So here’s UD’s take on the big ol’ racist sorority story at her university.

Most fraternities are repulsive, and most sororities are too. But fraternities hog the limelight cuz they torture and kill people, while sororities lag behind because they don’t have the nerve.

So UD is pleased to see the attention of the world focused, for a change, on the repulsiveness of sororities.

UD had high hopes for the University of Central Florida‘s Alpha Xi something, but that didn’t go anywhere. It was repulsive, but not repulsive enough. GW’s sorority seems to have met the global repulsion standard.

The University of Southern California’s Experiment in Maintaining a Meth Head as Head…

… of its med school (a meth head-headed med school — say that five times fast) has played out poorly. (Put PULIAFITO in my search engine for background.). USC donations are down 55 percent — probably because people don’t like to think of their money going up the nose of the dean rather than down the veins of people with leukemia.

The dean made an unconscionably high salary for someone who spent much of his time tending to his dopamine receptors. It’s a sweet life when you make over a million and don’t even come in to work much. And when you do come to work and see patients, you’re high as a kite.

Replacing the dude with a notorious sex rascal was also counter-indicated; but what can you do? It’s virtually impossible to find ethical people who want to live in Southern California and assume a prestigious, highly-paid position.

The Gathering Storm

In response to students stocking up on guns and alcohol, the University of North Florida launches a counter-offensive in which it outlaws tailgating.

Fantastic photograph…

… of rotting housing within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

More here.

‘[O]ne season before the stadium is to expand to around 65,000, the actual average attendance at Louisville games last season was 33,785.’

Onward and upward at America’s most notorious public university, the University of Louisville.

America’s Highest-Profile University Students

“[T]hey could wind up brain-damaged. Fine. They’re professional daredevils. It wasn’t immoral to watch Evel Knievel. We watch stuntmen in movies.”

College football: A mind is a beautiful thing to waste.

The Onion’s Super Bowl Coverage is…

… as always, worth a read.

Fuck a Dodge Ram Today

I am certain that there are many, many, many, many, many [people] who watched that [Superbowl ad] and were moved by it — who appreciated MLK’s message infused with vague instances of Really, Really Real Americans in Really, Really Real America and will buy and perhaps even fuck a Dodge Ram today.

Damon Young, The Root.

Muslim Men Have a Clitoral Orgasm

The first time [Shayma] Al-Hanooti returned to [her Virginia] mosque since her father’s funeral was to speak at a town-hall meeting at the height of the [mosque’s Female Genital Mutilation] scandal. It didn’t go well.

The crowd was mostly men, she said, and no recording devices were allowed. When it was Al-Hanooti’s turn to ask a question, she quoted [the mosque’s senior imam’s pro-FGM] remarks and asked how the mosque could continue under such leadership.

“The moment I quoted him, the community went crazy. It was just, like, this eruption,” Al-Hanooti recalled. “I was the only one they cut off, the only one that had a time limit, and suddenly security was in my face.”

***************

Tomorrow’s the day.

‘[R]iots are one of the only school traditions that bring [together] UMass students from all backgrounds.’

America’s most violent university campus (details over many years here) does its thing after yesterday’s football game, and a student writes in defense of systemic rioting at U Mass Amherst because, after all, what else is there? High tea at the Emily Dickinson Museum?

‘One of the women who protested on the street last week by taking off her scarf, and who requested anonymity out of fear of being arrested, said that the report was helpful, but that it did not go far enough. Women are demanding full freedom…’

Wotta shocker. Half of Iranians want to dump the required veil. As of 2014. No doubt that number is higher now. No doubt the real number was higher then.

All thanks to My Stealthy Freedom and the brave unveilers of Iran.

Ramming it Home.

If you hadn’t yet gotten the message about American football and postmodern capitalism, here’s your baby.

It’s a win/win.

***************

Here’s the antidote. Ram tough. Watch the whole thing, from a guy who routinely gets money penalties for hits.

Oh dear.

If any of this is truthful testimony, we have in Oxford professor Tariq Ramadan a character beyond the wildest imaginings of Michel Houellebecq.

According to the complainant, the assault occurred very soon after her entry into [Tariq Ramadan’s] room: slaps to the face, arms, breasts and punches in the belly, oral sex and sodomy imposed by force, new blows, a new rape. “He dragged me by the hair all over the room to get me into the bathtub to urinate on me,” she said in her complaint, claiming to have finally managed to escape only in the morning.

‘I am the very model of a Very Stable Genius, / I’m very good at spelling and I’ve got a giant penius…’

UD bows to the Gilbert and Sullivan superiority of the Brits. She got the link from Jon. Read it all. Sing along.

“The women’s accusations have put a dent in his projected image as a pious family man.”

Dent? … You mean like this? …

***************

The dons adore their dear Tartuffe;
Indignantly they ask for proof.
And when it comes, from lame and weak,
Against their godly pal Tariq,
Then watch each one of them go poof.

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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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