Your namesake law school is a national embarrassment.
… here.
Triumphal sadism as a way of life. Hard to know how you do anything about that.
Killing babies and lethally imperiling the rest of the population: The ultraorthodox way.
Responsible ultraorthodox are vaccinating. These people are however unable to stop the insane among their lot from letting children fall ill.
Wouldn’t want to leave Yale out of the Epstein saga. The Yale Daily News weighs in.
The good folks of Des Moines saw no reason not to hire Ian Roberts as their school superintendent, even though they did no due diligence on his, er, spotty background. Weapons arrests, in the country illegally, lied bigtime about his university degrees.
The lying thing is de rigueur among many school principals (you get a salary bump with a doctorate, and schools don’t seem to mind if, like Roberts, you buy it from an online vendor), but the rest of it makes for an unusually rich brew.
********************
Story jumps to the NYT.
**********************
The schools are suing the recruitment firm that fucked them up.
Sahndringham or Hahvard, the world’s grahndest locations were Jeffrey Epstein supplicant centers, full of people peeing themselves at the prospect of moolah from the captain of the Lolita Express.
Writers at the Harvard Crimson have selected some real beauts among expressions mixing memory and desire from a swath of Harvard éminences. The Harvard prof quoted in my title, now hiding out in LA, hits all his marks: Fond memories of our lowly origins before we got fahncy; reminders that since we come from the streets we don’t give a shit about any fucking justice system (cue Jets Theme, West Side Story); loyalty pledge.
At once poignant and hilarious, a wee legal assistant to Epstein’s best beau The Dersh strives earnestly to answer Epstein’s odd inquiry about transporting minors for sex. “I’m sorry I was a little confused about what you were asking on the phone,” he wrote to Epstein. The lad is clearly trying to get up to speed on the dirty big boy world into which his massive LSAT score has catapulted him.
As Charlie Javice is led off to serve seven years in prison for defrauding JP Morgan of $175 million, UD once more asks, What is it with high-priced lawyers? Their most compelling keep her out of jail arguments in this case were
1.} Hey we’re surprised that big ol bank even noticed the piddling 175 mill she stole. They’ve got SO much money the theft of almost two hundred million is nothing, judge. Nothing!
and
2.} What, really, is the point of jailing a criminal, especially within the guidelines? “Justice” is such a broad, ambiguous, concept; if you look at the matter with fresh eyes, judge, you’ll see that nothing is ever served by incarcerating someone who has done something illegal.
***************
Wharton notes that Javice of course graduated from that school, which grinds out world historical crooks like nobody’s business. Read my many Wharton posts for their immense mafia.
Suicide’s a funny thing. When a healthy 28 year old dies out of nowhere it could be something else (undetected heart condition, epileptic seizure, sudden bacterial sepsis, murder…), but it’s probably suicide. And eventually news coverage will straightforwardly include the S-word; but there’s often a slow walk, as it were, to the scaffold.
This Daily Princeton article about a brilliant cutting-edge engineering postdoc, for instance, notes that no cause of death has been given, but also says in its last sentence:
[Haoran] Li’s death is at least the eighth of a current or recent student at Princeton in the last four years, including four determined to be suicides.
And the word “suicides” will get the article’s last word. Nuff said.

photo DANIEL MIHAILESCU/AFP
The rest of America thinks you’re really weird for posing the question.
I’ve already said on this blog that there are certain sentences that only seem to show up in the New York Times, like this one, which features the phrase “only $100 million.”
One of New York’s vilest billionaires, Ronald Perelman, sued his insurance company because, far from paying him $410 million for fire damage to five artworks, they paid him NUTHIN cuz the paintings weren’t damaged and in any case (again see this post’s title) even if the insurers were in a mood to pay up, Perelman’s goodies were only worth the paltry sum of one hundred million (sniff).
So Perelman suffered not only a money diss, but today he lost his lawsuit because like everyone else – except some massively compensated expert witnesses – the judge can’t see a speck of damage.
The germ theory of disease is the work of the devil.
As England debates assisted dying, a charismatic couple in their late nineties decides they’ve had enough of “merely existing.” They went to Switzerland, although the friend quoted in my headline points out that if England had legalized assisted dying by now, they’d have been able to stay home and die among family and friends.
They sent a note to their loved ones:
Sorry not to have mentioned it, but when you receive this email we will have shuffled off this mortal coil. The decision was mutual and without any outside pressure. We had lived a long life together for almost 75 years. There came a point when failing senses, of sight and hearing and lack of energy was not living but existing that no care would improve.
We had an interesting and varied life, except for the sorrow of losing Jeremy, our son. We enjoyed our time together, we tried not to regret the past, live in the present and not to expect too much from the future. Much love Ruth & Mike.
Millions, however, don’t seem to mind the language directed against them which is quoted here.
One did decide she’d had enough, and she threw the thing away.
And wrote about why.
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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