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UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Harvard

The weather's always crappy in Cambridge. In the winter, it's appalling. Now that it's summer, it's humid and overcast. There must be many pleasant days in Cambridge, but I can't remember having been here for more than one or two, and I've been coming to Harvard Square for over twenty years.

Not that things are better, at the moment, back home in Washington.

I should blog about the war of words that's escalating between Harvard and Larry Ellison, he of the gigantic unmade gift... But I can't get too excited about someone who was about to give an insanely overendowed university yet more millions, and then for various reasons thought better of it. I mean, I applaud his having thought better of it... I think it's time for Harvard and its enablers to stop the madness... But unless some interesting angle emerges in the Ellison case, applauding and moving on seems best.

I'll have some things to say about the Denice Denton memorial service that was held today, and about a well-meaning but I think somewhat wrong-headed interpretation of her catastrophe in today's Inside Higher Ed (no links for the moment -- I'm at Irving House in Cambridge, using their temperamental computer). But not now. Now I'm going to bed. Wedding rehearsal tomorrow.