To compare and contrast coverage and outcome of the Jason Arday scandal with that of Cambridge plagiarist William O'Reilly

[OneArtfulUmberSquid]

Partly due to being an academic, the slow news season and the sensationalism, like many people I've been following the Jason Arday story and have been appalled by the scale of the fabulation and the abysmal lack of due diligence by Cambridge when they appointed him - I've also been appalled by how he was presented by the University when he was hired in terms of the emphasis on his back story and what he represented rather than his scholarship.

It's interesting to compare/contrast with the case of William O'Reilly - who was caught plagiarising his own undergrad students' essays and was then found to have plagiarised other scholars' work a number of times before...see https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/27433

He also threatened to sue student journalists for exposing him - not as bad as Arday calling the police, but still pretty risible
https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/26105

A further issue relates to his witness for the accused in a rape case despite being involved in the investigation.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/feb/22/cambridge-university-sexual-misconduct-cases
https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/18747

I'd be interested to know what anyone else thinks of the two cases in terms of academic misconduct and outcomes, particularly anyone who works in Cambridge. O'Reilly claimed that the scrutinising of his work was due to homophobia.

More here but behind a paywall
https://www.ft.com/content/ae7f16ae-95ab-4aae-a676-0748e3e61b6d?shareType=nongift&syn-25a6b1a6=1

Just listening to LBC talking about this, doubling down on the racism aspect, unchallenged by the presenter as usual.

Looks like nothing will be learnt from this case. The same half-arsed DEI policies will be pursued by Cambridhe and the rest of the public sector and this will just keep happening.

The colleague with the terrorist group links? I mean, that's a genuine story in its own right.

That story came about I think because of people now looking into every member of the Cambridge faculty of education to find out if there are any other obviously unsuitable appointments. Cambridge uni took down its faculty personnel webpage to try to stop this scrutiny.

So I'm pretty sure there are people out there looking into anyone linked to this story.

Only racist people (who know racism is not a good look and care more about their image) care about being called racist, because if you are not racist it's water off a duck's back and you don't give a flying fuck if someone thinks you are racist. People who are not racist only care about whether they actually are being racist, not how it looks.

It might well be, but it’s nothing to do with him and has only become a story because of him.

No doubt, but I do think it’s notable that so many stories have continued about him - perhaps because they’ve been unable to scrape together sufficient dirt on the other culpable parties.

I think so many stories continued about him because with his memoir being published, more lies kept coming out (e.g. testicular cancer, locked-in syndrome, shaman woman).

People seem to think that the news articles should have stopped when he resigned, but that would be assuming that the plagiarism story was what was driving the articles, rather than the extreme lies he told. 'Prof copied earlier thesis' is not going to get as many clicks as 'Prof claimed to run multiple marathons on a broken leg' or 'Prof claimed to be on TV show that aired before he was born'.

It depends on what you’re trying to achieve of course. If you want to appoint more blacks academics to senior positions then a better way to do it is to ring fence a post and hire the best candidate. It doesn’t appear that’s what happened here. It’s reasonable for department that wants to expand knowledge about the sociology of race and race in education (in particular, though not exclusively) to recruit a diverse faculty to do so. That’s not the same as hiring someone ill equipped for the job.

If you want to ensure equality of opportunity you need to start much earlier. There are - from memory - a significant number of black students at Cambridge. I’ve seen no suggestion that the entry requirements have been lessened to encourage this. You may know different.

I suppose if you’re concerned that white or some Asian heritage students aren’t getting enough opportunities then you might be concerned about this. I haven’t seen anyone raise concerns about lack of representation of either group. Broadly speaking of course.

Agree, though many of those lies were known before he resigned. The book proposal and publication kept it going but I didn’t see anyone critique the publishers for their appalling decisions on that. Maybe I missed it, but I saw plenty of giggling faux outrage about the discrepancies and outlandish claims. Yes, he is responsible for this and had and continued to benefit financially but so are and did others. S&S could have put a stop to their part, but they were determined to continue a book tour.

I don't understand why there is this narrative that none of this was his fault.

He was an adult, he chose to lie.

I can only assume it is racism that is the reason people believe he was not responsible for his own behaviour.

Fair enough. I agree that if there is going to be a de facto quota (and I’m not saying there is) then having it clear and official is the right way to go.

I would oppose that, but I think it has at least the merit of honesty.

At the moment we seem to have a sort of squidgy preference scheme which is unsatisfying for everyone.

(I held a quasi-academic role recently at a big name place and was told that while I would be working with (white male) X, they were trying hard to find a woman of colour to be nominally in charge. I suppose one can see that as discrimination in either direction depending on who ‘should’ have been in charge. But it’s not something I’d come across quite so blatantly in many years in commerce).

The point about “enough” opportunities gets to the crux. Is it “enough” for all groups, or equal for all people that we are after. Although I’m team meritocracy in the end, I do think there are good arguments for the former too. Because I don’t think we can assume the latter delivers the former. Not mainly about race, btw. I think meritocracy becomes most tricky when thinking about class and economics.

I was astonished that they went ahead with the publication tbh.

I don’t think that it’s just black academics that can be favoured- Hilary Cremen (who welcomed JA to Cambridge ) a nd is Head of the Faculty of Education at Cambridge (surely a huuuuuugely prestigious role) has been an academic at Oxford Brookes and Leicester university school of education - neither RG unis - but was promoted to Cambridge. Maybe their aren’t many schools of education in the country but that seems a big leap.

Why wouldn't they?

Its free publicity, they are garanteed reviews, newpaper aticles and people will buy it just because of what has happened.

They also paid him an advance for the book.

Not saying that I agree with publishing it, but sales will go up because of this.

This is Professor Phil Vickerman at LJMU who supervised Arday's PhD.

At 16 years of age, I failed every one of my GCSEs (other than English!). I stayed on for a further year at school to retake everything – and guess what, I failed everything again.

www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/news/articles/2022/2/14/meet-phil-vickerman--provice-chancellor-for-student-experience

22 billion is spent on higher education students a year

As someone else said GCSEs came about in in 1988 - after he will have taken them.

Whether he took GCSEs or O-levels he was obviously a poor student at secondary school.

So you assume she wasn’t the best candidate because she didn’t attend elite institutions prior? Do you think maybe that attitude is part of the entire problem?

I don’t agree with quotas and I do agree it’s complicated. In my field/sector we have struggled with diversity of experience and ideas, so we work hard to recruit across race/ethnicity/class in particular. And we struggle to get diverse ethnic representation, for whatever reason. I wouldn’t advocate for a quota because equity for me is about being a place where people want to work/study and are suitable for the position. If you’re not recruiting across the board, look at why and remove obstacles if you can find them. It may simply be there aren’t diverse graduates in a field, for example. But in other fields it’s more important to have representative knowledge and ability to engage those affected. Arguably a ring fenced professorship isn’t the way to address that, but it could be.

Agree though that transparency is always needed - sunshine is the best disinfectant and doing things out loud keeps people humble and honest.

For me it’s also a consequence of universities being a marketplace now, and the subsequent separation of academia and administration. Different goals.

Did you miss the part where I said ‘yes he was responsible for that’?

@Cars4Gov It was Ratner by the way.

Yes, Cambridge have made themselves look like utter fools. It’s so much easier to have robust recruitment policies that don’t tick boxes. Best person for the job. No favouritism and keep students at the heart of the decision making process.

Sure, but one would assume reputational damage to a publishing house that published a non-fiction memoir that they knew was actually fiction.

I guess they were in the situation where all the books were sat in delivery vans ready to go and they figured it was too late to back out but who can ever believe anything they publish ever again?

Sure, but one would assume reputational damage to a publishing house that published a non-fiction memoir that they knew was actually fiction.

Penguin don't seem to care that The Salt Path is mostly fiction. They have not disavowed the author even though it's clear TSP & subsequent books are not an "unflinchingly honest" memoir as claimed.

This is absolutely wrong. People do care about being pronounced as racist because it can have negative consequences if others believe it (which they might, even if untrue, because many don’t actually think before jumping on the bandwagon or automatically assume that any accusation of racism must be true). Especially if that narrative gains traction. Those consequences can be damaging to your career (if not career ending), social exclusion and can be highly damaging. So yes, false accusations of racism are problematic even if you know that you are not a racist.

Didn’t the fact it was all crap came out after publication and the film?