by Andrew Hammel, Quillette
The Jason Arday fiasco is a reminder why academia has developed a reputation for cowardice, careerism, and conformism in recent years.
The story of Jason Arday, the Cambridge professor who has just resigned amid a scandal involving plagiarism, fabulism, and résumé-padding, has rattled a number of skeletons in Western academia’s closet. In 2023, Arday became the youngest black professor at the University of Cambridge when he was appointed professor in the sociology of education at the age of 37. Arday had obtained his PhD from Liverpool John Moores University in 2015. The son of immigrants from Ghana who lived on a Clapham council estate, he claimed to have overcome autism and other disabilities that left him unable to read or write until he was eighteen. That was just one of his many spectacular achievements. Others included raising £5.5 million for charity and running ultra-marathons at an elite international level. On his brisk voyage to the top of British academia, he was showered with prizes and awarded honorary degrees by four UK universities. It is no exaggeration to call him the darling of British higher education.
Alas, this glittering edifice of renown has now crashed to splinters, sending shrapnel far and wide. Arday has been credibly accused of plagiarising large stretches of his PhD thesis, filing bogus claims of harassment, falsifying data, inventing guest professorships, and telling tall tales about his personal background and achievements. Cambridge University initially leapt to Arday’s defence and called the allegations against him a “vile campaign to undermine his credibility”. Awkwardly, the university has now accepted his resignation letter and announced—through gritted teeth—an investigation into his work and background.
[…] It was all well and good, at American universities, to admit a percentage of incoming black students approximately equal to the black share of the US population (thirteen percent), but these students had an unfortunate tendency to drop out more frequently than students from other backgrounds, with only forty percent completing a degree within six years of college enrolment. If only five percent of black students actually graduated, this guaranteed static from advocacy groups and foundations. Here is where the diversity department resorted to the subtle art of “retention.” From the outset, the university ensures every student—in particular, students from “marginalised” backgrounds—may seek special assistance. Many such students contact the administration voluntarily. Others are identified by algorithms and receive a discreet email. The assistant deans or senior officers for retention assess the needs of these students. Are they having family problems? Are they suffering from undiagnosed attention disorders or other mental-health issues? Are they partying too much? Or are they taking courses which their high-school education didn’t prepare them for? And how are their study habits?
Read here (£)
Watch: Pat Condell, in 2023, highlights this problem in his inimitable style!
And a Christian view from James Mildred at CARE: Jason Arday and the Identity We’re All Chasing
X Contributor Basil the Great informs us: Cambridge University has been mocked online for some of the ridiculous PhD courses currently being studied.
They include:
- Traditional Cultural Norms, Technology and Gender Relations in Ghana
- The Political Economy of Female Circumcision
- Unsexed beings: constructing gender, humanness, and agency through the use of the word “unsex” in Late Modern British society and writing
- In Her Own Words: A Study of Women’s Voices in Contemporary White Supremacy and Far-Right Online Hate
- Legal Mobilization by Black Lesbian, Bisexual and Queer (LBQ) Womxn in Kenya and South Africa
- Exploring gendered embodiment in transgender and gender-diverse adolescents at the intersection of exercise and eating behaviours, social inclusion, and mental health: Towards a desire-centred approach in paediatric gender-affirming healthcare and research
- Codes of Life, Codes of Death: Tracing the (Im)possibility of Trans Lives in Algorithmic Assemblages
- Queer Cultural Memory in Literature, Film and Television since 1999
- The Sexually Sociological: Gay Masculinity, Intimacy and the (Un)queer State
A once proud University has completely lost its way