The Jason Arday scandal

The 'bless him' was clearly tongue in cheek.

Let’s not forget setting the police on a Times journalist for a 4 month investigation (Sir Mark Rowley has belatedly admitted the Met should never have been involved) and setting a defamation law firm on a fellow academic.

Lots to think about in this case. It’s very sad personally and institutionally.

Several worrying things about it are true at the same time as much as some people would like it to be a simple good vs evil tale. Arday is obviously a fantasist, but it’s also obviously the case that racism is at play.

Otherwise how could he be such a unicorn in the first place? He’s sounding like he’s been amplified in his over claiming by institutions for years. they have wanted to support these fantasies and have not spend the money and taken the time to do due diligence to check on things and that’s not OK either.

This kind of thing surely becomes inevitable when you make vast cuts to university budgets. Back office processes will get skipped. People change jobs a lot more as contracts are shortened and take home pay gets worse. Nobody wants to see the HR bill go up accordingly so things get skipped.

The risks of that worrying institutional behaviour way overshadows one person trying his luck as a chancer, yet the reporting of it is very skewed towards blaming Arday personally. Cambridge is just the most recent in a line of employers that haven’t checked claims. How many other less grandiose Ardays are there still there? This case rightly or wrongly is going to cause more burden on academics and institutions and back office processes because of this huge level of scrutiny the media have brought.

I also hate this media narrative of ‘everyone exaggerates their CV’ no I bloody don’t. I think a lot of women in fact women do the opposite. Underplay female achievement. So this will have a chilling effect on female promotion, which will be really depressing.

And I feel really sad for all the academics of colour who have struggled to get where they are now based on their merit and talents in a predominantly white academy, which will have been much much harder for them to do. They will feel singled out for skepticism of their appointments due to this case which is horrible.

I don’t know how you can fact check or challenge anyone’s claims of autism or if we should even try to do that ever… but I worry that the media presentation of autism as a big part of the picture when an individual has done something bad; will make other people feel autistic people are not genuine or autistic people are prone to lying about their achievements, or that people who say they’re autistic should not be believed, and they’re trying to make an excuse.

Not saying these are comparable acts at all but lately some prominent murderers or attackers have said they’re autistic when defending their case which I found really upsetting. The autistic people I know couldn’t countenance lying and in fact often get in trouble for being way too honest and direct, and obviously wouldn’t hurt a fly.

So this Arday case is confusing and upsetting because of what it uncovers. And I hope the one individual at the centre is OK because this is a lot. As well as all the other people hurt by this. As PP have said, there is a whole system of male over-promotion. Tale as old as time!

We don’t get this level of correction and interest normally so what is that saying about our employers and our society and its culture and value it places on individual or group achievement and/or barriers and struggle to achieve for individuals and groups?

Lots to think about in this case. It’s very sad personally and institutionally.

Several worrying things about it are true at the same time as much as some people would like it to be a simple good vs evil tale. Arday is obviously a fantasist, but it’s also obviously the case that racism is at play.

Otherwise how could he be such a unicorn in the first place? He’s sounding like he’s been amplified in his over claiming by institutions for years. they have wanted to support these fantasies and have not spend the money and taken the time to do due diligence to check on things and that’s not OK either.

This kind of thing surely becomes inevitable when you make vast cuts to university budgets. Back office processes will get skipped. People change jobs a lot more as contracts are shortened and take home pay gets worse. Nobody wants to see the HR bill go up accordingly so things get skipped.

The risks of that worrying institutional behaviour way overshadows one person trying his luck as a chancer, yet the reporting of it is very skewed towards blaming Arday personally. Cambridge is just the most recent in a line of employers that haven’t checked claims. How many other less grandiose Ardays are there still there? This case rightly or wrongly is going to cause more burden on academics and institutions and back office processes because of this huge level of scrutiny the media have brought.

I also hate this media narrative of ‘everyone exaggerates their CV’ no I bloody don’t. I think a lot of women in fact women do the opposite. Underplay female achievement. So this will have a chilling effect on female promotion, which will be really depressing.

And I feel really sad for all the academics of colour who have struggled to get where they are now based on their merit and talents in a predominantly white academy, which will have been much much harder for them to do. They will feel singled out for skepticism of their appointments due to this case which is horrible.

I don’t know how you can fact check or challenge anyone’s claims of autism or if we should even try to do that ever… but I worry that the media presentation of autism as a big part of the picture when an individual has done something bad; will make other people feel autistic people are not genuine or autistic people are prone to lying about their achievements, or that people who say they’re autistic should not be believed, and they’re trying to make an excuse.

Not saying these are comparable acts at all but lately some prominent murderers or attackers have said they’re autistic when defending their case which I found really upsetting. The autistic people I know couldn’t countenance lying and in fact often get in trouble for being way too honest and direct, and obviously wouldn’t hurt a fly.

So this Arday case is confusing and upsetting because of what it uncovers. And I hope the one individual at the centre is OK because this is a lot. As well as all the other people hurt by this. As PP have said, there is a whole system of male over-promotion. Tale as old as time!

We don’t get this level of correction and interest normally so what is that saying about our employers and our society and its culture and value it places on individual or group achievement and/or barriers and struggle to achieve for individuals and groups?

No theyre fine

Jason, imo, took 'exaggerate on your cv' far too literally bless him.

Hes done right by resigning and ive no doubt he was targeted due to racism. That said, the response should've been to properly check the claims a lot sooner.

'Obviously the case that racism is in play'.

How so?

In a micro sense, because he’s the latest black academic to have right-wingers target him for scrutiny because he is black. Now it looks like he’s bang to rights, but that doesn’t change the fact that they picked him to go after and try to find something.

In a macro-sense, because Cambridge and other institutions have appointed him as a ‘quick fix’ when they were under pressure for the extreme lack of diversity in their students and staff, instead of trying to address the underlying societal and institutional racism that led to that extreme lack of diversity.

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.

lol. Cambridge’s reputation is completely untouched. This will be forgotten about in 6 months.

He gave himself to criticism; nobody needed to go looking for him.

In a micro sense, because he’s the latest black academic to have right-wingers target him for scrutiny because he is black. Now it looks like he’s bang to rights, but that doesn’t change the fact that they picked him to go after and try to find something.

In a macro-sense, because Cambridge and other institutions have appointed him as a ‘quick fix’ when they were under pressure for the extreme lack of diversity in their students and staff, instead of trying to address the underlying societal and institutional racism that led to that extreme lack of diversity.

Yes, he gave them stuff to find. But they aren’t going looking at white academics’ PhD theses.