by Joanna Williams, spiked
The inquiry will ignore how the plagiarist professor was promoted well beyond his abilities.
Has the University of Cambridge abandoned its investigation into the hiring of Jason Arday? This summer, following Arday’s tragic suicide and amid an urgent sense that there were lessons to be learnt, Cambridge promised an independent review into all aspects of its ‘decision-making and actions’ – including how an academic who was so manifestly underqualified, had long been suspected of plagiarism and had made fantastical claims about his life story came to be appointed as a professorial chair. Now, the New York Times claims that the university is backing away from this pledge.
At first, it did seem that Cambridge wanted a wide-ranging inquiry. In early September, the university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Deborah Prentice, described the days following Arday’s death as a ‘period of profound sadness and reflection’. ‘We worked very hard to support Professor Arday during an appalling period of external criticism and focus’, she said, ‘but given the devastating outcome, we are still asking ourselves whether we could have and should have done more. This review will help us answer that question.’
Significantly, the review was always intended to be in two parts. The first part, to be led by Nazir Afzal, chancellor of the University of Manchester and former chief prosecutor for the north-west of England, was to focus on the ‘support, interventions and protections’ available to Arday in the period before his death. Afzal appeared keen to launch a thorough inquiry, saying at the time, ‘It is important that we approach this work with both rigour and humanity’ and ‘we must be willing to ask difficult questions’. The second part of the review was intended to cover the broader circumstances relating to Arday’s time at Cambridge, including the processes in place for recruiting senior academic staff and dealing with allegations of research misconduct.