Jason Arday, the former professor of sociology at the University of Cambridge, has resigned following a high-profile row about plagiarism. It was reported last month that Arday, who was the youngest black professor ever appointed to Cambridge, was alleged to have plagiarised the work of another PhD student for his own doctorate. Subsequently a series of stories broke about what looked like increasingly tall claims he had made about other areas of his life.
He said he had run 30 marathons in 35 days (the latter portion with a hairline fracture to his femur), and raised over £5.5m for charity. When asked about the fundraising claims, he said he had been part of a large syndicate, none of whom he could name because he had signed a non-disclosure agreement. He said police had investigated the delivery of a severed pig’s head to his parents’ house in London as part of a campaign of harrassment. But the Metropolitan Police said it was “categorically” incorrect that an investigation had taken place.
Interviewed by a newspaper at the weekend, Arday did not deny that he had plagiarised, but said his autism meant he absorbed information by mimicry. Cambridge, which had initially defended Arday against the plagiarism allegations, announced it had launched an investigation following “new information” about his “academic qualifications and honorary appointments”. Arday resigned shortly afterwards.
Melanie McDonagh, columnist and author
It’s not hard to know whom to blame for the Jason Arday affair, and the clue is, it’s not Jason Arday. If you’re surfing a wave of plaudits and uncritical adulation from academics competing to promote you, well, it’s hard to blame you for not wanting to get down. You might as well blame Perkin Warbeck for being set up as one of the Princes in the Tower; he wasn’t the prime mover.
Nope, it was Cambridge University, my own university, which looks careless and weaselly at best, in its conduct of this wretched affair. First there was the rush to deny the all too credible claims about Jason Arday’s plagiarism and fantastical sporting achievements. (Undergraduates could be thrown out for this kind of stuff.) Then Arday’s supporters went out of their way to accuse the sceptics of racism rather than address the evidence – not just one individual, but anyone who saw that there was a problem.
The real problem here is not so much fantastic credulity about Arday’s literally incredible achivements but the larger problem, the lowering of academic standards at Cambridge. Jason Arday was a professor of the sociology of education at the university’s faculty of education. Certainly new, less traditional subjects appropriate for universities emerge over time, but some simply don’t have the same rigour as others. Just read the nonsense language in Arday’s own words in the abstract for one of his papers.
More to the point, Cambridge expanding its education department to a faculty within the university debases the brand. It isn’t a credible faculty and education isn’t a credible academic subject; it’s not on a par with classics or mathematics. Just watch Hilary Cremin, a professor at the faculty, calling Arday the best of the best.
But having gone along with the fantasy, it’s now for Cambridge to explain just why the bar was set so very low for Jason Arday. The only explanation that covers it is that his was a story lots of people really wanted to be true. Not good enough, is it?
Albie Amankona, broadcaster and political activist
The scandal has every ingredient a bored commentariat could pray for: Cambridge University, high-stakes plagiarism allegations, and the holy grail of clickbait, critical race theory. Throw in a young, handsome, working-class, neurodivergent black professor appointed in the aftermath of Black Lives Matter, with a memoir coming soon. With a backstory of ultra-marathons, millions raised for charity, and knife-wielding racists allegedly stalking his picturesque Cantabrigian office, it is a story tailored to drive algorithms and newsrooms wild.
But did the commentariat accidentally orchestrate a witch-hunt?
Multiple things can be true at once. Post BLM, the establishment forgot that true equality means equal, not special treatment; that academic and personal integrity are non-negotiable. However, it is equally true that the way this story was seeded and reproduced turned into a bloodsport.
The immediate causes of this bonfire can be traced back to Arday’s extraordinary background, and the Substack of Nathan Cofnas, a former Cambridge academic who theorised that under a true meritocracy, black people would basically vanish from high-profile positions outside sports and entertainment. This summer Cofnas posted allegations about plagiarism in Arday’s PhD thesis.
What followed was a frenzy. Revelation after revelation from The Daily Telegraph on the right to The Guardian on the left, amplified by the BBC at home and The New York Times abroad. It became a wall of noise so deafening that, following the announcement Cambridge was investigating, Arday resigned.
The media has done its job in exposing potential dishonesty and institutional failure. But we must ask ourselves an uncomfortable question. A man’s entire professional life has been torn down in the most public way. Is that a proportionate outcome?
The ground was, to borrow a metaphor, tinder dry. Britain was ready for a mega scandal. Cambridge, by making such a song and dance about Arday – and then punchily defending him when Cofnas’s allegations first broke – gave first matches and then more oxygen. The way they set up Arday and then handled the story gave his pursuers everything they needed. As we pick over this sorry tale – was it fair game or a legitimate commercial pursuit that turned controversy into pound coins? – Cambridge has many questions to answer.
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