Jason Arday, Cambridge Plagiarist, thread two

[Angeruish]

We are nearing our 1000-post limit on the original thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5561878-jason-arday-cambridge-plagiarist?reply=153910946

I have now removed the question mark after "plagiarist".

I can't believe the sequel will be as good as the original, but you never know...

Maybe, maybe.....

Hear me out. Maybe Ardays entire career is a giant meta experiment into academic responses to "model oppressed minority" candidates and he's actually meticulously documenting all these instances of getting away with blagging through lectures and increasingly prestigious accolades.

"Tuesday 4th. Went on O'Brien podcast. Waffled about race stuff but told him he was inspirational speaker who motivated me to become an academic...."

I was interviewed for a supply position once in a college. I came with a full portfolio of qualifications and relevant experience. The interviewer was a woman and I got the feeling she was going through the motions in seeing me. I was passed over for the role by a black guy. I thought not a lot of it at the time. I was then called back into that role in the next academic year because he had failed his students. Why? It turned out he wasn't qualified in the subject area and his students either dropped out or failed that year. Much of the account is similar to the one you have quoted.

Doesn’t that just sum up the left wing and their laundry list of right on group think.
They think they are oh so wonderful human beings but nothing could be further from the truth.

There was a typical toxic post aimed at someone last night from a leftie. It said imagine being a right wing woman then listed the usual power imbalance in gender etc. Err hello, the Labour Party does fuck all to get women into leadership roles. They really are full of hate.

I think I'm lucky to be in a field with 50/50 balance of men/women at most levels, including on the panel and at shortlisting. the balance for minorities is less clear but probably reflects the UK as a whole.

When recruiting for a role, imagine you are looking for a candidate who will be able to progress into management roles in future. You are faced with a candidate from a minority who has spent 20 years working for one employer without ever being promoted.

It is reasonable to ask if their failure to progress is due to racism. If it is, you would effectively be adding to that racism by not employing them and giving them a chance to shine. However, it is not reasonable to assume their failure to progress is due to racism, and it is most definitely not reasonable (and may be unlawful) to employ them over better qualified candidates simply because you want a more diverse workforce unless there is a good lawful reason why you need a more diverse workforce. You need to find ways of figuring out if their failure to progress is due to racism or lack of ability.

DEI is good when it is about eliminating unconscious biases and making sure that everyone is treated equally regardless of sex, colour of skin, etc. Jason Arday is what happens when it goes too far and promotes people simply because they are a member of a group considered to be oppressed.

As the Mum of an autistic young trans person, I really hope this is the case as we need society at large to see what is so obvious and to stop mindlessly affirming our young autistic kids. These young people who find it too hard to be themselves (because they were bullied all of their lives for being themselves) adopt a trans identity, based on social contagion, online brainwashing et cetera. And because everybody is suddenly kind to them, they become fixated on the idea that they were born in the wrong body and embark on a journey of lifelong medicalisation.

Please let one good thing come out of this very sad DEI failure

I just came across this entry for him on the Royal Society website:

https://royalsociety.org/people/jason-arday-36339/

He is a member of their Diversity & Inclusion Committee.

But what stood out to me was this:

"His appointment made him the youngest-ever Black academic to hold a Professorship at Cambridge and one of the youngest academics ever appointed to a Professorial Chair in Oxbridge’s history."

[emphasis added]

So, not only was he a Professor, he had a Professorial Chair.

As I understand it (I never went beyond a BSc 40 years ago) having a Professorial Chair is even higher up than just being a Professor?

There appear to be several hundred professors at Cambridge but only around 100 chairs.

I'm getting uncomfortable with the tone of some of the posts here - basically some of those who are stridently decrying DEI processes and suggesting that there are maybe a sizeable number of appointments made via DEI processes to unworthy applicants.

Maybe there are indeed others. But I can well see how upsetting and annoying it would be to read for an intelligent, highly qualified non-white person to read these posts and feel that their achievements are being lumped in with JA.

It's also undoubtedly the case that many women (that's us!) would not necessarily have been able to achieve career success without DEI policies in their favour.

I once read an opinion that there had been positive discrimination in the workplace towards (white) men for hundreds of years; swinging that pendulum in the opposite direction for a generation was right and necessary to get an accurate rebalance.

Of course it seems that JAs promotion is an example of that pendulum swinging too far without checks. But DEI policies are supposed to redress unfair balances; they are not necessarily unfair of themselves. And people should be careful not to lump all successful non-white people together.

It will otherwise give truth to the suggestion that if you're not a white male, you have to be twice as good to get half as far. And that's not right, is it?

Well said @Mauvish1

I can’t help wondering whether it was just his blackness that smoothed his path to ‘greatness’? What if he’d been black, but not good looking, and not possessing a magnificent set of dreadlocks? What if he’d been very ordinary-looking, perhaps with buck teeth?

Not quite such an excellent poster boy for their DEI policies….

Yes, and that's one of the worst things of all - they hated Thomas Sowell because he wouldn't stay in the box the left wing thought he should inhabit, but if anyone else had tried to create their own box for him they'd have played hell (only this time quite rightly)

As a wise PP pointed out there's a difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome, and while some of us will always advocate for the first, attempting to ensure the second simply doesn't work

Yes, I agree. The really grim thing about this whole mess is how much material it gives to racists.

Wonder how those who have endorsed his book (eg Kathy Burke) feel now?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Unfortunate-Things-Jason-Arday-ebook/dp/B0G4N7H5N5?ref=astauthormpb
There will be an almighty onslaught when its published....

OneArtfulUmberSquid · Today 10:48
Wonder how those who have endorsed his book (eg Kathy Burke) feel now?

I doubt any of them will have the guts to answer any questions. Total silence from Hilary Cremin and co.

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHERI think it was the non verbal autism back story. From what most people would think of as learning disabled (non verbal autism) to the top university in the country. That’s what made this stand out and make global news. It also gave a lot of hope about what is possible for those of us with children with challenges. Hence the whole thing is deeply upsetting.
But that’s why it made such news in my opinion. Just being black might have been a day old news story.

Going back and looking at how Cambridge announced his appointment, they really trumpeted his ethnicity and disability and said comparatively little about his scholarship. It makes for abysmal reading as his academic achievements and potential are so vaguely communicated, particularly given what has come to light since. It's as if he was wished into being, but does absolutely no favours to anyone else who may be from an under-represented minority and wants their appointment and scholarship to be taken seriously.

Ethnicity aside, it also shows the danger of appointing people partly based on their back story (which might be difficult to verify, such as Arday's claim repeated here that he only began to read and write in his late teens) while being really sloppy about checking their actual credentials and achievements.

It's pretty notable that the VC for Education said he was 'an exceptional scholar', 'will contribute significantly to Cambridge's research in this area' and then the rest of the statement is focussed on under-representation of specific groups in HE and what Cambridge are doing about it.

This is the story they published on their website at the time:
https://news.educ.cam.ac.uk/230223-jason-arday

I hope the review of appointment procedures will fully address Cambridge's PR/communication strategies as this statement didn't help anyone at all.

Even if everything Arday said was true, the narrative promoted by the University (eg via this statement linked above) shows why the way DEI policies operate and are communicated should be challenged by any right-thinking people - it may be that mainly right-wing commentators are the most vocal critics, but the policies are often sloppy, shallow and ultimately patronising and racist.

And was any of the autism story verified? More difficult to do so of course, but then highly risky for it to be such a defining factor (not that the University did adequate due diligence across any factors)

Someone on tiktok commented of Arday's grinning shiney photos 'he looks like he's just come out of a Diddy party'. Sorry had to laugh

❤️ there will be a few positives from this

There was a man on social media claiming to have been at the same school as Arday and that he could talk, and they went to a Church group together, I don't know for sure if it is true.
He did get two GCSE's in PE and textiles, and so he could write when he was 16 unless there is a way to do no written work?
.
TikTok account saying he went to Heathbrook Primary with Arday

That's the point Kathleen Stock was making. The guardian et al are reverting to the "it's racist" line but it was the need to believe that someone non verbal and supposedly unable to feed himself until he was 7 could come on in leaps and bounds. It was the intersectionality that made him irresistible. Britains Temple Grandin

https://unherd.com/2026/07/jason-arday-cambridges-dei-darling/

Professor Simon Baron Cohen the world authority on autism (who really should have sussed him) has now removed his name from the GLP letter

I’ve seen JA speak before, at a conference. 95% of the room was eating out of his hands.
The skeptical few wondered around comments made by JA such as the Dr diagnosing his Autism commenting on his “amazing social skills”. The conference was mainly attended by white, middle class women. JA has a likeable, “high trust” demeanour / features and a way of winning people over. His content lacks any form of substance. I’ve met many gifted black academics (through my line of work) who feel they have to go to extra lengths prove their worth, perceiving that others view them as DEI hires. This episode will further exacerbate this situation. I have always believed that disadvantage needs to be tackled early on, through EI social initiatives rather than tokenistic hires in adulthood.

Which is really why the whole DEI process and philosophy needs to be revisited. They now need to ensure that people who might be inferred to have been DEI beneficiaries in the workplace and academia are protected/insulated from this rhetoric and that the way it is implemented going forward addresses the concerns this whole sorry saga has raised.

A well-implemented approach to DEI, a system that looks to develop talent and ensure equal opportunity, CAN exist (and, dare I say, HAS existed in some firms and institutions in the past). We shouldn’t be looking to throw it out entirely, but recalibrate what its objectives are and look to ensure equity and fairness for all in the way it is conducted.

Total silence from a section of MN as well.