better university.”

America’s dumbest state builds a stadium.

June 19th, 2016
Nicely put.

In coming weeks more GOP leaders could decline to support [Trump]. The awkward pose of polite distance could turn into a stampede — or to change the metaphor, ships deserting a sinking rat.

June 19th, 2016
Love the Quotation Marks.

A recent Science Friday investigated the absence of research studies of gun violence. Why does the CDC, for instance, shy away from supporting this sort of research?

The NRA “declined to come on the program,” but sent a statement complaining that researchers typically fail to mention positive outcomes associated with gun ownership, and only incorporate

“negative” outcomes such as suicide and/or homicides.

June 19th, 2016
Elitist Snob, Loser, So-Called “Professor,” Just…

jealous of Donald Trump’s success.

June 18th, 2016
Snapshots from Home

It’s been a way arty week for UD: A local production of The Drowsy Chaperone featuring her cousin; Bloomsday in Chestertown; piano/violin duets at my place with my friend Annie (Saint-Saens, The Swan; Schubert, Serenade; a stab at Mozart, Sonata No. 7); and, at the moment, a photography exhibit in DC – ‘eighties pix of The Smiths. (Here’s the book.) UD was dragged here

20160618_183103

by her sister the Morrissey fanatic. (The photographer is the woman in the black dress/black shoes.)

The duets were initially nerve-wracking and then exhilarating. UD – a hopeless amateur at the piano – has never tried actually performing with another person, and Annie is a serious violinist. But UD accepted her invitation to play some pieces together, and it went pretty well. More importantly, UD experienced the great and somewhat astonishing pleasure of creating with another person celestial harmonies. She found herself thinking about a line from Albert Schweitzer — he recalls that when he was young something as simple as the two-part harmony in the song In The Mill by the Stream “thrilled me all over, to my very marrow, and similarly the first time I heard brass instruments playing together I almost fainted from excess of pleasure.”

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UD REVIEWED

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

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