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...

Could be.

Could also be completely typical child (and adult) behaviour.

Peter Kay for instance, his entire stand-up is based on 80s nostalgia and getting the audience to sing jingles and TV ads.

Given ASC is diagnosed in the minority, the chances are it's not ASC but typical behaviour.

I really question why when Arday has been exposed for lying about so many, many things, some people seem so desperate to form a narrative that maybe he wasn't lying about ND or maybe was lying because of ND.

We're not talking about your DC if that's what you're worried about. And if people question ND because of Arday, that's on him and his fraudulent behaviour, you can't blame people for doing so when it's been proven how seemingly easy it is to claim ND and request reasonable adjustments or even special treatment when for the last few years, many people even in health and academia have been saying its a developing problem.

In all likelihood she probably isn't paid to do research. A lot of mid-tier universities made staff redundant or put them onto teaching only contracts so any research done is at the weekends/evenings with no recognition. She may well have made her career on admin ability and teaching.

There will be a lot of movement in the research rankings in the next REF in that tier because a lot of research active academics will have jumped ship and tried to go to research intensive universities. It's worth noting if you have a child going to university because there is a strong chance they wont be being taught by people doing actual research in their area.

Agree. We can't really know what he did or didn't have unless more info comes out, but the echolalia feels like a massive reach, given that he's said mutism, GDD, autism and the rest and sure as hell if he'd heard of echolalia he'd have mentioned that in his ramblings or be using it now to exonerate himself. But the thing we do know for certain is that this guy lies, so to try and figure out how he wasn't actually lying about the disputed mutism seems like a futile side-quest.

That's interesting because you are effectively then an advanced teacher so could you not start an acerbic career without a Ph.D.

I don't know the quality of this woman's teaching but certainly she didn't lack for condidence. However when talking to her you could tell.this was not someone absorbed in their subject academically but certainly enthusiastic about her own political aspirations.

It looks like Jason was a poor teacher but complaints were buried under accusations of racism.

Titles don't always spell the truth. As well as being a (medical) doctor in my main workplace, I also taught student doctors at a RG uni medical school. I had a fancy title there which included the word "lecturer" but I never gave a lecture in my life, nor was I required to!

Very good point - how did he get an education degree which would have qualified him to be a teacher - without GCSEs in Maths and English? Are there some equivalent courses that can be taken?

Excellent post.

Well done for summarising that.

Not that many posters will read it unfortunately.

Many have focused on his race and I think that was a lesser aspect of his stratospheric rise.

Race issues in academia have existed for decades. The ND angle is distinctly 21st century and more importantly, the last 10/15 years a societal issue.

And that's how he had so many supporters. His race was a selling point in terms of his perceived 'excellence' but add in ND and he became a poster boy.

It's also an explanation for why so many people apparently gave him a pass for poor writing for instance. Someone may be willing to risk accusations of racism failing a black person but are they willing to face accusations of racism AND ableism? In someone with the added profile of reported physical ill health, charity work, being a victim of racism and being championed as a leading light facing adversity for race AND ND?

Anyone who says no, people in academia or otherwise don't worry about that -are lying or have never been put in the position of failing or complaining about someone who is non-white, ND, a care leaver or so on.

The competition is so fierce now that all our teaching only lecturers have PhDs and several publications (usually in world leading journals) but many won't have research in their contract. Their hope will be to try and do research around their full time job and at some point get a research contract but I've never seen anyone do this. The teaching loads are overwhelming so they just don't have time. You can also guess who is more likely to get a research contract at interview over a teaching contract (it helps if you're white with a penis).
.

Absolutely inevitable. Apart from the blatant plagiarism, his career is pretty much a blueprint for any dimwit who likes the sound of his/her own voice. Start off in a highly unselective university, do a PhD in something DEI-ish and Bob's your uncle.

I was unaware that autoethnography is a thing until I read an article in today's Spectator. But evidently Arday was an autoethnographer.

Still, if he had not been making it up as he went along, it would arguably have been slightly more respectable than pole-dancing.

https://spectator.com/article/class-clowns-the-triumph-of-inanity-over-academia/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=WEEK%20%2020260813%20%20AL+CID_0a2de7bbdcb39ff491025dc400f54e8d

Archive version

archive.ph/e7ndk

They should have put him in an engagement only contract, no teaching just outward facing. Presumably what Hannah Fry is on.

100%

People who are super-confident in their own bullshit but use 'trigger' words around diversity, oppression, race and gender theories can bullshit their way through most conversations.

Because there are enough people in the audience bedazzled by the Emperors New Clothes they bow down to the 'privilege' they've been told they have so any questions or criticisms they may have are explained away by them just being 'racist or ableist' for even thinking them.

And Jason Arday was very charismatic and flattered every single person that ever interviewed him, telling him how they 'really got it' and so on which was all emotional manipulation.

Some are now coming out claiming they were conned.

I saw an interview with him where as a Professor of sociology, he was asked in essence what what would he do to improve society? and he said along the lines of 'i'd get a needle and thread and sew love, we should spin on an axis of love'.

Which i'd expect from a beauty pageant contestant, not a Cambridge sociology academic FFS.

But people lapped it up. OMG that's really all we need, love. Which the hippies and Lennon were saying 50 plus years ago. It's not new. Nor a solution to lifes ills.

Some of the testimonies of his students said he'd come in for a lecture and talk about Beyonce for most of the time then leave and they were (or supposed to) think wow, he's so relatable, what a great Prof he really knows how to relate to us.

It's all BS.

Good point. The media always want a good advocate for various academic themes and Jason could have been the go to for maybe CBBC when they are in need of inspiration for the next generation of he hasn't lied so much.

The saddest thing about the whole affair is that throughout education from primary to Higher Ed and beyond into research and scholarship, most of the staff are still white and it would be hard to find suitably qualified black candidates to apply for the job even now.

Perhaps a rethink about education and equality is due.

The article below from 2017, five years before Arday's appointment, raises a number of points most of which are still painfully relevant, and especially the last point:

"For (Deborah Gabriel), the problems are deeply-rooted and structural. She thinks that they will require sector-wide soul-searching about how universities view BAME staff and their place in the institution, rather than the window-dressing of diversity initiatives."

https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2017/nov/16/do-universities-have-a-problem-with-promoting-their-bame-staff

We're not talking about your DC if that's what you're worried about.
That's a weird thing to say - I'm not worried about my child in the context of JA at all thanks. I'm not 'desperate' to form any narrative, just think that in this story which is supposedly about the importance of truth, credibility and due diligence it's contradictory for people to seize on the slightest evidence (scraps of hearsay) and run with it.

For those incensed about JA and plagiarism/academic misdemeanours, he really really isn't alone - see https://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-leaderboard/

Yet that's exactly what you're doing.

There are numerous narratives saying JA was certainly not non-verbal ASC and GDD till the age of 11 as he wouldn't have been in a mainstream school if he was and when people are allegedly saying they attended school with him and he was very verbal, you're saying well that doesn't mean he lied?

Maybe he lied a bit? and still had ASC and GDD because it could be he had ASC traits that weren't as bad as his complete lies?

What's your point? That he might be a ASC liar and so that makes sense that he lied?

Do you really believe someone had such significant ASC and GDD that they were non-verbal till 11 and illiterate to 18 yet somehow got GCSEs in PE and Textiles without knowing how to read or write?

And less than 20 years later was the youngest black professor ever at Cambridge University?

That's not slight evidence. That's the evidence that JA himself is claiming.

Which is clearly bollocks. People refuting that just have common sense and are not taken in by a con mon.

Plus all the other bollocks this conman has said not related to academia that is proven bollocks.

Weird that you seem to want to support this obvious conman.

Can you give me your bank details? I am an UK based fantastic academic that needs some money to fight all the things in court. Help me, i'm being discriminated against.

The 'fireside chat' video titled 'We Built This City ..' posted up-thread in which he gives the 'keynote speech' is well worth a watch for a flavour of how he charms and flatters other academics.

He loves them, he's so, so grateful, they're the best etc etc. He says not one word of substance. It's an hour long ramble of buzzwords and popular phrases. Journey, kindness, diversity, authentic self, best that you can be,. Any question produces the same answer (after the obligatory 'hmm, that's a really good question'). It's just the buzzwords in a different order.

The highlight is when he quotes Rod Stewart's lyric 'It's in my heart and in my soul' in response to a question about what drives him.

He spouts gibberish and they absolutely lap it up. It was nauseating to see the fawning.

It reminds me of a satirical show I went to see called 'Wankernomics'. The two guys on stage ask the audience to shout out random corporate bullshit phrases they've come across at work- synergy, circle back, deep dive, cascade, that kind of thing. As the phrases are shouted out they add them into a PowerPoint. It doesn't matter what order the phrases come up, it's all wank and means bugger all.

What was BBC "Verify" the one and only purveyors of Truth as they keep telling us doing when they let him loose on the Today programme?

Discussions about race in academic circles are woeful. I’ve been at a reparation discussion where someone did a land acknowledgement for ‘the original peoples of Swiss Cottage [as in North London]’ and sat through keynote speech where we were told not to equate ‘dark or black with bad and negative things as this is quite obviously racist.’ At the same conference, during the opening welcome, the Asian head of the association urged white people ‘not to take up space by participating in discussions’ though there were fewer than a dozen people of colour at a 409+ person event. So the whole event was weirdly silent. Just sort of hysterical ten year old versions of the cultural and political issues around race.

'the original peoples of Swiss Cottage😂

Did they say who the original peoples of Swiss Cottage were or was it just unspecified original peoples?

Unspecified ‘original peoples’ 🤣🤣

The Swiss, surely!