‘At a demonstration in Habima Square this summer, a man erected a papier-mâché statue: an Israeli soldier carrying an ultra-Orthodox yeshiva student across his back.’

Art distills.

Mr UD, this morning, No Kings rally.

Refuses to remove her burqa. Refuses to pay her fine.

Why should she have anything to do with the so-called laws of so-called Switzerland? This, mes petites, is what people mean when they refer to the failure of (cough) ‘integration.’ She’s like the ultraorthodox in Israel, who see that “country” as the enemy against which God commands them to resist.

Deep Salafist pockets will pay her fines – she will continue to rack them up – until the state decides that the system of fines isn’t working. Next step: A social worker tries to reason with a fanatic. Then jail?

“We had over 30 Chicago police officers on the street at the time of the shooting,” [a local alderman] said. “It just shows how blatant and bold these criminals are that they will open fire with an automatic rifle in the presence of over 30 police officers. That didn’t seem to intimidate them at all.”

Chicago.

‘[S]ociologist James Tuttle uses “Murder Valley” to describe an area of 21 contiguous counties that includes the cities of Memphis, Tennessee, and Jackson, Mississippi, and much of the Arkansas Delta and Mississippi Delta. If the area were its own nation, Tuttle writes, it would have the fifth-highest homicide rate in the world: better than Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Haiti, which are ranked 6th and 7th, but worse than Ecuador and South Africa, which are ranked 3rd and 4th.’

‘[A gun control advocate in Mississippi] said Tuesday that he often reminds his colleagues in other parts of the country that “what they go through don’t even compare to what we have to go through in the South. Because in the South, guns is like having a bottle of water [sic]. Everybody got it. And then it’s a right-to-carry state. It’s a castle doctrine state. It’s constant gun shows every other week in Mississippi somewhere. So guns are just bloody in Mississippi…. Get us all together. You bring in alcohol. Then you bring in all the crazy drugs they got these days, and you got a state where everybody got at least 10 guns. What you asked for? You asked for violence.”’

Portugal will ban the burqa…

… and one of its political leaders uses remarkably strong language against the thing.

“[I do not accept that women should be forced to] walk the streets as if they were animals or merchandise.”

The Israeli winner of the Economics Nobel has choice words for his country’s ultraorthodox.

“If there are no changes within the Haredi community that succeed in bringing them into the 21st century and making them understand that without core curriculum studies, a modern society cannot function, in 30-40 years, Israel will be a theocratic state.

lol

 “Lucky Hank,” starring Bob Odenkirk, based on the 1997 novel “The Straight Man,” by Richard Russo, [offers a familiar] vein of disdain, one in which characters say things like: “My book of sonnets on Jonathan Swift has become the benchmark in early feminist 18th century response poetry.”

Kamel Daoud speaks.

[Arab women] are allowed access to the public sphere only if they renounce their bodies: To let them go uncovered would be to uncover the desire that the Islamist, the conservative and the idle youth feel and want to deny. Women are seen as a source of destabilization — short skirts trigger earthquakes, some say … [T]oday, with the latest influx of migrants from the Middle East and Africa, the pathological relationship that some Arab countries have with women is bursting onto the scene in Europe... People in the West are discovering, with anxiety and fear, that sex in the Muslim world is sick, and that the disease is spreading to their own lands.

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

An essential companion piece.

Finally, someone has the guts to call out Anne Frank’s white privilege.

CONTENT WARNING: Everything.

‘[The burqa] is rooted in the belief that women are impure and inferior. This goes against the principle of equality, and against Article 14 of the Spanish constitution. [The hijab and body veiling are] forced on minors by their families, which means that they cannot choose for themselves.’

A Spanish human rights activist argues for restrictions on various forms of Islamic dress in her country.

Blue ain’t my garden color, but…

… you can’t argue with these containers.

On my morning walk through Garrett Park.

Gender segregation in England??? Color me shocked.

They’re pretty much the last holdout in Europe on allowing the burqa, and like idiots they pride themselves on their tolerance even of cultural vileness.

Years ago, this blog covered the efforts of Muslim students to impose strict gender segregation in British universities, with the enthusiastic backing of the official body in charge of such matters. It took a lot of screaming and crying for this scandal to end.

And after all, having tolerated a branch of Islam rigidly determined to erase women, the Brits constantly have to tamp down further discrimination.

Things like a recent foot race which barred women from participating, for instance, continue to make the Brits look idiotic. The race went off without a hitch and without any women, and only after the thing happened did it occur to someone or other that there weren’t any women in it. So now oh yeah NOW we’re gonna appoint a committee to review that and for sure we shall do er something.

‘Parents often justify the procedure by believing they are acting in their children’s best interests—protecting their morals, ensuring virginity, or conforming to community standards.’

An article about the emergent scandal of medicalized FGM is much too coy: The point of the procedure is to assure that, their whole lives long, the women of Africa and Asia (230 million of them are currently walking around without sex organs) are guaranteed never to have even a teeny weeny blip of sexual pleasure. Total erotic numbness is the prescription, which your local doctor will happily fill for you. You can talk morals, virginity, the community, all you like. It ain’t none of that, really. It’s the amputation of the clitoris, and with it the death of erotic sensation forever. Some docs will sew your vagina shut too, just for good measure.

Until you understand that for hundreds of millions of human beings around the globe the thought of their daughters having the capacity to experience sexual pleasure is such an atrocity that they’d rather rip out their genitalia than run that risk, you’ll never get anywhere with this vile behavior. It really is there that you have to work: Just as public disgust with smoking decreased its prevalence, so disgust with violent hatred of female sexuality must be publicly expressed.

I say racket.

Some say that education consultants provide valuable skills and services to ensure schools can find the right leaders and focus on the right goals. Others say the business is a racket that wields too much influence and lines too many pockets.

[Des Moines Public Schools] has spent six figures of taxpayer money on that business. Now, it will spend boatloads more on attorneys to comb through the damage and shield the district from as much blame as possible for the [Ian] Roberts fallout.

And that’s to say nothing of the expenditure required to find a new superintendent.

The ed consulting racket is one of many rackets that made the world safe for Donald Trump. Here’s hoping the current notoriety of its most high-profile racketeer will help shut it all down.

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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