The Jason Arday scandal

[Ilikesundays]

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

Well I would like to know how they arrived at their decision and didn't do due diligence about his claims and qualifications. Wouldn't you?

Do they? Or does is that universities, like other any other institution, reflects the population?

I feel the same about Boris but I ultimately I guess one chalks it up to poor judgement.

It's very easy being an academic these days to jump on some kind of grievance bandwagon. Back in the day it was about academic excellence. That is all I am asking for. The same as when I go to a musical concert I expect to see highly professional and skilled musicians performing.

Holds up hand and waves.

I got a lot better than 2Es but would have got in with that.

Surely when AJ said he was on the Titanic and remembered meeting Jack, that would have raised an eyebrow?

I'm looking forward to PE's take on all this!

I love the way your opinions are blissfully untroubled by the facts. It's almost an art form.

It appears that music has largely been unaffected by DEI. You simply cannot play an instrument if you're not up to it.

Wonder what S&S will do about his memoir. Surely he can't be seen to profit from it. Most of his claims seem to be lies, his doctorate was obtained fraudulently, and his students have had their prospects damaged as he wouldn't or couldn't supervise them properly, or to the required standard. It would be immoral if he was allowed to keep his advance or pocket royalties from his book.

I was expecting to see the memoir delayed - but it is still due to come out on 11 Aug in US and 27 Aug UK. Other controversial books have had their publication date silently put back - the 4th in The Salt Path series, Stalked - a memoir.

Times Higher Education, a leading newspaper about, surprisingly, the higher education sector,

I'm surprised you don't seem to know the basics tbh, given how confident you are that it didn't happen.

When things are complex, and an individual is being made to stand for a politics by people acting in bad faith - point out that racism has always and still does exist.

He is the only person responsible for his predicament.

That’s got to be a hack for sure. No posts forever and then a flurry from 14 days ago

Which can I add very unfunny and not nice. I was hacked once across multiple things and it’s really stressful.

I did my PGCE at Cambridge (on an excellent mostly subject based course) but all the department wide stuff we did was awful and I'm really not surprised he has emanated from this part of the university. As PP have stated, educational research is largely complete bollocks, has no proper methods and is peddled by grifters who just want to earn a living without having to teach - it's not really fair to tar all social sciences with this brush. When I had just completed my finals at Oxford and then had to do the laughable extended project we did as part of the Cambridge PGCE which supposedly counted as half a masters I literally couldn't believe how pointless it was. Obviously I got QTS and moved on, but why anyone would choose to make a career in this part of academia is literally beyond me, but presumably the answer is Jason Arday.

I recently heard about Martin Speake, a gifted jazz musician and tutor who was working at Trinity College music school and has been caught up in a race scandal and cancelled. After a directive about "systemic racism" in the jazz world, he decided to say that, if anything, black jazz artists are over represented in the jazz world in the UK, compared to white musicians. For this he was traduced and eventually fired and lost most of his music engagements. A highly talented man who has lost his livelehood because of this BS.
What I would have said to Martin is, upon receiving this directive from his faculty, you should immediately report them to Ofsted for racism in the faculty. See how quickly they backtrack but he chose to be honest.

Somebody holding a different opinion to you doesn't mean that they find the subject challenging. I know you are attempting to be this patronising, but really - it doesn't make you look as 'well that's the last word and I win' as you think.

Slavery is something that has been a feature of most dominant civilisations for thousands of years. It is not something the Brits invented. We were however the leading legislative and diplomatic force driving its abolition.

Oh I thought you meant the band The The - worst name ever.
its the TimesH Ed and Times Education Supplement is Times Ed.

Milli Vanilli?

What a daft statement.

Quite. Who sold the African slaves to the Europeans? Other Africans. Not to mention Benin who were major slave traders. Apart from that... Egypt, Greece, the Romans, Portugal..all slavers.

Plus Europeans had European slaves long before they had African ones.

So - help me with this, the fact of the historic slave trade makes you feel so defensive that you feel the need to mention that black people were involved too. And other cultures/empires.

What’s the purpose of this?

Fake band. Couldn’t sing, vocals provided by backstage singers. They were an art project apparently. They then tried to relaunch as a real band but were hounded by media. One of them overdosed and died.