I am intrigued by the story of Jason Arday, who recently resigned his professorship at Cambridge. Most of the press accounts focus on his serious fabulism. He boasted about feats of physical strength—like running six hundred miles in six days—that are nearly-physically impossible. Worse, these are stories that can easily be refuted. Apparently, no one in the ultra-marathon circles knew who he was. It is almost comical that a major publisher gave him a seven-figure book advance.
The lies Arday told about his personal story are problematic, but the far more pressing issue is his academic record. For years, he faced significant charges of plagiarism and dishonesty in his dissertation and his thin scholarship record. Those who raised these charges were predictably dismissed as racists. Cambridge performed an investigation that now appears to have been a sham. Only now, when the entire story has fallen apart, people are comfortable speaking the truth.
Arday resigned, but he is not alone. He can't be. If he was able to get away with flagrant violations of academic integrity for years, others have as well. And to the extent that fears of being called racist shielded Arday from rigorous scrutiny, other academics are in a similar position. Indeed, how many Ardays have been hired and promoted, in the face of doubts, as part of DEI initiatives? Arday was hired in 2023 at peak-wokeness.
The UK Telegraph has a deep dive titled, "The Cambridge diversity scramble that led to Arday fiasco." Read the entire thing, but here is an excerpt:
Put simply, did Cambridge University lower its own standards to hire a man of questionable merit simply because of his skin colour? And having done so, did one of the cornerstones of Britain's world-renowned education system prioritise its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) credentials over its hard-earned reputation? . . .
The Telegraph has spoken to someone with first-hand knowledge of the interview process that Mr Arday passed through, who believes the university only "went through the motions" with other candidates because he was already the preferred choice.
We have also spoken to students who complained about inadequate supervision by Mr Arday, only to be told they were being racist.
John Preston, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Essex, said: "The appointment of Prof Arday certainly raised eyebrows at the time with people who work in this area because his publication record appeared rather thin. It raises questions about whether he was appointed for other parts of his CV.
"There were a lot more qualified people who would have been more suitable… they probably wanted to address their own failures in DEI in the past."
When the job of professor of sociology of education was advertised, Cambridge told candidates that: "The following groups are currently under-represented in our community: women, those with a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic background and those with disabilities."
Mr Arday, who had spoken many times about his childhood autism and learning difficulties, ticked two of those three boxes. . . .
But the Arday affair will not quickly be forgotten, and the questions of whether Cambridge cherishes DEI more than its own reputation will persist.
Even the New York Times can state the obvious:
In 2023, The Times of London paraphrased comments from the head of Mr. Arday's academic department, writing that his hiring "was proof of the university's commitment to tackling existing inequalities." "To any students or prospective colleagues who are wondering if Cambridge is a place where they can belong, the answer is, emphatically, yes," she told the paper.
If Mr. Arday isn't just a scholar, but a symbol of his university's commitment to social justice, perhaps that made it more difficult for Cambridge to examine its own role in his ascent—and to delay, by several damaging years, the full investigation Mr. Arday's case so obviously warranted.
Cambridge is an institution that dates back to 1209—before Magna Carta! Yet somehow, the DEI madness of the post-George Floyd era allowed them to look past all of the red flags. And if Cambridge succumbed to this mania, then far-less prestigious institutions likely made even worse errors.
The academy cannot perform its function of pursuing truth and knowledge if certain groups are afforded preferential treatment at every stage of their careers, and then are shielded from criticism for fear of undermining the entire DEI process. Arday was caught. There are likely others who should be caught.
Update: John McWhorter has more at City Journal:
Arday merely reinforced long-established and simplistic pieties. He became the equivalent of a full professor at Cambridge based on doing interviews with acquaintances about the racism they experienced, and then largely just presenting what they said. At its highest level, this could be good (but not great) journalism; it could not be academic work. On the level Arday worked, my 14-year-old could best him after some quick training in Latinate, Judith Butler-esque prose. . . .
Even worse than Arday's work displaying no actual excellence is the consequence that characters like him wind up passing the torch to the next generation of black scholars. In a career spent in and around academia, I've seen this happen too many times. I refer to nothing like all black academics. But this is a vortex that young black scholars are sadly vulnerable to being pulled into, aided and abetted by white fellow travelers. . . .
Arday had no original ideas. He can't teach someone how to write because his writing consists of, well, "mimicry." (Even his resignation letter seems likely to have been generated by AI.) There are reports that—big surprise—Arday had no idea what actual teaching was and couldn't be bothered with supervising students' work, probably because he had never done any himself. People taught by versions of this type end up occupying an alternative academic universe, where cultural fellowship and advocacy are the North Star, and learning and curiosity get lip service but are beside the point. . . .
The mentees, evangelized in the conviction that their blackness is what makes them matter rather than hard mental work, do not learn how to reason closely and clearly. And again, white academics make sure that they never have to. An eminent white academic once contacted me while on a committee evaluating a black scholar for a prestigious award, asking me what I thought of the person's work. The truth was that the scholar's writings and presentations were earnest but unstructured and unoriginal. From acquaintance, I knew that she could have done much better than this but simply had never been taught how. She was on the shortlist transparently because she was black. Many like her get the award nevertheless—and the torch passes on. . . .
But if Stephen Hawking's work were mediocre, no one would have celebrated it. The intelligent take would be to pity that his physical misfortune had prevented him from achieving something on a meaningful level. Let us imagine a white version of Arday with long blond hair (not dreadlocks, because I suspect those would have a sirenic effect on many as signaling an allegiance to social justice). Even with the same claimed experiences as Arday, this man with long blonde locks would not be celebrated as brilliant—but as someone sadly denied the chance for brilliant achievement. . . .
The only reason people would believe all this damnable foolishness—and remember, across the pond they're not wowed by his lovely accent the way Americans are—is that they see Arday as a Magic Negro. The kindly, antiracist white academics think suspending their judgment when it comes to a black man makes them good people. . . .
The youngest-ever black professor at Cambridge properly should have been a physical education teacher who did some after-hours tutoring. A make-believe academic who misspelled paltry as poultry in the title slide of a keynote address instead scaled the heights of Britain's Harvard because of his skin color and his exceptionally long dreadlocks.
