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???

Not me. But I’d rather get there on my own merits thanks. And I don’t really want to see my DH excluded simply because he’s a white man.

I'm another who has gone from a bit wtf to I really hope Cambridge have got duty of care in place on this. It doesn't matter what lies behind it, if they have appointed him, put him on a pedestal and exposed him, this is on them.

Er, yup.

That's certainly the way it seems by looking at the video I posted earlier (won't do so again for the reasons I specified earlier, but look for Leo Kearse, Cambridge's Diversity Hire). In a clip apparently taken from a television programme, at 1:49 he meets his boss, who looks as if she wants to wrap herself in his dreadlocks.

Interestingly, at 2:13 Arday appears to ask "what can we do to make sure this isn't a market (sic) appointment". I can only imagine he meant a "marquee appointment", which kind of shows the level of intellect we are dealing with. Anyway, she then says the board "was absolutely unanimous, we are so lucky to have you, you are the best in the world in terms of the research you do". Gush, gush, gush.

I find it intetesting that many Mumsnet users have posted their opinions with their reasons showing they have put some thought into coming to the conclusion they have about this man.
Posts designed to shut down the debate over Arday on the other hand are very brief, dramatic, poorly spelt and using strange terms I have never heard before - 'butthurt' springs to mind.

Yes, thank you. I sent the message below, to a friend, as I didn't want to jump aboard some unpleasant bandwagon:

I didn't take too much notice of this, at first, as some people were enjoying showing up the 'diversity' side too much. But, I'm always happy to call out taking us all for a ride. I read more about it on a plagiarism site - and then it was in The Guardian.

I am supportive of calling out the universities primarily now we have read the story.

I do know that quote was circulating on student reddits (full of outraged undergrads saying 'Of course it's still hard to get into Cambridge - I'm here' and 'I couldn't have passed my degree without the adjustments - that proves they are necessary'), but I can't track down the original. Genuine request - can you point me towards the source?

No, @pinkdelight is not my alter ego.Suggesting so is troll hunting and against the terms and conditions of this site.

To be fair @SixtySomething , I don't think your question was altogether clear, and I misunderstood it just as these two posters did, without being either of them.

"...the focus will be on the money that was reportedly raised and distributed to charities"

The Sutton Guardian newspaper reported in 2010 that he had completed 24 marathons and was set to complete the 30 marathons later that month.

It appears that he raised £6,285 which was split between the charities Shooting Stars and Shelter.

He stated at the time

"I am a 24 year old Sports Lecturer at Richmond upon Thames College"

and that:

"In the last 3 years whilst at University we were able to put on several fundraisers which raised just under £4,000"

So, that's about £10,000 in total (although I do note the use of the word "we" in the last sentence)

https://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/8331133.clapham-based-lecturer-close-to-completing-30-marathons-in-35-days/

It also looks like he at least attempted the 300 miles in three days thing (and raised £380):

Whether he actually did it or not is not said:

https://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/9158643.sports-lecturer-from-clapham-to-run-300-miles-in-three-days/

And here is a photo of him doing at least one of his 30 marathons, and it does actually look legit.

I think the 600 miles in 6 days claim has now been changed to 12 days.

This is not an isolated case of senior leaders at Cambridge either being too stupid or too enmeshed to call out nonsense like this; the only saving grace is that the collegiate nature and the autonomy of the Schools mean that infection can be contained to its immediate vicinity.

Quite how Sally Morgan continues to secure senior appointments after being a board member when Carrilion collapsed is beyond me.

Apologies for unwittingly enticing you to use the wrong spelling of feint/faint 🤦🏽‍♀️

MSWord would have picked that up and angrily underlined and highlighted my shabby English usage, but MN just checks for spelling not homophone misuse and abuse LOL. Odd how you can use a phrase a hundred times over the course of your life but never really clock it written down or use it yourself in text, only to mess it up the first time you do! Am taking comfort in the fact that my academic docs are usually pretty pristine for SPAG and it didn’t hold Arday back, did it?

So, hey ho, hey ho, it’s back to Word I go 🎶 before I waste any more time in MN. I was actually only meant to dip in to check threads about upcoming A level results day and whether we are supposed to have been working out a strategy for Clearing if DS gets neither of his chosen unis. 🤦🏽‍♀️

Oh, but you know this already… ‘cos you are really me.

For anyone who is interested in the 'How to break into the elite' documentary I mentioned - I just fell down a rabbit hole of following up on that documentary and found some follow-up information about two of the three candidates.

I could not find anything about the privately educated candidate, but what was quite interesting in the case of the second candidate, who wanted to get into banking, was that the very process of being on the TV programme had brought him the well-connected network (or social capital) that he needed. There was a seven-year follow up post on LinkedIn, in which he thanked the strangers who had reached out to him with support and offers of mentoring. He now works for a very prestigious financial institution, starting about a year after the programme was filmed. However, it had also taken him four years after graduation, multiple internships and an expensive Imperial postgrad course to get there, so the risks of that not paying off were high.

The final candidate appears to have got a job, albeit less prestigious, not long after the programme had finished filming. He seems to be doing well.

I am delighted that it worked out for them, but stand by my original view is that the challenge with social mobility is not that people from disadvantaged backgrounds are not talented - clearly these two young men are - it is that privileged people are also often talented (as was the middle-class young man on this programme) and a lot of the time the employer will prefer the 'easy' hire because of the need to avoid the time/trouble/challenges of bringing someone on.

Interesting indeed. Another EDI (class / learning disability) recruit?

Going back to Prof. Arday (I will give him that honorific as he holds it) the extraordinary background claims don't bother me. He is not getting paid as a marathon runner or a brain-tumour survivor.

The things that bother me are:

The plagiarism - it's hard enough to do a PhD these days when everyone thinks you should just 'use AI'. It is tedious enough to explain that you actually want to do it properly, without this plagiarism row erupting all over the newspapers! Talk about setting the sector back years...

The weak academic credentials - if Prof Arday had applied to Cambridge from another world ranking institution, then the 'youngest ever Chair' tag would have been less surprising. Is it usual for Cambridge to recruit academics from Liverpool John Moores University, which must be swimming in an entirely different realm of the league tables?

The sheer over-confidence - I wouldn't apply for a job at Oxbridge because, despite a masters degree from the number 1 institution in the world for my discipline, I know enough to know that the people at Oxbridge are probably cleverer than me! It smacks of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Yet a man, this man, was cocky enough to apply because...?

The people who have been displaced by him - teaching is female-dominated, education research is female dominated....There will have been a queue of highly qualified senior lecturers and academics who would have loved that opportunity, mostly women...

@AnonyLonnymouse - Jason Arday had been at other unis after Liverpool JMU, from The Guardian:

he forged an impressive academic career, mostly focusing on race and education, with stints at Roehampton, Glasgow and Durham universities.

The story is NOT, "person from a minority group did a bad thing"

The story is, "elite academic institution fails to apply rigorous standards (probably due to positive discrimination)"

Yes. There are circumstances where a trajectory from lower to higher ranked universities makes perfect sense. Obviously if rigorous academic criteria aren't applied, that's not applicable here. But the idea that you should never trouble a higher-ranked university if you have studied at a lower-ranked one is not meritocratic

Are you sure you aren't selling yourself a bit short, @AnonyLonnymouse ? Usually your PhD would matter more than your Master's degree, and obviously there are many clever people at Oxbridge, but they have often started or built careers elsewhere

Do you think it is significant that he pretty much only stayed a year at each? Not sure whether that’s normal and postings are extended on a year by year basis - but from the student perspective unless a lecturer is signposted as a visiting or guest lecturer for the current academic year, you’d expect longer tenures than that, wouldn’t you?

Well thank you @Oftenaddled. I am mid-late stage PhD and have no particular illusions of an academic career, due to age and life stage, but if I get to Oxbridge I will report back here!

What about the claim about running three marathons on a broken leg that had blown up to twice its size? Has that been massaged yet? The claim, not the leg. I believe the leg’s fine.

I suppose all will be revealed in his memoir, out in a few weeks, although I will not be buying it - it will be reviewed extensively!

ETA I just thought of looking up this, below. I'd love to hear more about the tailoring ....

Jason Arday | Jesus College in the University of Cambridge

The more this is discussed, the more he seems a victim being used as a mascot by Cambridge.

I feel Cambridge comes out as the villain in this story.