Our friends at the Good Law Project

They elevated Arday, a fragile and disturbed person, into a position where his fragility would be tested and he would be shattered. Even if the Cambridge Faculty of Education’s standards were so low that his inadequacies would remain unremarked there, he was a fellow of a Cambridge college with real scholars who would eventually be indignant upon realizing that their new colleague’s scholarship consisted of copy-paste jobs, semiliterate nonsense, and fan notes on his favorite 1990s Brit-pop. Did Arday’s allies think no one would notice? That those who noticed would be forever intimidated into polite silence? That drinking sherry in the common room of Jesus College would be a pleasant experience for Arday himself as he waited to be found out? Those who placed Arday in that situation were cruel and heartless. They may as well have taken a skin-and-bones Make-A-Wish kid, told him that he could fly, and shot him out of a cannon. The journalists were not the ones who stuffed Arday into the cannon and lit the fuse. They were gravity.

And

Arday was hired to teach social science. A terminal irony is that his main contribution to that body of knowledge will be as a case study, about a community that elevated a flawed man to a position exalted beyond his ability, without knowing or caring that they were actually offering him as a human sacrifice.

Contrast JoMo's response with that of Afua Hirsch. Whether or not you agree with her wider analysis.

I have lost count of the number of emails, text messages, DMs and WhatsApps I received asking me to condemn the allegations against Arday. Not one of these messages asked me first if I know him, what my opinion about the allegations is or whether I actually agree with their assertion that they are baseless.

It probably looks as if I support a lot of open letters and petitions, and I do...The due diligence involved in joining these causes includes checking the facts and legal basis of the petitions, and researching the backgrounds of individuals and organisations involved. I love that we show up for each other. I love that we take a stand. But knowing exactly what it is that we are supporting is essential.

The emphasis is mine.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/13/jason-arday-right-racial-equality-society

Afua Hirsch goes on to say

The fact is that many of Arday’s black peers in academic sociology have been voicing concerns about him for a while. He seemed, to them, to have come out of nowhere. His performance at high-profile academic events did not match the credentials that were being touted. I have had various conversations with sociology professors in which this has been the main topic of conversation, and their questions began to mount into a list. They did not voice them publicly because we all know that whatever the truth or the outcome, he would be unlikely to be treated fairly and we would all be damaged in the process. As for me, I was an interested observer to allegations the veracity of which I couldn’t personally verify. But hearing them from fellow black academics I respect was enough to put me on alert and raise a red flag for anyone who asked me whether publicly supporting him was a good idea.

Maugham singling out the black journalists who wrote about this in a way he didn't approve of is All Kinds of Special.

From what I can see, she only commented in depth after someone else tried to crowbar the Arday case into an unrelated comment she made about people finding it hard to recant ridiculous opinions. Her comments, as far as I can see, are balanced and compassionate. Although that obviously hasn't prevented her detractors trying to suggest otherwise.

Everyone really could benefit from being a bit more like her.

I think there is an interesting parallel with various women's rights issues. When unfashionable feminists raise concerns around women's rights - and I include the GRA etc- they are ignored. In much the same way Black academics were ignored. It is often only once 'concerns' can be leveraged to serve some other agenda that they get any publicity. We then end up with a dismissal "Of course this is racist/right wing/conservative/about traditional values" and the likes of Piers Morgan asking why "feminists didn't say anything".

I think the parallel diverges slightly in relation to 'trans rights', because the sheer determination of women to not let it lie became impossible to contain. Ironically (for TRAs) the consultation provided a mechanism for women to get heard.

And once again, we come back to "for the love of god people on the left, stop letting the right seize control of the narrative".

Agree 100%. She's probably so used to being misinterpreted, if not outright lied about, that putting it on the record was probably for the best. She must have a pretty thick skin by now.

"Some lies are so preposterous that intelligent people who believe them bear some responsibility for being taken in. And they are outright guilty for repeating the lies and urging others to believe them."

This, from the Atlantic article linked earlier, can not be repeated often enough. It's not just true in this case.

I think he's realised that was a misstep because he's posted a new video on Instagram asking his followers to leave the black journalists alone and go after Kath Viner. He must be so relieved to have finally found a woman to blame. Phew universal balance restored

The Atlantic article lays it all out very clearly.

More extreme cringe from Maugham…

https://x.com/treesey/status/2090062587752829037/mediaViewer?currentTweet=2090062587752829037&currentTweetUser=treesey

Sometimes it's easier than others to see why a young woman might be absolutely desperate to identify out of her sex, isn't it.

Cheers for that, I would like to fill out a bit of his earlier timeline. He said that he was illiterate to the age of 18, which would have been 2003 (born 1985).
This where it gets very sketchy, how did he get 2 GCSE's at Physical Education and Textiles and then attend Merton College to do a BTEC course on Sport and Development, when the minimum entry requirements are 4-5 GCSE's at grade 4 or above, one of which for obvious reasons must be English Language?
Somehow, he was accepted two years later, start his degree at St Mary's University Twickenham. In short, he has gone from being illiterate, to being accepted at university without any real qualifications in just two years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Arday

Definitely
I'm also feel a bit sorry for the young, pecky handed women who do the GLP videos. It can't be easy having him as your boss and trying to navigate the slo-mo JoMo midlife crisis

The URL causes an error to appear instead of the content. Try using this more basic URL: https://x.com/treesey/status/2090062587752829037/

This is very odd sums it up well.

This case aside, it's fairly common for students to enrol on a BTEC without English, with the understanding that they will complete a Functional Skills qualification in Literacy. It's also often the case that entry criteria are relaxed if a student has practical experience.

Kath Viners partner is Adrian Chiles (there's a reason why he has those pedestrian columns in the Graun). He's much more in the normie world than the terminally online prosecuting this, but if Maugham wants to get him involved through her facing assorted shunning (or worse. Trans activists JM consorts with like Sophie Molly have sympathies to Bash Back who've stated they wish to take revenge on behalf of JA) then this might just bring down a shit storm on JM.

As with Arday, no one has really bothered looking into GLP until they became much more prominent. Id mentioned Kids Company and the overarching prominence they got in the 2010s courtesy of Camilla Batmangelidh. But at least they did actually feed kids. Wtf has GLP actually done?

In short, he has gone from being illiterate, to being accepted at university without any real qualifications in just two years.

Pretty remarkable. Also not explained is how he managed to get two GCSEs (presumably in 2001 at age 16) when he couldn't read or write. Or did he get the GCSEs at age 18 (2003) and then do the BTEC for two years before starting the degree in 2005? Even that doesn't make a huge amount of sense, because if he got his GCSEs at age 18, then surely he'd have had to have been reading and writing for at least a year before that.

As with Arday, no one has really bothered looking into GLP until they became much more prominent. Id mentioned Kids Company and the overarching prominence they got in the 2010s courtesy of Camilla Batmangelidh. But at least they did actually feed kids. Wtf has GLP actually done?

The GLP are a powerful emerging voice in the let them speak campaign. They toil onwards, day by day, without complaint, despite the heavy hand of history resting on their shoulders. Their contribution to the sex realist, GC position, should never be underestimated.

One could salute their indefatigability.

I also wonder how his claim to have supervised 15 PhD students is possible over the 5 years he held any kind of academic position once he was awarded his own PhD. I mean, it would be highly unusual for a newly qualified PhD in a new senior lecturer role to be given any PhD students to supervise. And even if for some ridiculous reason he was given one or more at each institution he was at, he was never there long enough to see even one PhD through to a successful viva. Note, the claim was made by Carter-Ruck that he was supervising 15 PhD students and had acted as an external examiner for "over 35" doctoral students. So even if this record of PhD supervision and examination was only from his time at Cambridge, it's still an unprecedented number. And if he'd only started supervising students once he'd been appointed as a Professorial Chair (or whatever it was), that in itself is odd, as one of the criteria considered for such posts is the number of successful supervisions a candidate has had.

The Media Show is just about to start on Radio 4. I'll be interested to hear their take which isn't necessarily the official BBC line but will be informed by it.

Looks like he's back pedaling furiously to deflect attention.

I've read elsewhere that JM offered to take Arday out to the cricket as some sort of Self care last week, but he refused (why would he want to go out in full glare of the public Jolyon?) so he left him to his own devices and went himself.

Still, Maugham had a nice holiday

The problem is that even among reasonable progressivism, some people are calling for the media to operate such that when a scandal breaks, they need to do an assessment of the person at its centre and, if they're "vulnerable", then the reporting needs to be shut down.

The scope for abuse in the media being controlled in this way is enormous.

There's a hell of a lot of DARVO going on with Maugham. A lot of the allegations he is throwing at the Guardian could also be leveled at the GLP. They amplified this situation with that letter of support, which brought the story to a much wider audience. They also didnt do any research before acting so when the details started becoming clearer and people withdrew their names that was a very public rejection.

The GLP and Maugham in particular need to back off because they have, and continue to make, this whole situation worse.