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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Our friends at the Good Law Project

237 replies

Gymnopedie · 04/08/2026 13:52

I know this doesn't belong here but given the bollocks from the GLP about issues that do I thought people might be interested.

It's about Professor Jason Arday, a Cambridge academic. The story started when there was a claim that large chunks of his PhD thesis had been taken from another (sometimes not even changing typo errors) published a few years earlier. His justification is that he's autistic and his way of coping is 'mimicry'.

Sine then his many claims about his charity work, fundraising and physical exploits have come under increasing scrutiny - much from the Guardian - and are unravelling fast. He's having to backtrack and 'explain' a lot. He's claimed to have been on a TV programme that he never was and it was chronologically impossible for him to be on it. He has claimed a lot of nasty harassment but has no evidence of it, no photos, no messages, and didn't report any of it to the police. (Well he claims he did once, but the police have no record of it and the story doesn't stack up.)

What does the GLP have to do with it? They're organising an open letter in his support, claiming that there is nothing to see here except that he's a victim of vile racism.

Support for a left wing cause that bears no relationship to the facts? Where have I heard that before?

Charity casts doubts on volunteering record of Cambridge professor (The Telegraph via MSN)

Playbooks, plagiarism and a pig’s head: new claims surrounding a star Cambridge professor | University of Cambridge | The Guardian

Glasgow University denies Jason Arday visiting prof claim | The Herald

OP posts:
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YourWatermelonship · 05/08/2026 15:39

BettyBooper · 05/08/2026 12:32

From the above article

'The Claims, Laid Out Together
Here, in one place, is the full set of claims Jason Arday has made about his life:

  • Diagnosed with autism and global developmental delay at the age of three.
  • Non-verbal until the age of eleven.
  • Unable to read or write until the age of eighteen.
  • Four to five hours of speech therapy every day from the age of three.
  • A mother with five degrees.
  • A benign brain tumour removed a fortnight before his PhD viva, which wiped his memory of the entire thesis; he re-learned it and still passed.
  • Two further brain tumours diagnosed after the PhD, later found to be benign.
  • Deaf in one ear.
  • Ran 30 marathons in 35 days, the last nine after sustaining a hairline fracture that made his leg swell to twice its normal size.
  • Covered 300 miles in three days.
  • Covered 600 miles in six days (later quietly amended in some citations to twelve days).
  • Raised £5.5 million for more than 80 charities.
  • Installed water points in South America and West Africa with WaterAid.
  • Received a severed pig’s head at his parents’ home.
  • Faced a knife-wielding masked man.
  • Received bullets in the post, rape threats against his daughter, threats to make him “top himself,” and other forms of intimidation including corrosive substances and mutilated animals.
  • Came through a professional football club’s academy system and later played semi-professionally.
  • Was on the verge of turning professional at snooker.
  • Awarded an MBE in 2017 and turned it down.
  • Olympic Torch Bearer for London 2012.
  • Appeared in the ITV documentary series Seven Up!.
  • Obtained a Masters degree in “psychodynamic practice” from Birkbeck and became a qualified counsellor.
  • Held visiting professorships at the University of Glasgow and Ohio State University.

This is the origin story as it has been told. Almost none of it has been independently verified. Several of the most dramatic claims have been directly contradicted by the organisations or records that should corroborate them.'

Surely he has relatives or someone who has known him from childhood? Someone must be able to corroborate or debunk at least some of those claims?

TheywontletmehavethenameIwant · 05/08/2026 16:00

YourWatermelonship · 05/08/2026 15:39

Surely he has relatives or someone who has known him from childhood? Someone must be able to corroborate or debunk at least some of those claims?

It'll probably turn out that he was of royal birth but was stolen out of his cot and brought up by a family of wolves in Hyde Park.

SodThisHeadache · 05/08/2026 19:58

Sonia Sodha has reported that an investigative journalist was warned off delving into Arday' alleged plagiarism, by the police.

"Jack Grove, a reporter at the Times Higher Education Supplement, reportedly emailed a series of questions to Professor Jason Arday about his academic record: a standard aspect of journalistic practice. Someone proceeded to file a police complaint on the basis of this communication; Grove has not been told who, although the University of Cambridge has denied it was them.
The Met then investigated Grove for the criminal offence of harassment by speech for four months. The first he knew of it was when a police officer contacted him to say they would be taking no action, and closing the case. But Grove reports that the police officer asked him not to contact Arday again because of the effect his communications had had on Arday’s mental health. After Grove clarified the officer was speaking to a member of the press, he says the officer again repeated his request that Grove refrain from contacting Arday on mental health grounds"

Sodha piece here: https://soniasodha.substack.com/p/yet-another-police-failure-on-free?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=4958925&post_id=209935987&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=8touk&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email,

moto748e · 05/08/2026 20:25

Good piece, that.

TwoLoonsAndASprout · 05/08/2026 20:41

He’s resigned

SodThisHeadache · 05/08/2026 20:41

Sonia Sodha has been consistently good. She's a great writer, and is great on camera too.

SodThisHeadache · 05/08/2026 20:42

TwoLoonsAndASprout · 05/08/2026 20:41

He’s resigned

Ah! And it will be all the fault of 'bigots' I expect

Hoardasurass · 05/08/2026 20:49

Gift token for the telegraph article

www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/c86470419280d44a

Chersfrozenface · 05/08/2026 20:53

I note that he said he was resigning " “with immediate effect” from his position at the university and also Jesus College citing “unrelenting level of public scrutiny”."

As if public scrutiny was a bad thing.

TwoLoonsAndASprout · 05/08/2026 20:56

Chersfrozenface · 05/08/2026 20:53

I note that he said he was resigning " “with immediate effect” from his position at the university and also Jesus College citing “unrelenting level of public scrutiny”."

As if public scrutiny was a bad thing.

A comment on the Telegraph article - in response to him citing “unrelenting levels of public scrutiny” - says ah, he’s learned to cite then…

MarieDeGournay · 05/08/2026 21:03

SodThisHeadache · 05/08/2026 20:42

Ah! And it will be all the fault of 'bigots' I expect

I predict 'hounding' will appear a lot..

SidewaysOtter · 05/08/2026 21:32

MarieDeGournay · 05/08/2026 21:03

I predict 'hounding' will appear a lot..

Plenty of accusations of this all being due to racism and 'campaigns' against him. And absolutely no recognition of the idea that he should be held to the same level of scrutiny as everyone else.

SidewaysOtter · 05/08/2026 21:35

This has come to mind today. I can't imagine why...

4

(It's a parody of "I'm on Fire" called "I'm a Liar)

AimsAndObjectives · 05/08/2026 21:36

nicepotoftea · 05/08/2026 14:44

Am I the only person in the UK that didn't get to carry the Olympic torch?😭

AstonUniversityPotholeDepartment · 05/08/2026 21:49

I feel.Cambridge has a lot to answer for, in putting JA in this position. He is either a confabulist or a compulsive liar (pick which group you find personally the most likely), and his incredible stories are on such a scale that he was always destined to get found out. I think it was sheer cruelty to appoint him, and tantamount to dooming him to eventual public humiliation.

But I am full of post-exercise/chocolate endorphins (you pick which is the most likely), so I am perhaps feeling unusually benevolent.

SidewaysOtter · 05/08/2026 21:55

I think it was sheer cruelty to appoint him, and tantamount to dooming him to eventual public humiliation.

I agree, he has been used as a way for others to signal their virtue.

Roxela · 05/08/2026 22:12

MyThreeWords · 05/08/2026 09:39

I think that racism is systemic and institutional, in addition to being a mindset of some individuals. At a systemic level, it is defined in terms of poorer outcomes for black people and other ethnic minorities (eg poorer maternity care and greater likelihood of harsh disciplinary outcomes in the NHS). So a movement to break down the systemic (institutional and cultural) features of racsim seems legit what-it-says-on-the-tin consensual anti-racism to me. The problem comes when it is done badly, stupidly, as an exercise in corporate branding or as a spillover from social media bubblethink. In today's climate, lots of movement are subject to this kind of distortion, but anything related to diversity seems to be particularly vulnerable. I wouldn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

There is of course syatemic rascism and instituional rascism (neither of which are about people being rascist), but anti-racism derived from CRT goes much further, seeking to disrupt, reformulate and remove cultural and institutional norms of majority/indiginous communities on the basis that they are rascist and that people who uphold those norms are (individually) racist. It goes further than seeking to include, understand or provide for the culture, history and needs of minority and immigrant groups.

nauticant · 05/08/2026 22:35

What did for Arday in the end? Was it when the Good Law Project moved to provide him with their full support?

https://goodlawproject.org/an-update-from-jason-arday/

Hoardasurass · 05/08/2026 22:38

nauticant · 05/08/2026 22:35

What did for Arday in the end? Was it when the Good Law Project moved to provide him with their full support?

https://goodlawproject.org/an-update-from-jason-arday/

Would that be a bit like having John swinneys full confidence and backing otherwise known as the ⚫️ of death 😬

DrBlackbird · 05/08/2026 22:50

AimsAndObjectives · 05/08/2026 22:45

Yet the Arday affair has exposed something darker than a culture-war skirmish: an identity politics that compels intelligent people to subordinate the pursuit of truth to tribal loyalty.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/08/05/the-jason-arday-farce-is-an-embarrassment-to-black-britain/

Will this sorry series of events lead any universities to acknowledge the extent to which academics demonstrate progressive blindness in the face of DEI? Unfortunately I doubt it.

moto748e · 05/08/2026 22:56

ATEOTD, 'truth' is what the whole shebang is about. And in many sectors, that seems to have been completely forgotten.

moto748e · 05/08/2026 23:08

Now I've read the Spiked piece, and you couldn't agree more, could you?

avilsdedvocate · 05/08/2026 23:32

How has it got anything to do with the trans stuff youre all so obsessed with? Or are you just all out (openly) facism now?