The Jason Arday scandal

Ok, I read the Guardian article last night and felt it was more about questioning what could have happened than being particularly accusatory. The way I read it was that the young man was built up perhaps promoted before his time because Cambridge desperately wanted to smoke screen their woeful diversity record. Which smacks of racism.

But we all experience being a bit out of our depth sometimes, no?

The reason I feel that JA has treated unfairly is that he’s been subject to more scrutiny than his white middle class peers.

I also watched Krishna Guru-Murthy’s longish interview with JA and I thought it was impressive. He’s articulate but uses accessible language; much like Professor Brian Cox who makes complicated physics easy to understand.

You could argue it’s dumbing down but on other hand it could encourage people to go on to more high brow reading.

Nathan Cofnas who is JA’s main adversary said: [black people would] disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment" in a true NeroHe’s clearly using Jason (I did cut and paste that quote just to be clear. 😜 It sounds like he’s worked hard at getting this case to fit his hypothesis.

In essence, having read around case as much as I’ve time for (not a lot), I do believe Jason has been victim of a witch hunt. I also believe that plagiarism needs a proper sort out because using AI to say something was likely plagiarism doesn’t cut it for me. Remember AI is unreliable and tries to give the answers it wants in order to keep you consuming.

Finally, truth seems to be an increasingly intangible commodity these days. It seemed obvious that Lucy Letby was guilty once didn’t it? Now people are not so sure. I admit my reasoning is based on hunch as well as reading around case. But it wouldn’t be the first time that a young black man was set up, would it?

A fuller quote from the blog post in question reads:

Under a colorblind system that judged applicants only by academic qualifications, blacks would make up 0.7% of Harvard students. (Even that might be an overestimate, since high-school credentials are sometimes given a boost by affirmative action.) In a meritocracy, Harvard faculty would be recruited from the best of the best students, which means the number of black professors would approach 0%. Blacks would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment.

I don't think he's making a moral claim there. He's pointing out the consequences of abolishing affirmative action and DEI, given the current levels of educational attainment among different ethnic groups in the US. (He goes on to suggest that this is a reason not to do it, because it would lead to too great a backlash.)

Having said that, his politics clearly are very right-wing.

Like I say, it's a troubling case. Is it an example of fearless truth-centred inquiry to analyse the scientific literature around race and IQ, as he has, and conclude that there's a hereditary link? Or is it an academic fig leaf for racism? I don't know, but I like to think that if the latter is the case it ought to be possible to refute his position intellectually rather than just dismissing it because it's poitically unacceptable.

A fuller quote from the blog post in question reads:

Under a colorblind system that judged applicants only by academic qualifications, blacks would make up 0.7% of Harvard students. (Even that might be an overestimate, since high-school credentials are sometimes given a boost by affirmative action.) In a meritocracy, Harvard faculty would be recruited from the best of the best students, which means the number of black professors would approach 0%. Blacks would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment.

I don't think he's making a moral claim there. He's pointing out the consequences of abolishing affirmative action and DEI, given the current levels of educational attainment among different ethnic groups in the US. (He goes on to suggest that this is a reason not to do it, because it would lead to too great a backlash.)

Having said that, his politics clearly are very right-wing.

Like I say, it's a troubling case. Is it an example of fearless truth-centred inquiry to analyse the scientific literature around race and IQ, as he has, and conclude that there's a hereditary link? Or is it an academic fig leaf for racism? I don't know, but I like to think that if the latter is the case it ought to be possible to refute his position intellectually rather than just dismissing it because it's poitically unacceptable.

This is really sad. I am an autistic academic and looked up to him to what can be achieved. To see that it was all lies has shaken me.

That's just not true. Any such numbers were vanishingly small.

But the media and others have decided they are going to convince you otherwise, to justify the current situation.

I can't imagine I am going to convince you otherwise, and shall not bother trying.

Your statements are objectively wrong, to pull out just two: there may not have been massive plantations, but there were black slaves in the UK and black people have been present in these lands throughout history.

For anyone arguing in favour of him read some of the actual shit that they believed, even my elderly parents in their 80's would not have fallen for it 😂

Utter rot has set in at most of our Universities Cambridge leading the way!

Exactly.

I don't think most British people born before 1990 (?) had even heard of Rosa Parks growing up. But everyone born since has been force fed stories of her, almost as if she were one of our own.

George Floyd was American. The BLM movement came from him.

American footballer Colin Kaepernick was the first to take the knee before a match. For a time it looked as if it was compulsory in Premier League matches.

Even the dreaded n-word is American, whereas forty years ago it was only known as something from Huckleberry Finn.

Nearly all the rap songs that use the n-word, and call for attacks on the police, are American.

British society has swallowed American views on all of this. Whole and undigested.

I wonder how many current British schoolchildren realise that there were never black slaves in the UK? That there were effectively no black people here until the 1950s? That the 1960s may have been characterised by the civil rights movement across the Atlantic, where there was still massive discrimination, but here we were swinging and it was all about mini skirts, Profumo, the Beatles and the end of the Chatterly ban.

History is being rewritten before our eyes, and we are being forced to sign up to American guilt.

Ok, I read the Guardian article last night and felt it was more about questioning what could have happened than being particularly accusatory. The way I read it was that the young man was built up perhaps promoted before his time because Cambridge desperately wanted to smoke screen their woeful diversity record. Which smacks of racism.

But we all experience being a bit out of our depth sometimes, no?

The reason I feel that JA has treated unfairly is that he’s been subject to more scrutiny than his white middle class peers.

I also watched Krishna Guru-Murthy’s longish interview with JA and I thought it was impressive. He’s articulate but uses accessible language; much like Professor Brian Cox who makes complicated physics easy to understand.

You could argue it’s dumbing down but on other hand it could encourage people to go on to more high brow reading.

Nathan Cofnas who is JA’s main adversary said: [black people would] disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment" in a true NeroHe’s clearly using Jason (I did cut and paste that quote just to be clear. 😜 It sounds like he’s worked hard at getting this case to fit his hypothesis.

In essence, having read around case as much as I’ve time for (not a lot), I do believe Jason has been victim of a witch hunt. I also believe that plagiarism needs a proper sort out because using AI to say something was likely plagiarism doesn’t cut it for me. Remember AI is unreliable and tries to give the answers it wants in order to keep you consuming.

Finally, truth seems to be an increasingly intangible commodity these days. It seemed obvious that Lucy Letby was guilty once didn’t it? Now people are not so sure. I admit my reasoning is based on hunch as well as reading around case. But it wouldn’t be the first time that a young black man was set up, would it?

I very much agree that the transposition of American opinons about race the to the UK context is unhelpful and is the root of a great deal of misunderstanding of ethnic relative disadvantage in the UK.

The problem for universities is that academic careers develop over decades, there is no quick fix to problems of underrepresentation.

Ironically, Cambridge have put a lot of effort into widening access, which imo is the only effective way to address things.

A fuller quote from the blog post in question reads:

Under a colorblind system that judged applicants only by academic qualifications, blacks would make up 0.7% of Harvard students. (Even that might be an overestimate, since high-school credentials are sometimes given a boost by affirmative action.) In a meritocracy, Harvard faculty would be recruited from the best of the best students, which means the number of black professors would approach 0%. Blacks would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment.

I don't think he's making a moral claim there. He's pointing out the consequences of abolishing affirmative action and DEI, given the current levels of educational attainment among different ethnic groups in the US. (He goes on to suggest that this is a reason not to do it, because it would lead to too great a backlash.)

Having said that, his politics clearly are very right-wing.

Like I say, it's a troubling case. Is it an example of fearless truth-centred inquiry to analyse the scientific literature around race and IQ, as he has, and conclude that there's a hereditary link? Or is it an academic fig leaf for racism? I don't know, but I like to think that if the latter is the case it ought to be possible to refute his position intellectually rather than just dismissing it because it's poitically unacceptable.

He said "under a true meritocracy black people would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment"

What is the context that would make that acceptable and not racist?

It's not just the right wing press, the Guardian running a big piece on it was a critical turning point last week.

Three degrees from good unis? He claims to have had the reading ability of a 3 year old whilst doing his undergrad, that he needs to use "mimicry" because of his autism, is accused of having plundered quotes from other people's research and pretend they were quotes from interviews with subjects he had conducted himself, and frankly - if you've seen any interview footage of him at all, I'd be disappointed in his intellect if I met him at a sixth form parents evening and realised he was responsible for teaching my children.

I've read his Substack and it seems racist to me, he seems quite aligned with so-called 'human biodiversity' and 'race realism', movements that claim people need to face the truth that black people are on average the least intelligent, with white people in the middle and Asians at the top.

There are facts, and there are 'facts' though. He's also American and trying to directly transfer American opinions about race to a UK context is never helpful.

Fair point, but not the case across the other departments? The university obviously feels it has some ground to make up or we wouldn't be having this conversation ...

It is interesting that everyone with sympathy for Jason Arday is queueing up to dismiss Nathan Cofnas as racist, apparently on the basis of hearsay and a few quotes taken out of context. Isn't that exactly the sort of witch hunt that they are objecting to in Arday's case?

Cofnas' work on race and intelligence is undoubtedly troubling and morally challenging, but surely it's the duty of philosophy to confront difficult questions rather than to pretend they don't exist.

Cofnas is undoubtedly a racist, but IMO it's always better to defeat an argument with logic and facts. Unfortunately, refusing to engage with a racist because they are racist just leads to some people believing not having a discussion is because there are facts behind his opinion that people are unable to address.