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 you add Nigel Farage to thr lost of white people scrutinised for at potential illegal donations?

@Noras sending a hug - your DS sounds awesome in having worked so hard to manage and ‘overcome’ [not sure that is the right word] the potential limitations of his diagnoses. Just dedication and resilience and strength of spirit. And I suspect a lot of advocacy help from mum to make sure the support was there for him. You sound like such an effective team. Can’t wait to see you post on MN one day that he has graduated and is working on his MA. What an amazing lad.

Edited to @Quokkas
It's a small specialist field. What I have taken back to the sources would enable anyone with Google to track down my PhD and published work, so I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that I'm not even going to begin going there.

Sorry it’s Hilary Cremen.
-wiki
She was an academic at Oxford Brookes University, followed by the University of Leicester School of Education where she was director of research, then joining the University of Cambridge in October 2008 as an associate professor.[3] Cremin was later appointed head of the Faculty of Education at Cambridge.
Jason Arday plagiarism allegations
edit
Following the appointment of Jason Ardayas Professor of Sociology of Education in 2023, she praised his selection on a BBC broadcast, stating: "The board of electors on your interview day were absolutely unanimous. We are so lucky to have you. You are the best in the world in terms of the research that you do."[4]
In May 2023, two academics, David Harris and Martyn Hammersley, presented Cremin and Cambridge management with detailed evidence of text duplication and qualitative data irregularities in a 2018 paper published by Arday.[5]
Emails later published by The Timesshowed that Cremin responded to the whistleblowers in June 2023, stating that she had met with Arday, who spoke about his experiences with "direct and indirect racism" and poor health conditions during the paper's preparation.[6] Cremin noted that Arday had agreed to temporarily remove the article online to address concerns, but affirmed that he retained the faculty's "full support" and expressed hope that the matter was resolved.[5][6]
When Hammersley warned Cremin that withdrawing the paper indicated a "proven case" requiring a wider audit of Arday's publications, Cremin did not reply.[6]Following public scrutiny and wider allegations regarding Arday's thesis text and academic credentials, Cambridge initiated a formal investigation into his appointment, culminating in Arday's resignation in August 2026.[6]

There Is a reason it is so prolific and reported.

The issue is the harm he has done to others eg by having police investigate them and the harm to students etc. Peope felt threatened by him and his legal team.

There was also a poor girl who wrote a thesis in 2009 and he seems to have taken a lot from her - see the video Black Belt Barrister on you tube re the comparisons. As a non academic they seem shocking to me. How might she feel.

There are numerous victims of all this and that sj the issue.

Exactly @Noras .

I posted this on the other thread meant to post here.

Cambridge were obsessed by DEI that overrode common sense and checking his background.
This is Cambridge not just any university with alumni like Steven Hawking!
They are truly a laughing stock to put it mildly.
Arday was put in the job by DEI and the truth brought him down.
He conned and lied his way into a top position. Lauded and financial rewards heaped upon him. He waved the race card every time he was challenged about his abilities and achievements. This resulted in one journalist being investigated by the police for four months. He called students racist to their face. Many students got much lower grades than predicted because of his lack of teaching. Was he really qualified to teach at all? Lot of questions need answered.

@Noras Some of his primary school friends are saying he did speak and had quite a few friends. It’s just a big web of deceit really. Although others have said he didn’t speak to them!

All the people who have brought cases against newspapers over the last 15 years would argue they had a rough time. The Arday case would have disappeared but many webs of deceit was going to keep it a fresh story. Plus why should the press not inform us of deceit and lies when someone holds a publicly funded post? It matters to the students and the wider public.

The outcome is horrendous of course but Cambridge have stated what assistance they put in place.

Also my observations with my son who learnt to talk late was that he had missed out on so much English learning. For example, he really struggled with syntax, punctuation and structure etc. He did not suddenly go from not talking to being able to write well. The level of study support he had required has been huge. He needs extensive 1:1 English tutoring for years and years. He had it all the way through primary and senior school. Unlike Arday he could spell form an early age ( because you can still learn to spell even if you can’t form sentences well or talk fluently) and he could read ( despite being then deaf as I used his cranium as a hearing aid as his ears were too much of a mess for hearing aids etc) In fact reading helped give him a script.

But as the talking resolved issues remained eg my son wrote his entire A Level project on the past perfect rather than the past ie ‘he had had’ as opposed to ‘he had’.

My son is practically the living embodiment of this story but he is at university with lots of support. We’re someone to ask ‘does he have a disability’ it’s there to be seen. I have no doubt that my son has an enormous understanding and love of his subject. I studied the same at UCL (SEES) and he knows far more than me. Yet he is at an old style poly with a great faculty/ and a lovely head. To get where he is we have had to delay his admission for several years, send him to life skills, assemble a great team of mentors and heavily invest in English tutoring / Drama lessons etc to get him to speak at university.

His ideas are fantastic but getting them on paper is hard.

I don’t want people to think that someone with global development or the lesser matter of complex needs can miraculously lose their disabilities over several years and suddenly it’s all ok.

It’s not good for anyone and can make people feel quite wretched.

@Noras thank you so much for explaining this. Your son sounds amazing and I'm sure that with the support and reasonable adjustments he's going to be super-successful. As you've explained that there are no Lazarus moments where all of this gets wiped clean and someone with profound developmental delays becomes "normal", much less "extraordinary". And it's even more distressing that this man's claims to having overcome such profound disabilities has been held up as an exemplar by some of what others "could do" if only they were as determined as JA was. That's tragic.

I can't see the lie about receiving death threats and a pig's head as anything other than an attempt to set back race relations.

Andrew Mountbatten Windsor has had a relentless pile on too. I don't see any complaints about that.

I know concerns were raised about him over the years, but I do think it's all come to a head now because of his book. Obviously I'm not saying that anyone who publishes a book is fair game for the press and everyone else to 'hound' them, but it was a big move to make his story public on that scale, which widely exposed everything that didn't stand up to a moment's scrutiny. He must have known what he was writing was dodgy AF at this point - even from the gulf between the book proposal and the book itself where things didn't track - so to take the money and put it out there was playing with fire, and every person involved in that decision to publish and publicise opened the door to all of this.

It's a horrible, tragic thing, but hardly unforeseeable, and it says it all that people are now drawing parallels with the likes of Princess Di. I knew the sanctifying would be inevitable, but no one ever learns from it. The press (and public) will build you up and tear you down, so be very careful when you open yourself up to them. Some people like performers have to do that because of the nature of their talent, but JA and the people around him chose the spotlight and wanted it. That's another reason why it's so despicable of CU to retreat in the shadows now, like they're just important academics doing their jobs and it's not on them.

Similarly to lie about a masked man threatening him with a knife in his office. After CCTV and a panic button had been installed in response to his claim of an earlier 'masked man' incident in the college grounds. The first lie wasn't enough. He had to make it even more sensational and specific. In his office, targeted at him, with a knife.

So this 'incident' couldn't be passed off by anyone as a random attack. This was a deliberate, escalated, elaborate lie to claim he was the victim of a racist attack.

And as the Guardian reported, he had no photos of the bullet, the banana, the corrosive substance or the pig's head. He could produce no emails or messages with anyone at the time to corroborate any of those incidents. Close family members told the Guardian he had 'shown them' the bullet and the 'poison'.

I don't doubt he suffered real racism in his life. But that doesn't seem to have been 'enough'. So he faked a lot more and made it bigger, more colourful, worse.

No doubt some will try to justify that or gloss over it. But I can't see how lying about it helps combat racism. Quite the contrary.

@pinkdelight I don’t think the press did build him up. Who, outside academic circles, would have known who he was 6 weeks ago? Very few people. Yes he made a bit of history with his appointment and then most of us quickly forgot about him. Had there been no disquiet about his work or his cv, that’s the last we would have heard of him. Then there’s the book which presumably perpetuates the myths. I do not see that the press built him up beyond how he promoted himself. If anything, Cambridge built him up.

I think time of year as well - summer season didn't help.

I suspect going after journalists asking questions with police - is also in there as well.

Cambridge univeristy with their name recognition also didn't help with coverage level.

Watched a Channel 4 inteview last night being played as a clip where he claimed he had reading age of 9 but got a degree - which given wordy area he was in seems incredilby unlikely - reading issues yes - I had those being dsylexic but it was just accepted and admired not questioned or really explained what was meant by it.

I think the press did build him up a little, actually.

Since the most recent news stories questioning his achievements, I’ve found stories from when he was appointed at Cambridge 3 years ago which emphasise the extraordinariness of his achievements. They’re from 2023 and are very easily found if you search them.

They didn’t attract much public interest at the time because, unfortunately, the general public prefers a story with an angle of sadness/shame/strangeness rather than a straightforward narrative of success.

That’s not just me being cynical, by the way - that is a widely accepted view!

Arday was a guest editor of the Today programme in December 2023

Professor Jason Arday is our latest Christmas guest editor.

This year he was appointed as one of Cambridge’s youngest ever professors. A significant accolade by any measure but even more so when you consider that Professor Arday was diagnosed with autism and global developmental delay aged just three and didn't learn to speak until he was eleven or read and write until he was eighteen.

He uses his programme to look at improving adult literacy and he speaks to the head of Universal Music UK about championing neurodiversity in the workplace.

Professor Arday also indulges his passion for 90s music with a discussion including Blur drummer Dave Rowntree and as a fan of a sharp suit, he champions the tailoring industry.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0h266d1

There were all the pieces @Quokkas refers to from when he was appointed. All the 'youngest ever... ' publicity. I'm not over-egging it or saying he was some big star at that point, just that Cambridge made a big PR push for him, and then I think you're making my point for me which is that the book publicity push triggered all of this recently. If the PR wheels for the book hadn't cranked into motion, who would be looking his way? He was literally asking people to find out all about him and so they did, just not in the way he wanted or could control. That was my point.

@pinkdelight Yes, I acknowledge Cambridge made a fuss when he was appointed but that became chip paper very quickly for the average person. It was several years ago. I can assure you, going back just a few weeks, he was not being discussed by anyone outside academia.

You don't need to assure me. You're making my point for me. This is all triggered by the book. If he hadn't put that out there and wanted the media to help sell it, no one beyond academic circles would have been all over this.

But also as @MrPrettyDamnCosmic just posted, let's not pretend he wasn't enjoying putting himself in the public eye and playing the media game, with all its risks. No academic needs to do that. And again, it doesn't mean he deserved to die or anything twisted like that. But it's a dangerous move to escalate things by publishing your life story when it's riddled with pitfalls that people will find out. One could say that he was trying to be a positive role model, but that falls apart when it's not based on reality and just makes it extra damaging in the end.

The point I took from @pinkdelight’s post (which is also my view) is that, although the general public wouldn’t have heard of JA before last month’s coverage kicked off, the mainstream press certainly had previous reports about him. As the reports were so unusual, that made them very newsworthy.

The media then used this newsworthiness precisely to justify their coverage of him, even when it verged on speculation and the witch-hunting they’ve now been accused of, via repeatedly questioning his claims and background, often via revealing no new information at all but simply repeating what other outlets had already said.

I expect they’ll continue to use that defence of newsworthiness if they’re questioned about their coverage in the months to come.

In the months and years to come, I would like there to be a neutral, evidence-based investigation in the media of JA’s claims, ideally done with the support of JA’s family, to try and understand how this whole situation surrounding JA was even possible.

https://www.dailymail.com/columnists/article-16055435/Jason-Ardays-death-force-reflection-SARAH-VINE.html

For all those DM haters I think piece is quite fair and has a fair amount of compassion towards Jason which maybe reflects the thoughts of many.

D&I is by definition not about merit. In selection processes it applies statistical data to judgements that should be made at an individual level, explicitly introducing bias to achieve a predetermined "desirable" objective, in your example, fewer white men. It is possible that there could be reasons why it might be useful to an organisation but it has nothing to do with merit.

What i can't understand is why Baron Cohen after speaking with him on the morning of his death where he was saying basically i don't want to go on, didn't raise an alarm or put in place emergency care? Or maybe he did and we didn't know.

Good article.