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...

Yes, that claim has been well documented on here and in the press.

Not exactly. This is the pig's head story as reported by the Guardian.

Arday confirmed in an interview with the Guardian that the “mutilated animals sent to his family home” mentioned in the open letter was a severed pig’s head, delivered in a large cardboard box to his parents’ home address in south London. He claimed to have intercepted the package and immediately thrown it away, only telling the police several months later.

In a subsequent interview he claimed the police investigated, checking with butchers in south London if they had sold a pig, eventually finding one that had sold a “whole hog” on the morning the head was left outside the family home.

When the Guardian checked those details with the local butchers Arday named, they said no police officer had come in to ask them about a pig. When asked if they were sure, the butcher said “that’s the kind of thing we’d remember”.

When the details Arday gave about the pig’s head investigation were checked by London’s Metropolitan police, the Guardian was told they were “categorically” incorrect and no investigation had taken place.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2026/aug/01/playbooks-plagiarism-pigs-head-new-claims-surrounding-cambridge-professor-jason-arday

Thanks.

Whoever Philip Swallow 2 is, he puts it very well. I'm not a sociologist but I'm not an idiot either, and I have read Arday's PhD thesis, and some of his peer reviewed publications. You would have to be a moron or a liar to claim that it is adequate let alone distinguished. I have read more convincing hoax publications.

So, what should we make of Hilary Cremin and her friends?

And to add that the Guardian said Arday was unable to produce any emails or messages which could corroborate the pig's head story.

Family members said he had 'shown them' the 'bullet' and 'poison' he claimed he had been sent in the post. The banana and the pig's head got 'thrown away'.

In one of his interviews I heard him over-egging the banana story with lots of detail about a jiffy bag, how it wouldn't have fitted in a postbox, so the sender must have taken it to the post office, spoken to someone at the counter, got it weighed, declared its contents, paid the correct postage etc. ie it was a deliberate and time-consuming act of racism. Okaay. Except that all of that would have meant the package was traceable.

He just didn't know when to stop lying.

I'd decided to stop commenting here but then saw this website set up by his former students - nice to see another perspective on him https://leilacancode.github.io/everythinggood-about-jasonarday/

..then saw this website set up by some of his former students...

Fixed that for you.

Quite!

worth repeating from those tweets:
Get the facts of the matter in focus. And if you don't, you are just another fantasist projecting your dreams onto someone who could never bear the weight of proper intellectual scrutiny.

All the people claiming this is the media’s fault is indulging in pretty basic thinking. It’s far more complicated and involves many people.

I’m a bit disturbed by people saying Arday was vulnerable or ill. Theres no evidence to support that. Theres lots of evidence that he told totally audacious untruths and exaggerations to a point that’s genuinely impressive. It’s such a shame he felt unable to continue but noone forced him to do what he did and he had the choice to remain a Professor at Glasgow and remain entirely anonymous. But he loved courting attention. He seems to have loved sailing close to the wind if his untruths are anything to go by!! He described himself as a modern Icarus and seems to have known exactly what he was doing - just never expected getting caught would attract this much scrutiny/sunlight.

is it just me that think the real racism’s are the ones who gave him the job when he clearly wasnt up to scratch? It’s like they didn’t imagine he could do better and I find that really distasteful. Far worse than asking for accountability about academic standards and a truthful backstory

That’s a nice counterpoint to the other issues. Thanks for posting.

He was clearly a very charming and likeable guy, and will be missed by many. He seems to have had a lot of empathy and took time to say supportive things to say to lots of different people. it’s lovely that this positive view of him is out him out there

I therefore feel awful posting this - the empathetic gestures that are described on that website are just not consistent with significant autism deficits. Very few adults with autism can get or keep a job due to poor social skills. They aren’t stopping to make sure others are comfortable or intuiting if they’re struggling and need encouragement due to mind blindness. Instead JA’s social skills seemed to be highly developed!

I know those accounts don't fit a stereotype, but also know autistic people who are great at demonstrating empathy and reading emotional situations pretty well, for example one of my young adult children who is definitely (diagnosed) autistic and works as a voluntary teacher and really notices how people are doing emotionally.

Mind blindness doesn't tend to be used as a concept any more - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-blindness#:~:text=%5B5%5D%20The%20mind%2Dblindness%20theory%20asserts,who%20later%20pioneered%20empathising–systemising%20theory.

I think is what's termed "reverse ferret"

https://nitter.net/stueymaco/status/2089442478881452489#m

Christ, the right side of history is currently being led by Narinder from Big Brother

That's nice. But he wasn't very kind to his children when he ended his life was he? Suicide is probably the most painful way to lose someone. It raises very uncomfortable and difficult emotions as you can't just mourn as you also have anger and guilt and so many questions that can never be answered.

He relieved himself of his pain by passing it on to his children.

Anyone can say nice. kind things when it costs them nothing and make the sort of vague proclamations that ' all we need is love' that Arday excelled in. But its when its hard for people to live by their principles that you see what they really believe and who they really are. Arday set out to harm through the law people who were going to tell the truth about him. He has left likely lifelong harm and trauma to his children. That is not kind and it is not love. Being prepared to live through his current crisis, mourn his old life and cope with his new life, for the sake of his children would have been love. Women every day endure in lives they find traumatic, and would chose the oblivion option but for the need to carry on for their children and their unwillingess to make their children suffer due to their death. THAT is someone who lives by the principle of love.

Mumsnets favourite pot noodle scented Trans activist has more footage of the vigil, including Jolyon telling white people they need to stop talking and start listening.

Has he looked in the mirror lately

https://bsky.app/profile/sophiemolly.co.uk/post/3mteb2dxyfs24

I tend not to speak ill of the dead - it's not virtue signalling, but a very very strong value I was raised with due to a high preponderance of mental illness (and suicide) in my wider family and cultural/religious beliefs. I understand something of the anger as I have seen it first-hand, but also understand that many people who die by their own hand really believe their families would be better off without them and even feel they're acting out of love for them - we don't know Arday's mindset and can't account for his actions. I think that for some people it really can be likened to a terminal illness.

Thanks for this. I’ve been struggling on how to process this as I and my DS are autistic but we can tell that people are upset/off immediately. Not sure if it’s because we are hypervigilent about observing people’s faces, tone, body language etc because we need every bit of data to ensure we’re reading a person or situation correctly. People don’t believe that we are autistic because we pick up on things and are very empathetic (my DD is more what was known as Aspergers and often seems to lack empathy and compassion, or at least being able to show it). I understand Theory mind research now points to a difference or nuance in how it works for us, rather than a total deficit. It’s the ‘are they laughing with me or at me’ conundrum on a much broader scale.

That's very interesting - my dc is overly empathetic in that other people's upset really affects him and he finds it hard to filter out. He takes the emotional temperature of a room or a person very quickly. In one way his responses might be seen as disproportionate compared to a neurotypical person but he manages them well now that he's a bit more mature - he still finds social cues very tricky but in terms of sensitivity to others he has it in spades.

Yes, that is something all three of is feel - we struggle to process other people’s heightened emotions, especially negative ones such as anger and distress, without becoming very distressed ourselves. I often describe it as being MORE attune to/sensitive to other people’s emotions but being unable to filter it out. It can be uncharitably misread by some as ‘making a distressed moment about yourself’, when it isn’t at all - you just absorb all the sensory data at once and have no filter, no ability to deflect it.

My (undiagnosed, but increasingly obviously also ND) DH is like this - but only when it comes to our distress. He is completely teflon when it comes to colleagues or work situations, but if any of us are upset, he implodes in response because he doesn’t know what to do with what we are feeling, how to fix it, even becomes scared for us… and makes it worse! He has a real meltdown, but truly cannot see that this is what’s happening. After A level results day recently for DS and DD simultaneously deciding not to go back to uni this semester, I’ve had to conclude that he is best excluded from family drama as he really cannot process it.

To put it bluntly, there were other more qualified black academics ( according to various sources) but Cambridge chose to go with the back story which would get most publicity. Now Cambridge with the help of the left will deflect all of this onto racism without revealing their part in the naked explotation of this man for their own purposes. They will get off scot free.

There's a veritable bodycount of academics thrown out of jobs for spurious reasons according to that Storyville Speechless documentary so, of course, a lot of them would be out for blood.

Think of the pile on Phillip Schofield got. He did something unethical but not enough for the level of pile on. He's just done what most people would do. Disappear and enjoy his money.

Sarah Ditum commenting in The Times today has it about right. A fair summary of the issues. This is also a big push for Leveson 2 after Harry and Co failed to impress.

This sounds very familiar! I’ve always put this down to the ADHD component more than the autism tho…

I wouldnt trust student feedback on him at all. Our student feedback is usually guided by grades. If students get low grades they give low feedback, if they get high grades they give top scores, so 'easy' markers who are lazy can get fabulous teaching scores. We also know (there have been a lot of studies on this) that student feedback is worse for women and ethnic minorities. This site even gives a tool where you can search for terms like 'intelligent' and visually see the gender bias across subjects in the US https://benschmidt.org/profGender/

I'm interested in the appointments panel.
The ones who were unanimous in their decision to hire him.

I think there is a lot of research being done on the AuDHD v ASD v ADHD because of the difficulty in teasing out which behaviour, difficulty, difference belongs in which diagnostic category. It’s sort of a Venn diagram (I’ve attached one, though there are many versions… all different and many inadequate!)

I do wonder, if JA was autistic whether it wasn’t accompanied by ADHD, as it might explain some of his behaviours and presentations - but I doubt we will ever be privy to the reports that clarify what he was really diagnosed with, and when, and whether he was #actuallyautistic.

@MeetMeOnTheCorner Have you got a share token please?