The Jason Arday scandal

This is hilarious.

Why on earth should anyone have to plough through the Renaissance before examining 'global' (you mean 'not white', I guess, because global is a strange word to use here otherwise) conceptual art?

The extent to which the latter reacts against the former can be explained in 500 words I should think. The movements immediately preceding conceptualism are useful to understand - but there's no sense in which conceptual art cannot be understood without a detailed grounding in Renaissance art.

So you must be saying that there is something intrinsic to 'the canon', and the Renaissance in particular ,that makes it more valuable than other forms of art (How do you know? Who decides? Have they seen All The Art?)

And that there's no possibility that our understanding what constitutes the canon is just as subject to ideology - plus fashion, taste, power, wealth - as anything else.

Or are you saying that things should be studied ONLY in descending order of value, as you perceive it? So Shakespeare first, and then eventually when you're about 30 you might be allowed to move on to Toni Morrison?

Or is it simply because it's older? Because I see you're not calling for everyone to study pre-Columbian art before they tackle Carl Andre.

So confused.

I'm the OH of a Renaissance art obsessive, an artist myself, and someone who is by no means uncritical of the current state of arts/humanities/fine art education and the contemporary art scene. I cannot imagine invoking 'the canon' uncritically - to hear you do so makes the rest of your argument not worth the candle imv.

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?

This is hilarious.

Why on earth should anyone have to plough through the Renaissance before examining 'global' (you mean 'not white', I guess, because global is a strange word to use here otherwise) conceptual art?

The extent to which the latter reacts against the former can be explained in 500 words I should think. The movements immediately preceding conceptualism are useful to understand - but there's no sense in which conceptual art cannot be understood without a detailed grounding in Renaissance art.

So you must be saying that there is something intrinsic to 'the canon', and the Renaissance in particular ,that makes it more valuable than other forms of art (How do you know? Who decides? Have they seen All The Art?)

And that there's no possibility that our understanding what constitutes the canon is just as subject to ideology - plus fashion, taste, power, wealth - as anything else.

Or are you saying that things should be studied ONLY in descending order of value, as you perceive it? So Shakespeare first, and then eventually when you're about 30 you might be allowed to move on to Toni Morrison?

Or is it simply because it's older? Because I see you're not calling for everyone to study pre-Columbian art before they tackle Carl Andre.

So confused.

I'm the OH of a Renaissance art obsessive, an artist myself, and someone who is by no means uncritical of the current state of arts/humanities/fine art education and the contemporary art scene. I cannot imagine invoking 'the canon' uncritically - to hear you do so makes the rest of your argument not worth the candle imv.

An example: students learning about global conceptual art and remaining ignorant of the Renaissance.

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.

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!

...the rest of the university faculty is overwhelmingly populated by middle-aged white blokes ...

Simply not true.

You can't always tell from the names, and not everybody has photos, but the first SIXTEEN of the people in the education faculty listed below appeared to me to be women:
https://faculty.educ.cam.ac.uk/about-us/our-people

And a good number of them are definitely not white.

What did trinity have to do with it; thought he was a fellow of Jesus?

Well, obviously not, as JA's appointment was a bit of stunt casting designed to draw attention away from the fact that the rest of the university faculty is overwhelmingly populated by middle-aged white blokes ...

The fact that no-one bothered to check his bona fides beforehand shows he was diversity window-dressing and reflects badly on everyone involved.

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!

If he was a middle-aged white bloke from a provincial university who was found to have skimpt on his citations and juiced up his cv absolutely no-one in the wider world would give a monkey's, and there certainly wouldn't be a big fuss in the media when he resigned.
That said, Trinity should have looked harder at his credentials - this is an absolute open goal for the diversity critics.

Oxford. Oxbridge is reaping what it sows. What a great example to be setting children who are told study pays off.

Yeah, there are plenty of respected black academics who could work at Cambridge, but the university bureaucracy wanted a quick fix and someone they could parade as evidence of their sincerity and righteousness (for example the current president of Wolfson college is a black woman who is very highly respected in her field)

I work in a field where women are massively underrepresented, but I would hate this kind of appointment being made- it's frankly insulting and leads to bias against the very people the bureaucracy claim to be helping.

Middle aged white blokes who deserve to be there. They've, you know, done the work that gets rewarded by being employed by Cambridge.

Well, obviously not, as JA's appointment was a bit of stunt casting designed to draw attention away from the fact that the rest of the university faculty is overwhelmingly populated by middle-aged white blokes ...

The fact that no-one bothered to check his bona fides beforehand shows he was diversity window-dressing and reflects badly on everyone involved.

Middle aged white blokes who deserve to be there. They've, you know, done the work that gets rewarded by being employed by Cambridge.

Well, obviously not, as JA's appointment was a bit of stunt casting designed to draw attention away from the fact that the rest of the university faculty is overwhelmingly populated by middle-aged white blokes ...

The fact that no-one bothered to check his bona fides beforehand shows he was diversity window-dressing and reflects badly on everyone involved.

A middle aged white bloke in that situation would not have been appointed in the first place.

that's the whole point...