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The Jason Arday scandal

690 replies

Ilikesundays · 06/08/2026 21:55

To think that Cambridge University’s reputation has been shot to pieces by the revelations about ex-professor Jason Arday?

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21
YourAmplePlumPoster · Today 12:28

Jason Arday: a question of academic standards - UnHerd https://share.google/i4IjAjC8nz4Sqbu2Y
What Dawkins says.

YourAmplePlumPoster · Today 12:31

Obscurantist language is what Judith Butler hides behind. I would have thought the James Lindsay expose with his fake academic papers would have knocked this on the head.

AnonyMumAuDHD · Today 12:41

Posting here as the other thread is getting a bit full, but there is an interesting article in Unherd by Dawkins on academic obscurantism that seems worth a read. Will try to attach screenshots as I believe it is behind a paywall.

The Jason Arday scandal
The Jason Arday scandal
The Jason Arday scandal
The Jason Arday scandal
LuckyHazelFox · Today 12:50

SevenYellowHammers · Today 12:20

Oh no! That’s what men do, trivialise women’s work and culture. It’s only house work, only fashion, only melodrama. What about Hall and Gilroy? Not worth knowing about because they point to the inherent racial inequality in society?

Thanks for reminding me why I find sociology so dull. I referred to Oakley, not Hall's work on race inequality. Great thing about studies is that anyone outside of academia can dismiss them as being out of touch with the real world.

AnonyMumAuDHD · Today 12:56

YourAmplePlumPoster · Today 12:28

Jason Arday: a question of academic standards - UnHerd https://share.google/i4IjAjC8nz4Sqbu2Y
What Dawkins says.

Lol, sorry didn’t see this before I posted screen shots. 🤦🏽‍♀️

Heggettypeg · Today 12:58

AnonyMumAuDHD · Today 09:05

I’d argue that racism is also at play when your expectations of black scholars is so low that you allow under-qualified and inexperienced individuals, with a small pedigree of published works, to be promoted into high level jobs. I’ve seen interviews with high ranking black professionals who demand that DEI measures in the UK/US be removed because the perception of black candidates and graduates in academia and other professions is completely undermined. Because it erodes any respect they can hope to get for their very considerable experience.

I have no issue with contextual grade reduction - on paper this really is just 1-2 grades so AAA gets reduced to AAB/ABB. for candidates who do not meet the on paper criteria for a contextual offer, universities (eg Southampton) offer interviews (my DS was invited to one, I assume because of his autism declaration in is statement) and he also received a grade reduction in his offer as a result of impressing them. I think if it were more than a few grades I’d have an issue, but contextual reductions for are less about candidate ability and more about recognising that if you come from a school with poor Ofsted rankings or a special measures history, and it is in a deprived area, that candidates there are institutionally and systemically disadvantaged.

That the current A Level system does not prepare children for university in and of itself - that private school pupils have an advantage because they are taught the requisite skills along side A level teaching - is criminal. It’s something that the government, exam boards and universities need to bash out in a room somewhere and change. A student who has got ABB rather than AAA, should still be readily able to adapt to university standards quickly if the teaching and syllabus at university facilitates it - unis should be where those skills are taught, honed and extended, not a place where they rely on students arriving as fully formed academics. In fact, that a student who has achieved an ABB in an underperforming school really should be the indicator of significant intellectual potential and academic resilience that it is. The teaching to exams effectively disadvantages any child in state school - not just the ones from disadvantaged backgrounds and minority demographics. And the reluctance of unis to build in compulsory prep courses for all students that covers academic skills - research writing, referencing systems, the way to structure essays/research reports in their specific disciple - is lazy and inadequate.

A university I worked for used to have a pre-degree access course that was great for levelling up. It included all those necessary study skills and some subject tasters. If you got on ok, you could go on and do a degree. It was used a lot by people who had missed out at school for various reasons, eg struggling and being written off as stupid and only later finding out that they were dyslexic.
They stopped running it, for some reason. Something to do with funding, I think. A shame, because it was popular and did a good job.

Temporal · Today 13:15

A few people are going to be left looking extremely foolish after this. James O'Brien for one. His fawning, nauseating radio interview with Jason Arday was so cringey. If he'd said he'd invented oxygen, he'd have believed him.

Cinnzia · Today 13:22

I'm a mid-career academic and mom to an autistic 5yo who's not fully verbal (has some words but non-conversational). his story has been circulating in every autism parenting group since his Cambridge appointment and every time I saw it, people commented on how inspiring it was and how much hope it gave them/us. I honestly don't care much about plagiarism and other outlandish claims. but now evidence is merging that suggests the backstory about developmental disability might be fabricated - imagine faking a developmental disability, imagine how much harm this would do actually disabled children and adults.

AnonyMumAuDHD · Today 13:24

Heggettypeg · Today 12:58

A university I worked for used to have a pre-degree access course that was great for levelling up. It included all those necessary study skills and some subject tasters. If you got on ok, you could go on and do a degree. It was used a lot by people who had missed out at school for various reasons, eg struggling and being written off as stupid and only later finding out that they were dyslexic.
They stopped running it, for some reason. Something to do with funding, I think. A shame, because it was popular and did a good job.

Some unis still do Foundation Years for students with lower grades than needed to go straight into the first year. The Access Course, also, used to operate on the same basis - my DD did that at 19/20, in stead of A levels as it confers UVAS points etc. it is totally geared towards university: research techniques and methodology, how to structure essays, APA and Harvard reference methods etc. all assessed by assignments, like many degrees now, rather than exams. She was much better prepared for university than I could ever imagine as a result and the quality of her assignments was absolutely undergraduate level. I was, tbh, rather blown away by what I was concerned was a ‘lesser’ qualification.

TeaAndALittlePeace · Today 13:31

Both Oxford and Cambridge dropped out of the top three universities in The Times university rankings for the first time ever recently. And this won’t help either.

LuckyHazelFox · Today 13:34

AnonyMumAuDHD · Today 13:24

Some unis still do Foundation Years for students with lower grades than needed to go straight into the first year. The Access Course, also, used to operate on the same basis - my DD did that at 19/20, in stead of A levels as it confers UVAS points etc. it is totally geared towards university: research techniques and methodology, how to structure essays, APA and Harvard reference methods etc. all assessed by assignments, like many degrees now, rather than exams. She was much better prepared for university than I could ever imagine as a result and the quality of her assignments was absolutely undergraduate level. I was, tbh, rather blown away by what I was concerned was a ‘lesser’ qualification.

I always found working on access courses far more enjoyable than the staid A levels. You're right, FCs equip students with more practical grounding for university. A level students might be great at passing exams but can struggle with essay structure and referencing. This all depends on their A level subjects, of course.

LuckyHazelFox · Today 13:35

TeaAndALittlePeace · Today 13:31

Both Oxford and Cambridge dropped out of the top three universities in The Times university rankings for the first time ever recently. And this won’t help either.

Good. They've been dining out on past famous students for too long.

Sartre · Today 13:37

SevenYellowHammers · Today 08:39

Do you think anyone actually reads people’s theses anymore? Strikes me, and I might be over simplifying, things are written digitally, read digitally, peer reviewed digitally, shoved on a digital shelf to gather digital dust and forgotten about. Only to be pulled out and scrutinised if the writer happens to be a working class oik who needs his comeuppance.

Ha yes of course they do, are you crazy? PhD’s aren’t handed out willy nilly! It’s read in its entirety by an external and internal academic as with most academic work you undertake. You’re then interrogated during your viva which isn’t easy either. If you got Claude to write it, you wouldn’t pass the viva.

Sartre · Today 13:40

AnonyMumAuDHD · Today 13:24

Some unis still do Foundation Years for students with lower grades than needed to go straight into the first year. The Access Course, also, used to operate on the same basis - my DD did that at 19/20, in stead of A levels as it confers UVAS points etc. it is totally geared towards university: research techniques and methodology, how to structure essays, APA and Harvard reference methods etc. all assessed by assignments, like many degrees now, rather than exams. She was much better prepared for university than I could ever imagine as a result and the quality of her assignments was absolutely undergraduate level. I was, tbh, rather blown away by what I was concerned was a ‘lesser’ qualification.

It shouldn’t be a lesser qualification but sadly still can be viewed this way by elitist uni’s. I also did an access course because I dropped out of school at 16 when I also left home (abusive childhood). I got a PhD and am an academic so obviously nobody gives a flying shit about my level 3 quals! Having said that, some Oxbridge courses offer foundation years so they’re becoming more normalised and acceptable.

AnonyMumAuDHD · Today 13:47

Sartre · Today 13:40

It shouldn’t be a lesser qualification but sadly still can be viewed this way by elitist uni’s. I also did an access course because I dropped out of school at 16 when I also left home (abusive childhood). I got a PhD and am an academic so obviously nobody gives a flying shit about my level 3 quals! Having said that, some Oxbridge courses offer foundation years so they’re becoming more normalised and acceptable.

I am really hoping things seem to have changed now. All of her peers went to Russell groups and one to Cambridge, many having dropped out of school at 16 too (DD was autism burnout/MH issues, but others had been in care, one had a teen pregnancy and was in her mis 20s hoping to build a life for herself and her child). The diversity of the group, the learning about all the different challenges people had had to overcome before choosing the course, was as impactful on her as the course itself. Absolutely the making of her.

Shedmistress · Today 13:49

YourAmplePlumPoster · Today 12:31

Obscurantist language is what Judith Butler hides behind. I would have thought the James Lindsay expose with his fake academic papers would have knocked this on the head.

Did ANY university or institution or publicaton revise their processes after the Boghossian/Lindsay/Pluckrose shaming?

ZetaOrionis · Today 13:50

Angeruish · Yesterday 23:04

Spaghetti alla word salad

Originally posted on the other thread (where they are having fun using AI to unentangle it) as an example of the kind of sociology our taxes go to fund....
(chosen at random, I promise, from the link to recent Phds awarded by Cambridge):
Through a critical genealogy that traces the colonial classificatory violence of binarity, its implementation into bureaucratic administrative violence of nation states and its automation in contemporary algorithmic violence, this thesis challenges the algorithmic relation to transness, the presumed technooptimist ‘objectivity’ of algorithms and the ways in which the algorithmic organises the necropolitical infrastructures of targeting, surveillance, and cisnormative violence that trans bodies live under. This intervention posits that algorithms—as the computational set of instructions—constitute the channels through which the trans body is classified and translated as information, coded as data, marked-as-different and imbued with necropolitical violence that cannot valorise transness, which position transness against and in tension with the binary valorisation of life itself.

Through a critical genealogy
So using Foucault as a framework, trying to track the historical development and use of sets of ideas which come to have real-world effects.

that traces the colonial classificatory violence of binarity, its implementation into bureaucratic administrative violence of nation states
I'll assume you mean the European colonial period, whose agents were interested in classification (all colonists are) provided by the new biological sciences, specificially theories of species which led to theories of human races. OK so administrations use classification systems and you could find colonial administration systems which created new states, and classified people in them as white Europeans (top humans) and black or brown natives (other, lower humans) so the admin system was set up to treat the two categories differently in a 'racial' hierarchy.

and its automation in contemporary algorithmic violence,
OK you could find examples where colonial administrations were backed by force and large numbers of people were subject to threat and real-world violence in order to enforce the hierarchy, affecting e.g where people could live, what work they could do, what rights they had etc. You would then presumably be using this history of classification-in-action as a framework to analyse a new, original example. You don't say so but I'll assume that.

this thesis challenges the algorithmic relation to transness, the presumed technooptimist ‘objectivity’ of algorithms and the ways in which the algorithmic organises the necropolitical infrastructures of targeting, surveillance, and cisnormative violence that trans bodies live under.
Whoa nelly. OK so Foucault says modern states are ruled via surveillance by authority and self-policing rather than by direct force. So, transsexuals are policed / self-police (in which states?) under a similar system of administrative classification as the colonial subjects previously invoked? And the administrative classification system is assumed to be neutral, but isn't? And you'll be telling us the context of that system later, I expect. Also the specific contexts in which the system(s) you're talking about (not yet specified) use surveillance and classification to bring about deathly violence or an equivalent of genocide to transsexuals in a direct and legitimate comparison to historical violence perpetrated in colonial states?

This intervention
Not research and analysis?

posits that algorithms—as the computational set of instructions—
Are we talking about actual computer algorithms here or our old friend the automated administrative classification system?

constitute the channels through which the trans body is classified and translated as information, coded as data, marked-as-different and imbued with necropolitical violence that cannot valorise transness,
Can you give us a crumb of context here? Is this the Western medico-administrative system (Foucault was fond of talking about that)? Is this about the system coding / classifying people's bodies into healthy and unhealthy and enforcing real-world treatments or incarceration on the unhealthy ones?

which position transness against and in tension with the binary valorisation of life itself.

So classifying people into two biological sexes, so transsexual people can't live because men aren't women? So it's as good as violence / genocide / death camps?

This is great - have a studentship!

SevenYellowHammers · Today 14:08

Sartre · Today 13:37

Ha yes of course they do, are you crazy? PhD’s aren’t handed out willy nilly! It’s read in its entirety by an external and internal academic as with most academic work you undertake. You’re then interrogated during your viva which isn’t easy either. If you got Claude to write it, you wouldn’t pass the viva.

Ok. So Jason proper earned his then?

TheKeatingFive · Today 14:16

I find it very strange that the plagiarism wasn't picked up at the time Jason was awarded his PhD.

His supervisor and his external examiner should have been very well versed in the scholarship already available in the field. Were they not? Did they not read his work thoroughly?

Neandernathalie · Today 14:18

Cambridge University was founded in 1209.

Is it unreasonable to think they have seen worse?

JJkate · Today 14:20

@ZetaOrionis😂

LuckyHazelFox · Today 14:24

SevenYellowHammers · Today 14:08

Ok. So Jason proper earned his then?

Using a fake benign tumour to justify his poor recollection in his viva? Yes, well earned.

TheKeatingFive · Today 14:26

Neandernathalie · Today 14:18

Cambridge University was founded in 1209.

Is it unreasonable to think they have seen worse?

I'm sure they have, but they shouldn't be rewarding this or anything 'worse'. They have a reputation to uphold.

notwavingbutdrowning1 · Today 14:41

LuckyHazelFox · Today 10:55

I'm not sure you can compare studies in Feminism and housework to Quantum physics, although at least Oakley wrote her own stuff.

Well no, you can't compare Sociology to Quantum Physics, they're like chalk and cheese.

However, chalk and cheese are both equally valuable, although in different ways.

Peter Townsend, who I referred to before, was a sociologist who did research into poverty that changed the way we measure it and ultimately changed government policy. I'm sure that when he embarked on that, you could find people who said it was not as worthwhile as Quantum Physics. I disagree.

I find the denigration of the humanities on this thread quite alarming. There's a Thatcherite tendency from some PP on this thread to think of knowledge as a very transactional thing. I'm with Stewart Lee on this:

x2boys · Today 14:41

Theres some very intersting comments on Reddit from past students of his
The consensus seems too be his lectures revolved mainly about his thoughts on Racism with nothing to back him
And if anyone complained he accused them of being Racist.