Jason Arday, Cambridge Plagiarist?

[Angeruish]

I’m surprised to be the first to mention this, but what do people think about Jason Arday, the Cambridge professor accused of plagiarism, and the media row that is brewing around him?

For those that don’t know, three years ago Arday became – at 37 – the youngest-ever black professor at Cambridge. Arday claims to have been diagnosed with autism at an early age, and says he couldn’t speak until he was eleven, and apparently only learnt how to read and write at eighteen.

The appointment, made when BLM issues were very much in the news, was made despite allegations of plagiarism in Arday’s doctorate, which were dismissed by Cambridge as being beyond its purview, and because he had been cleared by the awarding institution, Liverpool John Moores.

Those allegations have resurfaced in the past few days, with examples that certainly seem fairly damning, including a misplaced s apostrophe in the title of part of his doctoral thesis (An exploration of peer-mentoring among student teachers’ to inform reflective practice within the context of action research). This blatant error seems to have originated in a phrase supposedly lifted from the thesis he allegedly plagiarised, although in that original case it formed part of a sentence in which it was grammatically correct.

My experience of dipping at random into the paper, which is available online, immediately showed a number of other very basic spelling and other mistakes, almost as if it had not been proofread at all.

In an abstract (the summary written by the author, which is placed right at the beginning of an academic paper) from a different 2018 Arday paper, the following three grammatical/spelling errors occur within a single paragraph of just 160 words (again, this can easily be found online):
This paper employs a Critical Race Theory (CRT) a storytelling method, which operates…
powerful ways in racism unfolds within in the Academy…
dismantle inequity in all its suboardinated forms…

There are now reports that Cambridge – which insists that Arday is the victim of a “vile campaign to undermine his credibility” – is, perhaps not surprisingly, facing a “staff revolt” over the issue. Arday himself complains of “dark arts” being used against him, and says that autism led him to rely heavily on mimicry to make sense of information.

On the web you can find reports of various claims made by Arday (though several universities seem to be scaling them down, now that the spotlight is upon them). And yes, I have copied some of these:

• To have finished his PhD in 2½ years while working full-time and living with a brain tumour.
• To have featured on a television show that ran over a decade before he was born.
• To have run thirty marathons in 35 days, despite having experienced an epileptic fit, a seizure and a leg fracture. He also says he has run 600 miles in six days, just fifty miles short of the world record (no evidence of these extraordinary feats appears to exist, nor have witnesses come forward to testify to them.
• To have raised over five million pounds for charity (when challenged in recent days over this, Arday said this was done in association with others, who he declined to name because, he said, he had signed non-disclosure agreements that stopped him from doing so).
• To have played football and snooker professionally (no indication is given as to how Arday might have communicated on a football pitch when mute, as he says he was until the age of eleven).
• To have had a stroke immediately after graduating, causing him to lose his memory of working on his PhD.
• To have two GCSEs, in PE and Textiles (no timeline is given for when he is supposed to have taken these exams, but both of them would presumably have involved some writing – a skill that he apparently only acquired at age 18).
• To sleep only two hours per night.

Try searching online..... even "The Guardian" has now decided he is not everything he claims to be. So what do people think, and what does it say about higher education nowadays???

Good luck, @AnonyMumAuDHD - you can and will do it.

Since moving to Cambridge I’ve met 3 fantasists who tell similarly spectacular and easily disprovable lies (1 is an academic), having never met any before in my life it makes me wonder if there is something about this place 🤣

By the time he got to Cambridge he did have an impressive CV (even accounting for the exaggeration).

His own academic credentials wouldn't seem to fit Cambridge. But then with (un usually short) stints at Durham and Glasgow, it projected him to a different level.

I'm on the fence with this. I feel like many are taking away that he didn't hold any of these positions which doesn't appear to be case. By that i mean full responsibility doesn't seem to lie with him or Cambridge but it part of something wider and I'm uncomfortable with the focus on him. The whole this just so odd.

But it does also coincide with the time period of both Glasgow and Cambridge publishing their slavery reports and i wonder if that contributed to the enthusiasm with which they appointed him.

Glasgow is a serious university, so Cambridge will have assumed that THEY did their due diligence.
They are almost as much at fault as Cambridge imo (though I suppose not quite as much as the more time went on the more implausible claims will have accumulated).

@MissyGirlie thank you for your explanation - that makes sense.

Yet another university that has been mentioned, in his credentials, where he is a visiting professor is Nelson Mandela Uni. They do have him listed in a certain way, see below, but that page cannot be found, on their site:

Jason is a Visiting Research Fellow at The Ohio State University in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, an Adjunct Professor at Nelson Mandela University

I've been thinking about this a lot recently - more in relation to why people go along with the trans nonsense, but it seems appropriate here as well - very few risk being the odd one out.

Asch conformity test - the YouTube link shows an example a few years ago.

Jason is a Visiting Research Fellow at The Ohio State University in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, an Adjunct Professor at Nelson Mandela University

I think Ohio have now said he isn't. It was reported somewhere, maybe one of the Times or Telegraph articles.

That video interview posted a couple of pages back where he talks about the viva/tumour/City Hall defining moment... he can't even keep his story straight for a second. He says he'd have gone to work for Sadiq Khan as if he had an offer, then says he would've applied for that job, as if he was merely thinking of going for it, then says he had an interview, as if he'd applied but not had the outcome.

He's making it up as he goes along, and not sounding remotely switched on about any of it. Some ex-student on Reddit was saying how he'd taught a term at Roehampton and just rambled about race from his general perspective and didn't teach them anything relevant to the module they had to pass, so another member of staff took over when complaints were made but it was all done quietly because he was this big deal. To think of all the students who've had time, money and faith wasted by his poor quality ramblings is quite shocking.

Yes, I read that Ohio have said he is not on their employment records (as someone in that position would be) and that the specific Office of Diversity and Inclusion has been closed down for some time. Can't recall where I read that though.

Was it this one?

www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/25/nora-roberts-files-multi-plagiarism-lawsuit-alleging-writer-copied-more-than-40-authors

Might it be this? It caused quite a row at the time, as the inventor of "Asian teen chick-lit" suddenly fell from grace..

It wasn't Nora Roberts. I'd remember if she was involved because she's a big name and has been involved in more than one lawsuit.

I don't think it was the Asian chick-lit. My admittedly vague memory is that the book in question was more in the misery memoir genre and the writer was older.

This is his profile in his faculty, as opposed to Jesus College:

Jason Arday | Faculty of Education

A good, comprehensive piece this one (thanks for the link, which I add again):
https://donnalouiseflowers.substack.com/p/believe-me?r=1mnouu&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

A few things not yet seen in this thread emerge from it:

• Arday said in 2023 that 70% of the UK population live below the bread line
• He has said he is deaf in one ear
• A cv submitted in the mid-2010s include cycling London to Paris, and running Edinburgh to London in six days (this seems to have been mixed in with the 600-miles-in-six-days claim in some versions, but I have also seen him recently claiming that was done on a treadmill – in theory it could have been both, of course)
• He says he was awarded (not “offered”) an MBE in 2017 and turned it down.
• The Good Law Project letter supporting him has been progressively toned down in recent days (so “thorough investigations” became “investigations have found no evidence”). Name(s?) were removed from the signatories without being disclosed, and Simon Woolley’s Cambridge affiliation was removed. The 11,000 people that had signed the unamended version were not informed of the changes in what they were subscribing to.
• In August 2025 two complaints were made to the Advertising Standards Authority about claims in Arday’s biographies, which ordered the removal of claims that lacked adequate substantiation (I assume this to be about the amount of money raised for charity, but this is not clear, and I am not sure if that is even known publicly).
• In a 2022 panel discussion Arday claimed to be a “qualified counsellor” but the relevant professional associations show no record of him.
• In the same session, he said he had a Master’s in “psychodynamic practice” from Birkbeck, University of London – but it doesn’t offer that degree (although there is a three-year course in MSc in Psychodynamic Counselling and Psychotherapy which must be taken part time, and requires prior relevant experience).

I make it that the Birkbeck claims brings to six the number of London area institutions he claims to have been attached to, along with Roehampton, St Mary’s, Surrey, Greenwich and King’s. To make a total of ten when added to LiverpoolJM, Durham, Glasgow and Cambridge, and obviously not including the alleged visiting professorships, or honorary stuff.

There is a book called The Confidence Game: why we fall for it...every time by Maria Konnikova which sets out many examples of con artists/fraudsters etc. It includes a chap who lied his way into various professional jobs such such as US Navy surgeon (no less) despite having no medical experience or qualifications. He did it repeatedly for a load of unrelated jobs over decades. There was another chap who was a professor at a US University who completely made up his entire academic and publishing history. He got quietly dismissed in the end.

It is an interesting book about the jaw dropping lies and audacity of some people and explains why people fall for the cons (multiple reasons including that human society depends on assuming people are honest).

I am not related to the author but some posters might find it interesting!

So Liverpool John Moores did 'investigate' and respond to questions about his thesis, early in August. “A confidential procedure was conducted… Professor Arday’s PhD still stands. We will not comment further.”

That's very strange wording - what is a 'procedure'? Was it or was it not an investigation (misconduct committee)? If so, what did it find out? Did they identify plagiarism, or not? I can't imagine that they didn't given what we know now, but perhaps Arday threw so much baloney about racism, disability, bullying, and inadequate supervision, that they found it easiest to turn a blind eye and hope that no one would notice. His excuse that any copying was inadvertent as he learns by mimicry is some of the most incredible bollocks I've ever heard in an academic setting. Anyway, that's certainly a meeting that I'd like to see the minutes of.

On his academic appointments - while seeming incredible, I suppose they don't actually surprise me all that much any more. 'Chairs' awarded for professional practice and lacking much (or even any) track record of scholarship are unfortunately not all that uncommon anymore (see: Ed Balls KCL; Alice Roberts Birmingham; David Blunkett Sheffield, Hannah Fry Cambridge). He was obviously a diversity hire to further a political / ideological agenda and the Cambridge PVC says as much himself: "... he will contribute significantly to ... addressing the under-representation of people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds". Even though I disagree strongly with these sort of appointments, it would've been more honest for Cambridge to go all in on this instead of pretending his research was in any way exceptional (or even half decent). The PVC quote and Faculty Head interview are utterly nauseating. I don't think this Chair was advertised as such (and one could even argue about the status of his professional practice, too), so it was only a matter of time before serious questions were asked.

Having said all that, it would be nice if he and those who appointed him would actually take some responsibility for this entire debacle rather than the blame-shifting and victimhood (and in Cantab's case, complete silence).

Having said all that, it would be nice if he and those who appointed him would actually take some responsibility for this entire debacle rather than the blame-shifting and victimhood (and in Cantab's case, complete silence).

I agree.
Also it would interesting to ask those who interviewed him such as Krishnan Guru-Murphy and also the BBC in an interview with whom Arday said ‘abolish the Royal family and put their funding towards the 70% of British people who live below the breadline”
70% is about 50 million people, the annual cost of the monarchy is about £150 million, so £3 a year to people who are aren’t all below the breadline.
Why wasn’t this queried?

The thing is, these interviewers claim to be hard hitting, ruthless, speaking truth to power and so on, but they don’t like it when they’re the ones having to answer questions.

@gldd it would be nice if he and those who appointed him would actually take some responsibility for this entire debacle rather than the blame-shifting and victimhood (and in Cantab's case, complete silence).

Yes I think it is on Cambridge to address it. The main reason, for me, is this:

• Doctoral (PhD/EdD) and Masters (MPhil/MEd) student supervision

This is some students' opportunity to reach a high level in their subject - and Arday is their teacher.

I think as with trans, there is a conformity test element - people end up surrounded by others who all think the same way - or who all say they do even if they have nagging doubts or questions, because the culture is that that makes them a terrible person. So the conformity gets stronger and stronger to the point that not going along with it costs you your career, your social circle, maybe family members, everything.

But also in the academic fields where this kind of identitarian-led, "progressive" content (largely meaningless circular drivel dressed up in fashionable jargon) is prevalent, no one who is doing that for a living wants any of it looked at too closely. It's not just that they're expected to agree with the prevailing dogma in a kind of cultish way, it's also that if Arday is exposed as/faces any kind of consequences for being a massive bullshitter, they're all next.

It's widespread in whole sections of academic "study". I was on track to do a PhD in literature as long as 30 years ago, had funding and everything, it was at a major uni in north America. I left and took a different career path because I had an issue with the endless bullshit and the way things were expected to be written, in a convoluted way using particular terms and concepts (things like discourse, construct, negotiate, colonialism etc) and yet when I tried to nitpick and get to the bottom of what someone was actually supposed to be saying, I would get nowhere. It's only escalated and grown multiple new heads since then.

IMO most of the people who are trying to protect and defend him probably don't care about him personally and wouldn't care if he got the heave-ho if it left them untarnished. The "anti-racism" is more about showing how inclusive you are and ticking the righteousness boxes than actually caring about diversity - if they actually cared about diversity they would embrace diversity of belief and opinion.

The only person I've met who was an out-and-out fantasist and repeat outrageous liar was an academic. She claimed to have been involved in any well-known disaster you could mention and her recounted experiences added up to many more years than she could possibly have been alive! It struck me at the time that her colleagues must have wondered what that might imply about her academic record and reliability, but I think as academics are often eccentric or ND, people just let it go.

he will contribute significantly to ... addressing the under-representation of people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds"

I'm sure there are genuine scholars from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds producing quality work who could have been appointed on their own merits, instead of to meet some DEI target.

How demeaning to think you only got the job because you tick some boxes, rather than because you were genuinely the best candidate.

How did Arday get this post?
Was it advertised?
Were there other candidates?
Did he go through a recruitment process?

Jason Arday has triggered a relapse of a condition in which I believe myself to be living within the pages of a dark satire. Fortunately, it does have a few lighter moments, like this post on Blue sky:
https://bsky.app/profile/profjasonarday.bsky.social/post/3mrhnqmqvps2c

His career has been massively accelerated/compressed. First publication in 2018 then a Senior Lecturer then Associate Professor then full Professor at Glasgow then full Professor in Cambridge in 2023.

Is it normal in academia to have so many jobs in such a short space of time? He doesn't seem to spend more than a year anywhere. Could it be that they are all giving him glowing references to get rid of him?

Autistic individuals are statistically more likely to experience both delusional-like beliefs and intense immersive fantasies. Statistically, autistic individuals have also a higher rate of psychotic experiences. This often stems from social and chronic stress like masking and trauma, as well as Theory of Mind differences, which can cause social misinterpretations to evolve into paranoia and some of the sense causing these issues being connected. Some (STEM etc) academic fields in general and at Cambridge in particular also have higher % of autistic student and academic staff.

Anyway, that's certainly a meeting that I'd like to see the minutes of.

Freedom of information request?

I’ve met plenty of fantasists over the years in different jobs, I don’t think it’s just an academia thing, or just an autistic thing, just people who seem to feel they ought to be more interesting than they are, and no one pulls them up on it because their stories are usually so outrageous it’s obvious to everyone they’re not true, but no one wants to upset them cause problems in the workplace, so you just roll your eyes and laugh about them behind their back.