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...

Most of my social media feeds are full of people saying he's blameless and been hounded due to racism. I thought it was that simple I'd agree- but it isn't.

Cambridge would love racism getting the blame.

Plays right into their DARVO strategy to avoid responsibility.

We owe it to JA and the rest of this country to tell the truth so it doesn’t happen again.

Ditto

It's a mob mentality with someone putting on some unevidenced statement about ' being hounded' followed by a thousand likes by the virtuous and a couple of inane comments about those who were courageous to scrutinise this fantasist.

Also read Arday's work or opinion pieces and you will see he had maybe a true conviction that the UK was riddled with racist institutions and there was this broad conspiracy theory to limit black academics. It seemed like an ideology based on vctimhood and if you are into that you see any deliberate justifiable scrutiny or accountability as a personal attack not just on you but your race. If you are do invested in thr ideology everything is an attack to justify your own world view.

SBC has had some funny ideas. There is also the concept that no autistic person has theory of mind (I think SBC supports that, too), which seems completely untrue; it doesn't seem to apply universally at at all.

Jason Arday also "explained" that he copied parts of another's thesis due to him trying to understand things through "mimicry".
IME mimicry is used for social behaviour (sometimes), not verbatim copying academic work. That statement of his was so outlandish, it is part of the reason why I doubt the autism diagnosis very much. It's like he just said random words which seemed plausible but actually don't make sense in the context he used them in.

@bluewanda We should not have shifted from best person for the job on measurable objective criteria. We should not favour anyone for any reason. Nor should we discriminate against someone when it’s unlawful to do so. What we have done is favour certain categories of people based on race, colour and educational background and are not objective in how their skills and attributes are measured. Companies and organisations set quotas and this can mean the best are not recruited because it’s necessary to move the employment stats to a better ratio near as possible to the target. The targets might be arbitrary and unrealistic. To not recruit the best, measured objectively, to public funded posts is utterly misguided. There should be no discrimination but why should there be “poster” academics who have been favoured above others? It doesn’t benefit students or the university.

Last week I watched some videos of JA to better understand the case and I noticed that between two different lectures, he seems to change his accent.

I am not a native speaker, so maybe someone else has more ideas about that.

Five years ago he seemed (to my untrained ear) to sound more polished than last year, while usually it is the other way around.

vs

It is not legal to positively discriminate in the UK unless it’s an obviously essential criteria for the job (e.g. casting a black female in a part in a film, female
only attendant in female spaces etc). You can sometimes choose to appoint a candidate based on protected characteristics if there are two or more equally qualified people and there is a good reason for doing so (such as need for an underrepresented person in the role, for example if you had no male teachers in a school) but you can’t take the diversity hire over a better qualified person. Of course, places do, but they shouldn’t.

Those videos sound like waffle to me with no clear points made

Having watched about 5-10 minutes of each video I almost lost the will to live. There’s no way I could sit through that. Wtf?!

Do you really think heads will roll?
Who would /could sack someone in such a high position (? Vice chancellor Helen Kremen) -she can surely blame HR /the others on the recruitment board (they should all go imv) / JM University etc and in the end some minion might get demoted

He writes:

"The point of D&I is that you bring people into your organisation with different life experiences and perspectives; you value them and listen to them (that’s why it’s called “inclusion”); and the outcome is that you make more informed decisions."

Emetic left-wing hypocrisy. If you really value people for having different perspectives then don't select them on the basis of their skin colour, sexual orientation, gender, disability, or socioeconomic status; choose people with a variety of perspectives.

In institutions that educate the next generation, where genuine - ideological - diversity might be useful, less than 10% of humanities and social science academics identify as right of centre politically.

What is the percentage among Guardian journalists do you think?

maybe more MNetters should sit on on recruitment panels for Cambridge for feedback.
Yes, it didn't seem very scientific to me, either, even if it's a "talk" and not a conference paper.

I work in education. Those lectures are utter rubbish.

@Katey83 so is this sort of scheme okay legally? I don’t mind it in theory, though think it’s unfair that white working-class people are excluded - does the BBC have a similar scheme for them? I doubt it.

www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1746837/bbc-defends-bame-only-internship

Who is Vice Chancellor Helen Kremen?

Emetic left-wing hypocrisy. If you really value people for having different perspectives then don't select them on the basis of their skin colour, sexual orientation, gender, disability, or socioeconomic status; choose people with a variety of perspectives.

Okay, I don’t want to offend anyone here… but surely the very fact you have, say, a disability, means that by that reason alone you have a different perspective than someone who is not disabled.

Again, I hope I haven’t offended anyone - if I have then please accept no offence was meant.

I do understand the argument for having different perspectives in a workplace - I think that’s important. But at the same time I believe jobs should be offered on merit and merit alone - to avoid the kind of tragic situation we’re dealing with now.

Exactly.

To quote myself, lol - I actually think that’s what the Guardian article is saying. I’m all
for “positive action”.

Opening up your hiring to more diverse communities leads to more competition and therefore higher standards.
This is also why it’s important to make the distinction between positive action and positive discrimination.
Positive action is inclusive and offers training or short-term experiences to underrepresented groups, helping to level the playing field before they apply for permanent jobs. Positive discrimination (commonly referred to as quotas), excludes people from job applications, reduces the numbers who are able to apply, and therefore lowers standards.

I guess you wouldn't know until you asked them.

The fact is that the institutions that bang on endlessly about diversity are remarkably homogeneous and restrictive in their outlook.

bills.parliament.uk/publications/42697/documents/669

Proof that D&I doesn’t work. He shouldn’t have been put in that position by Cambridge by virtue of his race.

Except that in research you are not looking for the researcher’s perspective - you are looking for the perspective of the researcher’s subjects? If you want to look at the experience of disabled people or black people or women in the learning space, then you invite disabled people, black people or women to participate in a project specifically designed to elicit their views and experiences, and in a manner that has passed the ethics committee and with with oversight from supervisors. It is not about YOUR experience, unless your research is authoethnographical (Helen Cremmins speciality, supposedly), I suppose - but I have huge issues with that as an epistemological form for ascertaining data for which may for the basis of generalisable observations to ‘learning spaces’ and lead to learnings that are applicable across wider demographics.

I mean, as an AuDHD person I can only explore and examine my own experience of education. It would be narcissistic and widely inappropriate to assume my experience maps onto even one other person’s live experience without extensive enquiry - ie I’d need to engage with multip AuDHD persons, in a systematic and defined manner to ascertain the similarities and divergences before being able to draw any broadly applicable learnings that might be of relevance to other AuDHD individuals?

I guess what I am saying is that you are supposed to leave your ego and your personal biases at the door when entering into research and to observe and interpret through an neutral lens. It’s why you are supposed to declare interests/byases up front? So therefore you don’t need to employ staff on the basis of their different perspectives - you need to employ them on the basis of their openness to understanding the different perspectives of others - and their research subjects specifically?

@Marchesman
Children start at different levels because educational attainment is approximately 40% heritable and then parenting accounts for much of the rest.
That's the issue, isn't it? We know that parenting is a massive issue, but there is no way that I know of to make some parents step up and actually, yunno, parent. I've worked in Early Years and you can tell some parents as tactfully as possible that they really need to help their child with her reading, and they'll get all pissy and write you a note back in the child's reading diary about how they just don't have the time. Ten minutes a bloody day, that's all. Nope, won't do it.

There's no way that universities can compensate for that.

Please show evidence of any white person in the UK whose alleged non-criminal misdemeanours has received so much coverage in the British media in recent times?
Here's a screen grab of just some of the headlines about Jason Arday from just one newspaper (Daily Telegraph) over a few days. Why exactly did it matter so much that he (most likely) fantasised about his life history? He threatened legal action against journalists - so did William O'Reilly, another Cambridge academic who was found guilty of plagiarising from his own students and didn't even resign or lose his job - where was all the coverage about him?

how exactly is merit judged?