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...

I think this is an excellent article:

The most unfortunate thing - by Sarah Ditum - Tox Report

https://afcomm.org.uk/2026/01/10/emeritus-professor-title-withdrawn-critical-race-theory/
There's another academic involved in this, Dr David Harris who had his Emeritus title stripped after criticising CRT and for questioning the credentials of Arday. He also received a visit from the police and threats from Carter Ruck.

If Cambridge had done their job when the problem was flagged, there would have been no need for the media interest.

Remember Kathleen Stock .....forced from a job for criticising teams ideology. Did the same people aghast at Jason' resignation and the tragedy that enfolded have sympathy for her I wonder?

Well quite. The media interest doesn't come from nowhere. Hopefully any investigation would be rigorous enough to look beyond the symptom to the cause, and CU will be as keen to engage openly with that as to blame the press.

Regardless of what he did or didn’t do, the media and public (and some on the thread!! ) piled on someone who was clearly vulnerable.

He was an academic, there was absolutely no need for the public pile on. I hope all involved reflect on their actions.

Cambridge would have to act eventually as there were more and more reports of poor performance in terms of supervision and lecturing.(Sounds like a DEI mandatory training course). I guess the investigation would look into why performance management was never under consideration and it may have been linked to maybe a fear Jason would spiral if he was under critiscism?

Oh, Jess Taylor's waded in saying people shouldn't pathologise Arday.
OK, so he wasn't mentally vulnerable.

A vigil has been organised for tomorrow evening in Trafalgar Square. FFS.

@mids2019 Or he would say they were being racist. We do see this a lot and it’s been a problem for years. Being totally honest, it worries employers. They want to manage people fairly according to competence and performance management policies but find they are called racist if they dare to challenge some employees. The sad position surrounding this is that employers are very wary of who they employ. I want fairness for all but some employees are not fair to their employers.

Thanks, Marchesman. Just wondering where you’d read the points you’d said here about privately educated students being 50% more likely to get Firsts and about Cambridge preferentially selecting a demographic that appealed to their world view? And which demographic do you mean?

I agree.

Cambridge stopped publishing exam result data in 2017, read into that what you will. The last two year's figures below (with any luck) are from a personal freedom of information request. Their admission and access plan provides the justification, and Samoylova and Hall provide a detailed analysis of the outcome, but I can't persuade the document to download - Ekaterina Samoylova and Laura Hall, Analysis of student characteristics and attainment outcomes at the University of Cambridge, 2020.

https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/files/publications/university_of_cambridge_app_2020_25.pdf

Why is a uni that takes tax payers money able to just choose not to release results - what are our MPs doing that this is ok

I think the information you’ve given here is a bit unclear and misleading.

Do you mean Cambridge stopped publicly displaying exam results from 2017 onwards? If so, that’s not correct. They actually stopped doing that in 2021. I was there until 2015, and my results were published publicly outside Senate House as they had been in previous years.

Anonymised results from the university are also still very much available: https://www.information-hub.admin.cam.ac.uk/university-profile/ug-examination-results/results-course-dashboard.

Please see my post below. Cambridge do release results.

If Cambridge had done their job when the problem was flagged, there would have been no need for the media interest.

If Arday (or whoever was backing him) hadn't gone to such extreme lengths to shut down investigation, the media might have been less interested.

By clear and structured interview questions, practical assessments, and clear objective job spec criteria.

Stock was hounded out of her professorship. A Times column doesn't undo that. We are talking about people with diverse views being listened to at work, and particularly in academia. Don't move the goalposts.

Max Mosely wasn't releasing an autobiography and hadn't exaggerated or even outright made up feats of endurance. Yet he was still all over the press to the extent that he was.

That probably means a BLM riot. Hope the surrounding shops and caffs will put their shutters down.

What you are describing as "D&I" might be how the Yanks do it, but its illegal here.

For me, EDI means not getting fired when I disclose my recent autism diagnosis five years into having a job, and getting some reasonable adjustments put in place so that I can do my work even better.

Your definition of how it should work is correct, Quokkas, but employers can't overcome every disadvantage and it can all go very wrong when, for any number of reasons, they still fail to get sufficient applications from those they're keen to attract

That's when some - ignoring the nuances involved - simply cry they're "doing it wrong", and a situation can easily arise where, regardless of merit, they'll appoint anyone they can get in order to get the more unthinking campaigners off their backs

The alternative would be to address, openly and honestly, whatever factors have created the disadvantage, but that could highlight issues which some would find uncomfortable, and which aren't easily resolved

Well if they are done in private and results are confidential no one knows what goes on

employers can't overcome every disadvantage and it can all go very wrong when, for any number of reasons, they still fail to get sufficient applications from those they're keen to attract

Years ago, I knew someone who worked for the council in a town with one of the earliest established Asian communities in the uk. There was concern that the community was under-represented in the local police, so police, local council etc launched an initiative to try to attract more applicants. They were told in no uncertain terms that the parents didn't want their children joining the police. They wanted them to take up professions such as law, medicine, dentistry. I don't know how you'd address that.