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???

On R4 again now.
Kathleen Stock is speaking.

Thursday, 6 August Adrian‑Mole‑esque Diary Entry of Jason A.

8:15 a.m. Woke up with a strange sense of freedom, like a man who has accidentally resigned from his job while looking for the kettle. I am now officially between roles, which sounds more dignified than unemployed, so I shall use it henceforth.

The newspapers are full of my alleged misdeeds. I have decided to stop reading them because they keep using words like “plagiarism” and “embellishment,” which are not helpful for my self‑esteem. Instead, I shall devote myself to self‑reflection, which is what all great thinkers do when they have been caught out.

9:30 a.m. Made a list titled “Jason’s New Life Plan.” It currently contains three items:

Write a memoir - working title: My Truth: A Journey Through Other People’s Words.

Start a podcast - perhaps something inspirational, like Resilience: How I Nearly Had It All.

Learn an actual hobby - knitting? Pottery? Something wholesome that cannot be fact‑checked.

I feel these are achievable goals, provided I do not get distracted by the ongoing investigation.

11:00 a.m. Phoned Mum. She said, “Jason, love, you always said academia was stifling your creativity. Now you can finally express yourself without anyone checking your footnotes.” I found this both comforting and slightly pointed.

1:45 p.m. Lunch: a cheese toastie and a sense of foreboding. I tried to write the first chapter of my memoir but only managed the sentence: “I was born at a very young age.” I fear this may have been used before.

3:10 p.m. Decided to reinvent myself as a public intellectual who operates outside traditional institutions. I shall call myself a “freelance visionary.” It sounds modern and untraceable.

I also drafted a pitch for a TED Talk: “Authenticity: How I Discovered Mine the Hard Way.” I think it has legs.

5:00 p.m. Went for a walk to clear my head. Passed a charity shop and wondered if they needed a former professor to organise their book section. Might be good practice in handling literature without accidentally borrowing too much from it.

7:30 p.m. Evening resolution: I will rise from this like a phoenix, albeit one who must now be extremely careful about citing sources. Tomorrow I shall begin my new life with vigour, purpose, and a fresh notebook.

Where are those interviews @Hoppity80 as a matter of interest? I haven’t seen anything from anyone in his past willing to go on record.

However, people mentioned his brother - yes, JA did say in an interview (the same one where he made the 'Seven Up' claim) that his brother was the senior mental health nurse at Imperial College Hospital. That does appear to be true, he’s called Simon Arday.

It does sound very much as though a mixture of truth and outrageous 'enhancement' was going on (what Boily deliciously called the valorisation of “exceptional narratives”’ - I'm still snorting at that). I've encountered this, albeit on a much reduced scale, with someone I know who tells whoppers as a matter of course.

Liz Truss fascinates me.

Did anyone here listen to the spirited defence of Arday by Kehinde Andrews on the Today programme?

Deary me.

According to Andrews, it was all about racism, every accusation against Arday has been found to be untrue, and none of the accusations against him related to his exemplary academic record.

I was pleased to hear Andrews say that he'd also suffered like Arday since he'd been given the boot from his academic position.

A journalist was trying to research him and the police threatened him andtold him to stop asking questions.

Nobody was allowed to question him for one reason and only one reason - he's black.

This is exactly where DEI gets you.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/08/04/journalist-questioned-by-police-for-investigating-cambri

I'm listening to it now. I do not think Professor Kehinde Andrews is helping matters, let's just say.

This is fascinating. Actually my dad (mad, academically stellar, totally ND) taught biomechanics at Cambridge for a while perhaps 20 years ago and was shocked at how behind the students coming to his course were and how much remedial work they required.

I know the college you are talking about, I think, and that is a very depressing thing to hear as so many of the young people I know aspire to go there. To take your point and stretch it further, these kids are getting straight 9s at GCSE to gain entry, so why are they so academically poor? Because they are taught to the test, aren't truly stretched or encouraged to think critically and broaden their scope. While I welcome the Francis review, the fact that our new Education Secretary thinks kids are too stressed by exams and things need to be a bit more soft and gentle is incredibly disheartening. The inclusivity spiral seems to be speeding downwards, in all these Ivy League/Russell Group establishments (remember Claudine Gay?)

Incidentally, I attended one of the establishments you reference many years ago and the Master was told that in order to keep their education dept funding, they had to start admitting quotas of 'disadvantaged' students. To his great credit, he refused. Because not everyone can be Yo-Yo Ma or Baryshnikov, even if they want it 110% (Simon Cowell has a lot to answer for) and to lower that standard to pretend they could be would be doing THEM a disservice.

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.

He comes across as being a bit simple.

I'm old enough to remember when, "a bit simple" was a polite way of saying "severely learning disabled" (forgive me if there's a more current politer way again if expressing that, but ykwim!) which, despite his limitations, JA is probably not.

I'm old enough to remember when, "a bit simple" was a polite way of saying "severely learning disabled" (forgive me if there's a more current politer way again if expressing that, but ykwim!) which, despite his limitations, JA is probably not.

I didn't mean he is severely learning disabled* *as obviously he isn't but he has a very naive air about him. Think Forest Gump.

BTW The phrase "a bit simple" has never been a polite way of saying "severely learning disabled". It certainly meant a degree of intellectual impairment but not severely disabled otherwise "a bit" wouldn't make sence.

It was pathetic. The gist of it was ‘it’s all about racism, innit?’ Nothing to do with the overwhelming evidence that Arday was both an academic fraud and a deluded fantasist who was both promoted & patronised by his enablers & employers.

Imagine how undermined a proper, legitimate black academic, particularly one working outside the social sciences, would feel after listening to that. They would be justified in thinking that as a results of this fiasco people were doubting them & their credentials just because of their ethnicity.

Anyone else think his choice of hairstyle is a deliberate clue to his fake persona and fraudulent career? Remember Milli Vanilli?

Popping in while having morning coffee and waiting for magic meds (for ADHD) to kick in.

Found myself chatting with Google AI - remarkably more attentive than DH who I am certain is perfecting selective deafness when I am in rant mode. he does pat my hand and smile a bit, so might just have the edge over G-AI. Might.

I have been interrogating JA’s claims re GDD, mutism and autism from the perspective of a person with AuDHD, kids/siblings and other family members on the spectrum. My half brother attended a specialist SEN school, so I’ve tried to couch my questions in a way that state that I know autism is an umbrella term, that there are thousands of combinations of presentation and just because the bulk of my fam are in the high functioning/aspergers/whatever moderately offensive outdated term was attributed at the times of their diagnoses so cannot speak to personal experience of GDD… yet am very very confused by his claims.

Google analysis agrees. It confirms my intuition that a GDD exists in at least 2 areas, is measurable in those areas to be several levels below the lowest measure within ‘normal’ ranges in the population at large, is identified before the age of 5, and is a persistent condition that cannot be ‘overcome’. His mutism claim may have satisfied one of those criteria if it was assessed to be a result of cognitive and physiological impairment [clearly it isn’t]. It confirms that if he did indeed have GDD, with or without autism, he would NOT have been in the mainstream schools he is recorded as having attended - he would have been in a highly specialised SEN school, rather like my half-brother [who is actually not intellectually/cognitively impaired but, rather, very ‘Aspergers’, bloody enormous and has a potentially over-enmeshed mother who could not manage his aggression and physicality - ie, not even GDD].

I am not inclined to discount autism as a diagnosis for him - honestly no one believes DS and are are autistic as we are inveterate social maskers [many actors are autistic, just look at our beloved Anthony Hopkins 🥰] … though my ADHD announces itself before I enter the room LOL. Or within 3 lines of a 10 para post here, so I am willing to concede this may NOT be a lie. But, ASD/ ADHD/ AuADHD are not [I am prepared to be shouted down] disabilities in and of themselves in every person diagnosed. They can can explain social and processing difficulties, why anxiety/migraine/burnout and physical fatigue are an issue, they can help you understand why you constantly engage mouth before brain and put your foot in it. In some individuals where there has been childhood trauma, it can trigger significantly impairing MH issues that absolute ARE disabling [my DD’s ROGD and all the other letters she has collected, my own ED from 16-22yo], but for many it is a cognitive difference that means they navigate the world differently and may need a higher level of tolerance and acceptance in social interactions at school and work. Strangely, before DEI, I think this was more readily available and freely given, even if it was not perfect and you still encountered a few too many tossers in your daily life.

I am concerned that he may have so over-egged his diagnosis because of the intersectionality of race and disability, that he has done irreparable harm to the perception of ND conditions and am becoming increasingly cross. With him, with Cambridge, with LJMU, with the DEI movement which has actually done more to undermine the people it aimed to support.

Sigh.

Journo had never contacted JA or anyone near him.

That's not quite right, although it makes no difference anyway. According to the Telegraph article, "Jack Grove, a reporter for Times Higher Education (THE), was accused of harassment after he emailed a series of questions to Prof Jason Arday about his academic record."

No. Happy to pillory him on many issues, but not on the way he wears his hair which does have cultural (Ghanaian, I think) and practical underpinnings.

New article in The Guardian, more articulate than I can contribute: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/06/jason-arday-dei-race-issues-university-of-cambridge

Come on now. It’s not OK to take the dishonest actions of a handful of men, decades apart, and use them to discredit any black man with long locs.

How did I discredit all men with long hair? Come on, it was intended light hearted humorous comment🤔Clearly lost on MN

Appreciate it was meant to be funny, but it didn’t land well. Sorry :(

I'd like to add Milli Vanilli to that Celebrity Traitors list 😁

I listened to the R4 Today segment too and basically think that both Kathleen Stock and Kehinde Andrews are right - he was appointed to Cambridge because of his inspirational life story rather than his academic ability AND the amount of coverage now from MSM is driven at least in part by racism and doubts of Black people's academic ability.

Agree. The guy (and his enablers) has done enormous damage to Cambridge, academia, black academics and students, ND people and so on, but similar hairstyles have been worn all over Africa, and by black people outside Africa, for decades.

Oh I love this 🤣

I’ve spent way too much time looking at the crazy timelines. According to various sources in 2018 he was finishing his 15 month Black vote shadowing of an MP. He had his first solo paper published. He got a job as a senior lecturer at Roehampton but then quickly moved to a new job as Associate Prof at Durham. Around all that he managed to get registered as a Labour Councillor in Croydon in the May election. That’s just one year!