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???

I take your point, and I'm well-acquainted with the details and variabilities of autism from personal experience. But a lot of people who would now probably be diagnosed as having autism have been working in academia for centuries, especially in STEM, as well as those doing so more recently who do have diagnoses. MH difficulties and stress notwithstanding, they have generally been able to work within the expectations that you don't copy other people's work or falsify your results or lie about your record. They have generally been held to the same standards as others in this regard (though colleagues often tolerate eccentricities, of ND and other varieties, especially if someone has valuable skills) and yet have still managed to shine and become over-represented in these fields.

There is absolutely no reason for an ND diagnosis to mean Arday can't help being dishonest. If a person can't help being dishonest in such a way that it affects their work and causes them to make unfair gains at the expense of others, I don't think ND should get them off the hook.

I work in a creative field where you can easily "identify" as autistic, no one will check and it will gain you entry to all kinds of special prizes and awards and job opportunities. If you can just say "I'm ND so whatever I do is OK" then people will exploit that.

WhatterySquash · Today 15:47

💯💯💯

There's that, but also that this issue brings the whole of academia into disrepute if it's not resolved.
Plus the impact on Black and neuro-diverse academics and students.

I would bet money on the university system collapsing in the next 30 years. It's too expensive for the financial benefits for the students. Scholarship itself has been seriously compromised in humanities and sciences. Employers are finding candidates with degrees are poorly skilled and in many cases even unable to innovate or think creatively. And many schools have far too much expensive infrastructure .

I’m thinking perhaps he has a wife/ partner who’s extremely switched on and clever.

Of course he may well not even be neuro diverse, everything else appears to be a lie. Odd that no one seems to dare to question that.

Following the discussion with interest.

As regards the conformity test, the costs of not conforming have, amongst some groups, increased exponentially in recent years. We know it takes a certain self-confidence to buck the trend when it's something harmless as a part of an experiment with a bunch of people you don't know, but when all your friends and colleagues - and in particular the ones with power of some kind (influential in a friendship group, will be writing your reference or annual assessment, can throw you out of a society) - are singing from the DEI hymnsheet, it must be incredibly difficult.

One of the few times when I felt any sympathy for my PhD supervisor was back in the early days of trigger warnings. He thought they were nonsense (well, he didn't actually say so, he just rolled his eyes), and that if you were planning to study his subject area you needed to be able to read about various horrible things, but he was fairly early in his career and desperate to get ahead. So he dutifully put them on his various materials. But if he and others like him had held the line back then, perhaps we wouldn't be quite as far up Shit Creek as we now find ourselves.

I think the opening up of universities has been good for social harmony. In the past , few people had degrees and were recognisable by and large by how they spoke. These days , most people are comfortable to mix with someone with a degree, which wasn’t previously the case. So society has become less ‘us and them.’
However, I don’t think that benefit outweighs the enormous costs.
I think it would be good if the number of universities shrunk back to the former number. It would also be good to lose some of the administrators who seem to be so generously rewarded compared to worker bee academics.

Now it is a published book that is disputed - this is more from Benjamin Ryan, Independent investigative journalist

Prof Jason Arday repeatedly claimed that he was the author of a book called Being Young, Black and Male: Challenging the Dominant Discourse, which was said to explore stereotypes about black masculinity. The book was listed in his biography description in published essays as well as promotional material for speaking events, and was attributed to the Palgrave Macmillan publishing house. In reality, it never made it to the shelves and was abandoned by the publisher several years ago. The revelation raises questions over his employment at the University of Cambridge. To apply for a professorship at Cambridge, applicants need to submit an extensive portfolio of work, which includes a complete bibliography of essays, journals and book chapters.

Yes I think that eccentric ND vibe is particularly common in academia and therefore in Cambridge. I caught my academic fantasist in many lies and it really made me worry that her books (on quite serious topics to do with healthcare) were lies too!

https://freebeacon.com/campus/star-cambridge-professor-jason-arday-lied-for-years-about-raising-millions-for-charity-simon-schuster-scrubbed-financial-details-from-his-new-memoir-and-falsehoods-from-his-bio/

I thought this had a few interesting new points in it from a US perspective - especially about the forthcoming book

There’s nothing that it can’t explain, is there?

University of Cambridge launches formal investigation into Professor Arday's 'qualifications' https://mol.im/a/16031653

"In a statement, the university said it had 'begun an investigation following new information about Professor Arday’s academic qualifications and honorary appointments'."

No one thinks there are no good black academics. The problem is they aren't, according to modern anti-racist discourse, enough of them.

The reasons there aren't, proportionally, as many black kids en route to Cambridge is mostly nothing to do with the university itself.

I actually don't see any reason it should be the universities problem at all, so long as their admissions are fair.

Fair point. I did briefly wonder, given the eye contact he seems at ease with, but knowing how varied the presentations are - and the minefield of challenging it - makes it impossible to know/say anything. But you're right ofc. If the rest is bs, why is that one thing kept as some kind of irrefutable element and even explanation? I suppose one could say there's definitely something going on that's not NT, but being a pathological liar presumably doesn't have as many protections as being ASD.

So the universities in the US will now be short the DEI ticks they need... Maybe we could poach from African universities although they might not want to lose their best academics.

All you are doing with this approach is moving the pieces around. The idea of the best universities fighting for certain academics because of their identity box ticks seems pretty grubby.

There are two main reasons for racial demographic disparities in universities. One is the group don't meet the academic requirements proportionally to other groups. The other is they do, but don't wish to apply.

The second might be fixable, though if a groups values don't tend to include university education, that could be tricky, and one might question why that is a problem.

The first is a lower level issue that has to be tackled in other ways.

I'm surprised that the Daily Mail has so far seemingly not been able to find anyone who either knew JA during childhood or young adulthood and could help their good friend Jason out by providing photographic or video proof of Jason's level of difficulty in going through life, or even just confirming they remember playing football in the street with him and he was known as the kid who didn't talk. OR anyone saying nah! Look at this video of him at 9 playing the lead in the Christmas nativity.

But nothing either way is odd in itself.

Will be interesting to see how this pans out.

I've just watched a video of him talking, it was linked in this thread. There's something slightly unsettling in his manner. It's not autism, though not saying he's not ND, and I do wonder if he has something else wrong with him.

But nothing either way is odd in itself.
@Boiledbeetle

I thought that. Normally these journalists are extremely pushy and resourceful and happy to offer financial reward.
I remember years ago during an election campaign a couple of boys - late teens, early 20s at a guess - were hired to dress up in tail coats and behave like arrogant twits as a warning of life under the Tories.
Within a very short time both these boys had been identified by the D Mail and the fact one had gone to a fee paying school and many other details were revealed.
All for what was a non-story.

Thanks. I think that is fair and what could be hoped for.

It will be very interesting to see the outcome of this - whether Cambridge stands by Arday following its investigation, or whether there's going to be some kind of "parting by mutual consent" arrangement.

That struck me too, but I guess people who know or knew him just don't know to get involved in this awful mess, particularly after he called the cops on a journalist.

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16031653/University-Cambridge-launching-formal-investigation-Professor-Arday.html

Here we go.....inevitable .....how could it not be?

Maybe afterwards he could write a paper on his lived experience of being investigated as a black autistic man......(without help of course)