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???

Does anyone think Nathan Cofnas or Jack Grove will write a book about this? Because I would be FASCINATED if they did.

So apparently he underwent an endoscopic transphenoidal approach (ie, with a flexible scope up through the nose) to remove his tumour.

That's an interesting approach to surgical treatment of testicular tumours.

You forgot the alien abduction bit....

I think what Jason Arday has done is very stupid, and those who encouraged him equally so.
However rather like in the cases of Prince Andrew and Peter Mandelson, the gloating and gleefulness goes too far and I don’t think the book should be published as it will just add fuel to the fire and prolong the whole saga.

In following this scandal I started off with sympathy for Arday because at least part of the story was that he'd been used as a thing by Cambridge as a way to burnish their DEI credentials. They'd dehumanised him.

However, as more of the story has emerged, including correspondence from Arday, my sympathy has largely disappeared. His use of this-is-because-you're-a-racist as a means to deflect criticism or to make people afraid of the consequences that might land of them paints him in my eyes as a cynical and nasty piece of work.

Everyone going to Oxford was offered. EE. Selection was based on their entrance exam and interview. You just had to pass 2 Alevels if they offered you a place.

Please may I have an honorary doctorate for making this perceptive observation? Either Cambs or Oxon, I'm not fussed.

@cantabsupervisor I didn't say that Arday isn't an example of political correctness at work; he obviously is. What I mean is that such a fairly obvious fraud climbing to the top of the pile doesn't mean that wokeness dominates throughout the institution, even though it would be easy to assume so.

I'm also not saying that all or even most of the ppl working at my former faculty were/are conservatives. In fact, the majority were, as far as I can judge, middle-of-the-road liberals. But there existed numerous bubbles in which the occasional paleo-conservatives could get away with uttering extremely retrograde opinions apparently held sincerely. And such paleo-conservative opinions - often about class, as well as race - existed among people with a lot of power within colleges and faculties.

For instance, one college at the time was headed by a former head of one of the UK's spy agencies, who had no problem announcing to an undergraduate politics society that democracy would never take hold in the Middle East because it was not suited to Arabs/the Arab mindset (or words to that effect).

This was during the Arab spring. He meant it, and he wasn't the only one who held that opinion, either. I'm not saying that there isn't reason to be doubtful of democracy's chances in the ME, but blaming that on some sort of Arab national character is obviously racist.

But the main point is that the intricate, byzantine structures of the institution, and the way it sits in British society, have a dynamic of their own, so that a collective of mostly vaguely-liberal people can end up running an institution whose effects are predominantly (not always) retrograde. And 'diversity hires' a la Arday are an attempt to mitigate this fact - or obscure it, if you're more cynical.

@hellofrommyothername thanks, I'm flattered. But I have an eye problem atm that means I've already spent too much time on screen... maybe when/if that abates.

One of his interviews he admitted that as Assistant Dean (?) at Durham he didn’t understand 95% of what was going on!

C4 clips on the news yesterday show him saying he doesn’t like research and finds it really difficult

Yet he vigorously pursued a career in academia?

I'd say all the institutions that preceded Cambridge also have an equal role to play. There were supervisors and examiners at LJMU that overlooked and excused errors and nonoriginal thought (as well as plagiarism). And probably similar for his masters at St Mary's (especially since he completed this apparently while only able to read at the level of a 3-year-old). And someone made a decision to award him a place at St Mary's on a BA even though he had only just started to read and write. On what basis would any institution do that?

£90 for her hardback book which is 187 pages long. Not exactly priced for volume sales. No reviews online so maybe no one has read it

Of course! Why not both? And Edinburgh too 😆

Sorry, had to delete my posts due to potential copyright infringement (ironically).

There are two letters in The Times today of interest suggesting that academics are already seeing discrimination against white children at Cambridge undergraduate level.

Lord Biggar writes that the proportion of BAME students studying economics (58%) and medicine (66%) at Cambridge is higher than the proportion of non-BAME children in the population (18%).

Professor Edwards writes about another academic’s experience of the Cambridge DEI committee where a suggestion to include poor white children in DEI initiatives was met with scorn.

Whilst DEI set out with good intentions, I think it has gone way too far. How can discrimination against one group be corrected by discrimination against another group? How will this lead to a happier and more united society?

Good point. May as well go for the hat trick.

Haha!

Perhaps the surgeon realised Arday was talking total balls and got a bit confused with the entry point.

The minimum university requirements at Oxford in the 1980s were two passes at A-Level (so an "E" would do). They had a few others too: O-Level maths and English and a language, and at one stage they also wanted Latin O-Level - I know of somebody who was sent down for a year to take it, but that was in the 1940s!

I think in about 1980 Hertford College said they would give unconditional offers to pre-A-Level candidates they liked, who were generally state school students (nearly all privately-educated people had the facilities to do post-A-Level Oxbridge). But those admitted still had to make the minimal university requirements, so two Es.

I don't know if that was then extended to other colleges. But I'm fairly sure that the dons would have taken a very dim view indeed of anybody turning up the next year with much less than three As.

Other good universities now use very high A-Level requirements as a primary mechanism to sift through candidates, whereas an exam and interviews are the main tool Oxford and Cambridge use for that.

I gather it was more common for those who had taken the entrance exams (the maths one in particular). Im not sure this was the case for all subjects.

I seem to recall that the Miliband brothers both got really bad A Levels, like Ds, and possibly only two, but then both got firsts in PPE, which would seem like complete vindication for the college for having backed them, in this case Corpus Christi.

A friend of mine had an EE offer to study medicine at Oxford in 1983.

The university has been asking for it for years; and the pressure should be relentless until the people who appointed him are hung out to dry.

At undergraduate level - where it is explicit - the approach to selection has been to set a target for certain demographics and to hell with merit. In 2012 or thereabouts, the director of undergraduate admissions warned that it would be unkind to admit students who could be predicted to struggle. The same might be said for staff, it has to stop.

I also had an EE offer from Oxford! (In 1988.) Which was handy as I did screw up my A-levels, except in the subject I'd applied to do. The offer was on the basis of an entrance exam, which I don't know if they do now.

I agree with you @cantabsupervisor about the value of HE for "everyone". When Burnham announced trying to introduce equal parity for vocational qualifications, many of my academic friends currently teaching in the Humanities or Social Sciences called it gradgrindish approach that would enslave working class youth in low paying jobs and devalue the social and cultural worth of an academic education. I however, see it much differently. Having taught students from the age of 14-19, it's clear that there are many who would flourish were they given the opportunity to learn a vocational trade rather than continue to fail academically. I've come to the belief that the only young people who should actually be going into debt to acquire a university education are those who both have the proclivity to enjoy studying and who are intending to pursue a career that requires a degree. I know this would probably wipe out a lot of the students in the subject area I studied and taught. But if I had university aged children right now, I'd be advising them not to go to university unless they were dead set on becoming a doctor or lawyer or teacher or some other career that required a degree (or more). I'd not want them to spend 3 years doing Gender Studies or even English Literature and coming out the other side with a massive debt and very little job prospects. I know all the arguments for why the humanities and social sciences are excellent well-rounded degrees that equip graduates to slot into a plethora of jobs. And that well may be true. But it's also true that many many of our current graduates are spending their next few years doing minimal wage barista jobs. And those are probably the graduates who are doing all the right things and seeking out opportunities within their field. There are also too many graduates who probably shouldn't have gone to university in the first place. Who didn't enjoy their time studying (but possibly quite liked the social life and independence) and who have no sense of urgency even about their future. Some of them are even delaying the inevitable by going on to do postgrad degrees instead of looking for a job. Higher Education should be doing more than that.

I had no idea, day-to-day it seems Oxbridge is far less academically inclusive than it used to be (Arday aside!)

Enid Spyton - Yes, I agree with you. DEI has been applied too bluntly and based on superficial characteristics. Therefore it is performative and doesn’t necessarily identify truly disadvantaged children who have genuine talent.

It is disappointing that our top universities have felt pressurised into using a bad system.

Is it discrimination? Or is it taking away certain groups (men, white people, the privately educated) unfair advantage?

White men are routinely promoted beyond their competence and nobody raises an eyebrow. But a black man - well that's a different matter entirely.