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

Of course racism and the 'anti woke' agenda pushed by the right wing media played a big part.

They were literally salivating at the opportunity to knock down and destroy a young black man and then use his story to prove their sick belief that anyone who is not white, straight and middle-aged must have got a top job only because of HR equality and diversity posturing and box ticking...

The whole thing is sickening.

Alternatively, Cambridge and the left wing media, as well as the Good Law Project are responsible for applying different standards to POC which exacerbates the divide.

It’s such a sad situation. I agree that everyone close to him is partly responsible. If I had a delusional friend who did this I would be strongly saying this is a risky path to take (which maybe they did tbf). He wasn’t innocent, he fraudulently claimed high level degrees, a job with salary and so much attention that he hadn’t earned off his own back.
It’s tragic that he’s done this - he clearly wasn’t as arrogant and oblivious as say Canoe man who was criminally fraudulent and got slaughtered by the press for such a long time through his court case (the book about him is hilarious btw) but that was before the internet was such an integral part of life and its so much more pervasive now. He did have a strong section of public support too though.
Unfortunately people will always get hounded by the press when there’s an unusual or ridiculous story. There was clearly a great deal of fawning over Arday without rigorous checking at Cambridge and they’ve got a lot to answer for by accepting his version of events and putting someone so obviously wobbly in such a high pedestal. I’d be interested to know how much support they were giving him through all this press feeding frenzy. I wouldn’t be surprised if they dropped all care and interest in him to protect themselves. I hope not though - he seemed so sweet and mild and did not deserve the public flogging, despite being a delusional fantasist. His poor family.

The level of coverage day after day was completely disproportionate and the outcome quite predictable. He was hounded, he died. So I don’t see that language as particularly hyperbolic in this case.

And those pushing agendas continue to do so. Just sickening.

You're saying that other people were responsible for his death. That is incorrect.

This isn’t a d&i initiative, though. I’m a head of d&i and have worked in this field for 10 years. I’ve worked with Jason, incidentally.

you will find no d&i strategy that suggests ‘diversity hiring’, it’s nonsense. It’s what has happened to complex processes when they have to get reduced to sound bites for Joe Public to understand.

the d&i intervention would be: collect data. Identify any bias in your process. Take steps to remove the bias. Repeat.

call it a PR piece by Cambridge if you want to believe that, but hiring doesn’t come from any decent d&i strategy and i can only imagine Cambridge have got a great team. It’s literally illegal to hire someone based on a protected characteristic, as I’m sure you know.

honestly, he worked so hard to advocate for people who were underrepresented, it’s even more galling to see people continue to discredit the area of work he was so passionate about- it’s ended up killing him. He’s fucking dead. His kids have lost their dad.

Yes, it's illegal to hire someone because they're black. It still happens though, especially when organizations want a quick PR fix for long standing issues of racism.

Cambridge have got a great team? I'd hate to see their bad team. There's also no need to swear while mentioning that he was a father.

Tone policing is a way of controlling how someone speaks when you haven’t got a true rebuttal. It’s weak, do better.

If someone’s whole identity has been shredded in such a public manner, that’s very hard to come back from. Anyone in this sort of scenario is going to be at a higher risk for suicide, especially if there are any existing vulnerabilities. Although I don’t think we know the actual cause of death at this point. I hope there have been people trying to support him.

I have got a rebuttal - I don't agree with your explanation of DEI because there are too many cases where it's shown to be inadequate. It's a weak attempt at closing the gap on recruitment of minorities, defeating its purpose of providing equality.

Well nobody really knows anything for sure at this early stage. Maybe you are correct and the actions of others are completely unrelated. So I shall wait for further inquiry before I make my mind up about any culpability of the press or anyone else.

What are you talking about?

It might be a surprise to you but 'POC' as you call them are perfectly capable of getting senior jobs based on merit and qualifications, not preferential treatment...

It is disgraceful to suggest that because one black man might have lied/embellished his CV if means that every hire of a person of colour to a senior job is also not deserved/dodgy/ DEI tick boxing.

The hand in hand thing is a type of academic handshake, they did it to all the graduating students at DS’s ceremony (Bristol) - hand in hand or a little bow if not comfortable with that (they announced it all at the start of the ceremony).

What would you do to close the recruitment gap, then, legally? Give me your insights and I’ll consider them for our next approach.

That's not my job to do that! If you're asking a random stranger instead of taking this to a consultancy group, I find that concerning. Head of DEI you say?

I don't believe I said that. Are we not allowed to say POC anymore?

I think social media is often as vicious if not more so than the press and it’s getting worse.

There's no such thing as an "academic handshake"

Oh no I was asking because you clearly have a huge amount of insight into this area of work and I’m always happy to learn from someone with so much knowledge.

Yes I would agree with that. It has made me think this morning about what I might write about people myself.

I saw that greeting, it was bizarre and overly 'warm'.

You have presented yourself as someone with knowledge in the area so it would seem reasonable to ask your view though? You don’t have to answer of course. I have no real knowledge of DEI processes so nobody is asking me.

I would strongly disagree with any claim that he worked hard - his paper in Social Sciences is absolutely appalling rubbish, with massive errors- describing a specific participant as male, black in one paragraph and on another page describing the same participant as female, asian. It's shocking that he submitted that and even more shocking that it was published. His published work is very low quality. He exploited the academic area of research into racism in academia for his own gain. He didn't help minorities in academia - he exploited them.

He reported an academic who raised concerns to the police, and separately reported a investigative journalist to the police, and threatened legal action against Times Higher Education when they planned an expose. Those are not the actions of an innocent person. My opinion is that he was motivated by money and fame - like most con artists. His family must know whether the claims of being non-verbal and illiterate are true - given how much he lied in public I would assume these were also lies. I wonder how many people out there knew about his lies but kept quiet out of fear of being accused of racism.

I have a lot of sympathy for his family but he is responsible for his own actions - he wasn't in the media because of racism, but because he was a grandiose lier who got found out.