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...

Claerly that one's slipped through and maybe they're all too busy covering their own backs and arguing among themselves to notice?

I was encouraged, though, by a PPs report that some of Jason's students did indeed receive very low marks. Obviously it's terrible for the students themselves, but I'd half wondered if the resilts might have been "engineered" in an attempt to stop what Cambridge had done coming to light

Sounds like this, which was linked on the last thread, would be useful here: https://www.artybollocks.com/

I just LOVE this, and at least I now know where the utter drivel presented alongside some "work" may have come from

I'll say it again:

this was a contextual admission...
to a professorship at Cambridge!

There must have been other black candidates who weren’t loons. Why didn’t they hire them?

Or was the job created for him?

I just feel so sad about this whole thing. It is allowing for a whole lot of 'i told you so' and some pretty small minded opinions to be foregrounded. The autism isn't real crowd are here, along with the woke gone mad group., The my subject is more academic than yours and how the status of Cambridge opens up many other doors to someone regardless of actual ability

(we need to ask ourselves why we give such institutions such power in our societies).

How a bunch of obviously intelligent people (if we believe that Cambridge is the academic powerhouse we make it out to be) wanted so much to try alter historical under-representation; were blindsided into only seeing what they wanted to see.

What seems to be a whole lot of lack of fact checking and academic rigour - from the PhD through to basic human resources systems.

Why no framework picked up any lack of teaching/professorship duties on the courses he was responsible for - surely there were audits? Or did the institutions that hired on the basis of the Cambridge appointment merely move him out of the way quietly to avoid any confrontation.

And why can't anyone in today's interconnected society actually figure out the truth. Surely so much of this is recorded - from exam results, to schools attended, to sporting achievements.

The damage this is doing to other minority academics is immeasurable.

But the harm to young black men trying to enter academia now will forever have to deal with this.

The false hope that the story gave to struggling parents of autistic children - who are desperate to know that their nonverbal child may be the one who defeats the system (claxon alert: they rarely do and the Einstein didn't talk is an urban myth - sits there with the facilitated communication books written by 'locked in' autistic teenagers which are actually the work of the facilitator - I know non verbal people can use augmented technology to write and communicate - I am referring to the very specific group here - and I totally get why this happens...)

The whole thing is now just a huge bun fight with arm chair warriors picking over the bare bones to try and find the 'truth' - as if we even know what that is.

Bit harsh I think - that young lady did her undergrad in history and economics at LSE so must be a bright cookie. First in family to go to uni and to be fair seems to want to spread the message that it is achieveable hence deciding to do a research masters into the subject of widening access - which seems a reasonable topic for an academic education masters. As she then went to the Office for Students she presumably passed some form of civil service entrance proceedure before deciding to do a DPhil at Oxford and volunteering for their target schools programme. I'd say that sounded like a respectable CV for an Oxford DPHil candidate.

The ND angle was much more of a draw than him being black I think.

From everything I've heard from other academics commenting on this.

I think race played a part but that's been a case for debate for decades.

The ND angle is very much this century.

If it were not for armchair warriors, Arday would still be at Cambridge, neglecting to educate students. It is abundantly clear that the universities that employed him were not interested in either investigating him or preventing him from failing upwards. It is because so much is recorded that it has been possible to divine the truth as you put it from an armchair, and it is just as well.

His students from various points in his career have complained that he didn't teach them anything usable, and it is easy to see why. In the "independent" report into "systemic racism" at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine he explicitly justifies the use of a methodology that "brings to life the lived experience of those not privileged" by the system, rather than troubling anyone with "evidence and objectivity, which are themselves ideologies held within institutions." A small turnout of respondents is assumed to be due to fear of reprisal (rather than disinterest). In at least one "lecture" on YouTube, for which he confesses he made no preparation, he describes himself as an enabler rather than a teacher, while his students complain (not on YouTube) that he mostly talked about his own lived(???) experience in lectures and tutorials.

It is ironic that he made a living out of identifying systemic racism in education when his career would either have not got off the ground, or ended years ago, had he been white.

Look on the bright side, there is just the tiniest possibility that other people in his discipline might be more inclined in future to put more weight on evidence and objectivity, and bin the lived experience. But I wouldn't hold your breath.

Yup - you just pay the money and voila! Always makes me laugh when people put “Fellow of the RSA” on their LinkedIn bio. It’s as meaningful as putting “member of my council leisure centre” in their bio 😂

Have you seen the pile on on substack? The reporting of 'facts' - when actually the 'facts' have still to be established by the institutions affected.

Put his name into substack and what you will see is a good old fashioned witch hunt. Where this is being used - particularly over the Atlantic - to further drive quite extreme right ring agendas bordering on eugenics.

Or Reddit where people are salivating over the tiniest morsel of information they are able to uncover.

People forget in their righteous pursuit of 'truth' that there are real live people attached to this - children and wider family who are being affected.

I've just picked this up. Supposedly a school friend of Arday's laughing at his claims to have been mute. (Video taken from the 'friend's' TikTok.)

Bing Videos

There are enough "facts" that have come from JA that have now been proved to be untrue for most people to be confident he's a liar. Yes He was aided and abetted by way too many universities along the way, but the back story lies are wholly down to him and they are ultimately what will be his undoing.

He didn't just add a couple of minor alterations of the truth to his back story, he added near impossible events and health stories to it. He added educational achievements he didn't have and jobs he never held to his CV.

Then he went and put it all in a book.

Maybe Jason should have thought about his family and children before opening his mouth and lying repeatedly.

I went to Cambridge 20 odd years ago, and would definitely believe that a significant minority of students there have what used to be called Asperger's. It's full of slightly odd, geeky people who are ferociously intelligent. I wonder whether being very bright means your brain is wired differently, so the bit that focuses on social skills isn't as well developed?

Anyway, whether or not Arday has ASD is actually relevant, since autistic people can learn to copy others' social skills to fit in. Maybe he started off lightly, realised how much he could get away with, and then just got into the habit of comprehensive bullshittery/compulsive lying? It's not an excuse, he should quite rightly be condemned for it, but it perhaps makes it easier to understand how someone could become such an accomplished liar - it works, therefore he does it more, establishes a pattern and voila, you get a man who climbed Everest while learning Mandarin, beat Chuck Norris in a fight at the top, and then flew home a la Superman, stopping to save a boatload of orphans on the way. It's completely ludicrous that he got away with it so long!

Wow this is fascinating. And awful. So now you can’t write or research about autism without being autistic yourself? I find that very concerning.
These people do realise that NT parents have ND kids and vice versa don’t they? And that society consists of ND and NT people that need to understand each other and get along? This whole case has been so upsetting. If he’s lied about having autism or hasn’t lied I fear lots of people coming away from it conflating autism with a fake cover for lying or the cause for lying if he does have it. Awful position to put autistic people in.
The racism that pervades it is also awful. Those lies he’s told are so transparent.

someone who knew him at school said he “talked all the time”

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16038031/amp/TikToker-primary-school-Jason-Arday-NOT-mute.html

And just what do you think should happen here?

That we continue to whip everybody up into a frothy frenzy of righteous indignation? That we are feeding into something that has real world consequences for a generation of young ND and minority young people who might be considering academia? Who are now going to face hugely increased scrutiny by everyone around them.

If there are failings and blame to be apportioned here (and remember I don't know the actual facts here) then we should be looking at the institutions and the wider societal issues that allowed such a situation to develop. What did Jason stand for that made him such a figure head for a whole zeitgeist.

You see, if you separate him the man from the myth (and by myth - I mean what we/society/institutions have projected onto him) what he stood for was hope and change.

That you could be different and be successful in an area that has been historically viewed as only being accessible to a privileged elite.

And this is where the real damage liess.

Maybe a bit harsh, but there’s a bit of over-reach on her story (maybe no more than a lot of people do). Her degree is in politics and history not economics. Anything with economics in the title at LSE is much much more competitive to get in for. Describing the university support from her school as “limited” is a bit of overkill in the overcoming adversity story. She went to an all girls catholic school in north London. She doesn't say which one but London state schools have been shooting up the league tables generally and I know a number of the all girls catholic ones and they wld provide plenty of further education advice and support, and all the London universities do loads of outreach programmes for London state schools (and which she accessed). She went to LSE in 2019; this is not the 1970s!

If his ASD proves to be exaggerated or faked I will be beyond angry.

My son was unable to form sentences and gobby talked ( words interspersed with gibberish) during junior school. He was on the 1st percentile for expressive language at aged 10 repeat tested at aged 11. ( NHS reports done repeatedly) SALT pretty much gave up on him. We started him on 1:1 Drama and the teacher started him on P Level poems. However my son could read ( if not write) at aged 11. He just struggled to talk and physically to write. he is now at university. His Head of Sixth told us about the Cambridge Professor and said that DS could be like him after a truly difficult childhood. Now it’s all false!

People forget in their righteous pursuit of 'truth' that there are real live people attached to this - children and wider family who are being affected.

I agree with this but the same applies to anyone who has been publicly disgraced - Prince Andrew’s children, Peter Mandelson’s nearest and dearest, Huw Edwards’ children etc etc.
It must be absolute hell for them.

re. The autism isn't real crowd are here

I've not seen any of that. People have said he may not have autism, given that the vast majority of his other claims are lies. That's not saying autism isn't real. On the contrary, it's saying that someone like JA can screw things up for genuine cases.

He's a liar.

Repeatedly.

Whether that's related to some kind of pathology is irrelevant.

And whether some people supported him in his lies due to having an agenda or just fearing being called out as discriminatory is, when we're talking about his being a liar, irrelevant.

People should be torn down for being repeated liars. Especially when those lies effect others and society as a whole.

It's not a witch-hunt.

You claiming we should think about the people involved anyone accused of public lies and behaviours that adversely effect society.

Russel Brand? Jimmy Saville? Jeffery Epstein?

Yes, different accusations but lots of people previously (or currently) saying 'witch-hunt' when they were discussed.

I thought that too. North London Girls’ state schools are well equipped to send bright kids to university, even to Oxford and Cambridge. London state education on the whole produces a much higher level of exam qualifications than state education outside of London does, on the whole. Not a massive stretch for the RG unis to admit kids like her at all then.

I’m sure this young woman is very able. And her subject of querying whether widening access schemes work is interesting- as will the criteria used to measure aims and outcomes to show it ‘works’ or not, used by any researchers looking at this question. Just that could be a PhD in itself.

I’m much more impressed when these success stories have kids from underprivileged schools in places geographically and socially far outside London though- the poorest parts of the NE or SW of England for example- that make it to elite institutions. Because very very few of them ever do.

Exactly!

People forget in their righteous pursuit of 'truth' that there are real live people attached to this - children and wider family who are being affected.

There are plenty of real live people affected by his bad teaching over the years. It's him who chose this path. The organisations are ofc culpable too but it's him who's brought it on himself and therefore the people around him by his choices.

Yes it is.

Amd you're one of the ignored victims in the discourse around this who Jason and his supporters really didn't give a shit about in his narcissistic tissue of lies.

Same as the real victims of racism that he's thrown under the bus with his wild fantasies about being targeted by racists actually threatening him in person and sending pigs heads as an implied threat.

Which he never actually reported to the Police but he did report to the Police an academic that questioned his academic credentials.

Which the MET investigated as possible racist harassment and have recently said they shouldn't have.

He didn't stand for hope and change.

Barack Obama for example stood for hope and change. Campaigned and was voted for. Not perfect. Not ideal. Not accepted by everyone but put in the work.

Jason Arday stood for lies, narcissism and a DEI system which has fucked over black and ND people.

Thomas Sowell for example should stand for hope and change but as a Black academic from deprivation who complained about DEI and the consequences of it, including when he was a lecturer in top US University is dismissed by many as a race traitor.

He is an example of Black excellence in academia before it was trendy and has the receipts of how DEI in University's was failing Black students decades ago and everything he predicted has come true in Jason Arday.

With the added 21st century obsession with ND that he couldn't have predicted and how reasonable adjustments have not been at all reasonable and fear of being discriminatory means a number of people are receiving degrees and then further accolades that they don't deserve because they can barely string an essay together.