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

Let's shut down all of the humanities and save ourselves the money.

I agree with this.

That’s not what happened in the end though. Bemusingly.

www.yahoo.com/news/asian-americans-see-mixed-results-010523608.html

Why do you think they’re pretending?

Sure Cofnas can be a philosopher and a racist, I'm sure there are many racist philosophers out there philosophising without causing any waves.

The problem with Cofnas being a racist here, is that he isn't working on counting how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or whatever, he is working on 'scientific racism' or 'race realism' or whatever it's being called. This means that his conclusions need to be treated bearing in mind that he is completely biased towards a particular conclusion, and he has already demonstrated that he is willing to bodge arguments to support it.

Around 30 years ago there was a massive move in the US to weed creationism out of science classrooms. Evolution and the Big Bang should be taught as fact and the idea that God created the world and everything in it was a religious teaching, not a scientific explanation.

Creationists tried to get around this by completely reinventing creationism as something called 'Intelligent Design'. They came up with sciencey sounding stuff like intricate organs like the eye pointing to evidence for being designed ("what use is half an eye in evolution?") or gaps in the fossil record casting doubt on evolution. They literally went through creationist literature and did a search and replace for God to 'intelligent designer' and 'creationism' to 'intelligent design'. But we know they were creationists and what they were really trying to do.

This is what scientific racism reminds me of. Racists trying to sound sciencey to get their racist conclusions accepted more widely. People going 'well I can't argue with it therefore there must be something in it. Calls to 'teach the controversy'.

It's not proper academic study, but agenda driven campaigning.

THIS.

And it also ignores the comments about the need for “barriers between the racists” in the same blog. But yes, Cofnas clearly believes no black person is capable of success outside of Sports and Entertainment. This is a boring racist trope which has existed for centuries because Cofnas and the 17th century philosophers and slave traders he parrots want it to be true.

On a side note I never understood why the Right always tied DEI to black people. Black Americans are not the primary beneficiaries of DEI initiatives.

Because they gave him a job.

As an aside, people who claim to be anti-DEI only seem to say so when it comes to race. I don’t see too many people complaining about holding the train so the ramp can be put out for wheelchair users, or about maternity leave, or equal pay, or free prescriptions for pensioners. All these things are about equity, but some people only get riled up when it comes to including black people in things. They also seem to misunderstand its fundamental principle (which Cambridge also seemed to) which is not to shoehorn people in, but to remove the unnecessary barriers. Anyway we had this discussion elsewhere.

Your framing is more cogent than his, I think, and allows discussion. He is merrily obfuscating all of the known flaws in the data. He’s not an outlier but he seems keen to be a flag bearer. Again, he should be allowed to say whatever he wants, within the law of wherever he is (and sometimes outside the law, given how subjective and variable that is). But he is then also subject to the same critique as anyone else.

I’m also resistant to the impulse to make it about left or right. It’s about evidence and logic for me, and I don’t see enough of either from him. I think I’d have more interest in his philosophical argument had he not chosen to make himself out as an activist in this way and using such obviously unacceptable language about someone. It makes him seem unserious, and committed to his conclusions not the careful work of getting to them.

The signatories to the March letter didn’t give him a job. Yes much of the critique was known to the selection panel and so clearly the Rector can’t say she didn’t know about that. But Cofnas hadn’t popped himself all over podcasts, using ableist slurs and talking about taking vengeance and so on when he was appointed. I think the university is entitled to view things differently in that light, as we all might about a recent hire.

As an aside, people who claim to be anti-DEI only seem to say so when it comes to race. I don’t see too many people complaining about holding the train so the ramp can be put out for wheelchair users, or about maternity leave, or equal pay, or free prescriptions for pensioners. All these things are about equity, but some people only get riled up when it comes to including black people in things. They also seem to misunderstand its fundamental principle (which Cambridge also seemed to) which is not to shoehorn people in, but to remove the unnecessary barriers. Anyway we had this discussion elsewhere.

Exactly. This. From people who allegedly have an issue with DEI - they are fine with it when it comes to gender (white women are the primary beneficiaries of DEI initiatives in the USA), silent with the measures you mention about ensuring greater access for disabled people, absolutely find with America’s Ivy league giving priority placements to those with parents who also attended or have donated extensively….

But race based, especially linked to black people is where they become obsessed. I would be interested into a scientific investigation as to where that particular obsession comes from.

And agree with you on unnecessary barriers. My firm proudly has EDI initiatives and not a single one has been about putting unqualified people in roles.

I mean his history was known and the same people who suspended him for that history gave him a job in he first place.

The idea that you get priority attendance at a top US uni if your parents went there is batshit.

I remember in Gilmore Girls Rory being rejected by Harvard and then getting into Yale easily because her grandad went there and this not being seen as anything particularly odd.

Senior academics at the University of Ghent are so appalled at being forced to work with Israel/supporting racist Nathan Cofcas

So being forced to work with an Israel-supporting person is ‘appalling’??
that sounds a bit racist to me

I have always found it batty that the anti-DEI crowd have no issue with this. I also found it interesting they were comfortable with the military exemption.

The problem with someone being over promoted thanks to DEI is that they can’t be removed due to accusations of an ism so stay in place

Yes. I personally think there is a lot of good stuff in “lower-case d.e.i.”. And that UK laws strike a fairly good balance. Removing barriers, seeking useful diversity, widening outreach, having a high tolerance of difference, removing in-group preferences and irrelevant credentialism, contextual offers done well, etc. I see all of that as derivable from good liberal principles.

I still consider myself an opponent of “upper-case DEI”,
ie the critical social justice derived stuff (which I blame mainly on America and, to the extent we’ve imported the bad stuff, the America-brainedness of our elites). Reasons:

i) it is built on a flawed premise that disparate outcomes must be a result of bias, whether bias can be detected or not. (People and groups have different average traits and interests and make different choices, and most of the time that’s completely fine and good).

ii) on race, it seems a really bad idea to intentionally amplify race-based grievances (eg the systems of whiteness stuff). That is a genie best left in the bottle becuase everyone can play. If there is genuine racial injustice that needs smashing, bring good data and arguments.

iii) inevitably you end up replacing one set of cliques and group-think with another set. Humans will do that.

Well for one thing we call it EDI in the UK, the emphasis being on equity. I don’t know anyone who believes in equity who thinks all differences are to do with bias, but processes that do disadvantage some people unnecessarily can and should be looked at. For example, reasonable adjustments for disability. In my sector there are very few black people, and we’ve done all we can to increase it because we work on issues that affect black people disproportionately and we want decisions to feel more inclusive. But it hasn’t materialised, and that’s ok. Now of course I’m more alert to people assuming I’m here because of EDI, but I know that’s not the case.

And I haven’t encountered genuine policies that ‘amplify race based grievances’. Though of course some individual (white) idiots who think they meet their inclusion goals by, eg, asking all staff not to eat or drink on video calls with Muslim colleagues during Ramadan. This was especially amusing because we didn’t have any Muslim colleagues at that time.

That said, I don’t work in academia now and it may be that it’s more rife. I do encounter more woolly academics than I used to. But I do wonder how much it’s real policy and how much is individuals building (ironically) a little empire.

From the small amount of information Ghent have realised I don’t assume that he’s being investigated for information that was known when he was hired. You could be right, but it seems unlikely, and would - I imagine, not over familiar with Belgian employment law - be unlawful to remove him on that basis.

This is not a thing.

I think you prove my point

It's also about ensuring that there is "equal" or "equitable" (whatever that means in this context) representation of all sorts of "oppressed minorities". That includes in this day and age, nonbinary trans lesbians with multiple personality disorders, with an extra tick if they're missing a leg or blind, and an extra extra tick if they're not white. Lets not kid ourselves that every organisation is using DEI/EDI initiatives the way they may have been intended to be used and may be being used in some organisations.

I’ve never seen an EDI policy that requires equal representation of all groups of any protected characteristic. It would be unlawful and unachievable, and there are sensitive data categories that employers are not lawfully permitted to routinely collect without consent (eg disability, sexuality).

If you have seen an example I’m interested.

I think w Arday the issue with what people are calling ‘EDI’ is that it was a superficial approach - appoint a seemingly stellar disabled and racialised person who works on race and then try to get brownie points via loud trumpeting of the appointment.
Actual commitment to greater equity involves - as others have indicated - universal design so lecturers’ PowerPoints are legible to people who are colour blind, buildings are accessible to wheelchair users, and proper maternity and paternity leave are put in place. It’s also to recognise that white, averagely sized and abled men are not the default norm.

supporting Or not supporting Israel isn’t to do with race, just as being against Israeli policies and actions in Palestine doesn’t make you anti-Semetic

Yes, that actually tells you a lot about the mindset of so many academic institutions. Where I worked, I would never have been appalled at being forced to work alongside someone who supported Israel. The people I worked with had a range of views, and mostly no political views at all.

But in the world of academia, supporting Israel is a big no-no, heresy in the land of the good-thinkers.

I think his weak scholarship and the lack of transparency over his appointment as well as his racism was enough to make anyone uncomfortable around him.