Our friends at the Good Law Project

[Gymnopedie]

I know this doesn't belong here but given the bollocks from the GLP about issues that do I thought people might be interested.

It's about Professor Jason Arday, a Cambridge academic. The story started when there was a claim that large chunks of his PhD thesis had been taken from another (sometimes not even changing typo errors) published a few years earlier. His justification is that he's autistic and his way of coping is 'mimicry'.

Sine then his many claims about his charity work, fundraising and physical exploits have come under increasing scrutiny - much from the Guardian - and are unravelling fast. He's having to backtrack and 'explain' a lot. He's claimed to have been on a TV programme that he never was and it was chronologically impossible for him to be on it. He has claimed a lot of nasty harassment but has no evidence of it, no photos, no messages, and didn't report any of it to the police. (Well he claims he did once, but the police have no record of it and the story doesn't stack up.)

What does the GLP have to do with it? They're organising an open letter in his support, claiming that there is nothing to see here except that he's a victim of vile racism.

Support for a left wing cause that bears no relationship to the facts? Where have I heard that before?

Charity casts doubts on volunteering record of Cambridge professor (The Telegraph via MSN)

Playbooks, plagiarism and a pig’s head: new claims surrounding a star Cambridge professor | University of Cambridge | The Guardian

Glasgow University denies Jason Arday visiting prof claim | The Herald

Was just coming to post this. Times article here:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/93ce0c09-5c75-42e3-8abc-0cd5bdc3cf4d?shareToken=9ee94da088cbcacd68c56d4e59fdeaaf&ver=article

At some point those supporting the motivated-by-racism narrative will turn to Arday's work, pore through it, and then publish parts to show how it was full of outstanding scholarship.

Cofnas calls himself a 'race realist'.

He said that “In a meritocracy, there would be blacks in top academic positions, including at Harvard, although not in proportion to their representation in the population.”, but conceded that this “don’t necessarily apply to the UK.” He adds “African immigrations to the UK are relatively elite.”

https://thetab.com/2024/02/23/cambridge-fellow-involved-in-race-controversy-claims-quotes-attributed-to-him-are-fake

If he isn't racist, he certainly has difficulty explaining why not. (And from the photo he has Celtic colouring which surely indicates Irish ancestry and an implied gift of the gab?! 😂)

I do agree that his views shouldn't be a surprise to Ghent, and it's odd that he is being investigated now.

I wonder how his controversial positions intersect with:

Cofnas said he was under investigation by Ghent University "for discriminating against Arday".

Cofnas was involved, but came relatively late to the party. I think he's an easy one to point the finger at because he can easily be described as a racist. The other potential whistleblowers, such as Dave Harris, Martyn Hammersley and Jack Grove at the Times Higher Ed. are much more difficult to characterise in that way. OK, Dave Harris is a critic of critical race theory, bu then it's not too hard to find black scholars in the USA who are too.

Apparently the guy (Petra De Sutter) who is in charge of investigating Cofnas is an ex Green Party leader, transgender and a gynaecologist who was the head of the Department of Reproductive Medicine at Ghent University. 😳

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra_De_Sutter

This is getting like celebrity death match. Scientific racist versus trans gynaecologist.

Who needs satire these days?

Afua Hirsch writes about black academic sociologists unimpressed by his work, in her Guardian article from last week.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/13/jason-arday-right-racial-equality-society

She says they kept quiet because he would be unlikely to be treated fairly, and that would have an impact on all of them, i.e. they might be accused of being "DEI hires". From the context, she's talking about black colleagues in wider academia, but I'm guessing that colleagues in his department, of any ethnicity, might also have been unimpressed. If that's so, they might have chosen to keep quiet because of the risk of reputational damage to the department. In either context, it's a can of worms.

From the linked Wiki

In January 2026, De Sutter, in her capacity as Rector of Ghent University (UGent), faced significant public and academic scrutiny following the discovery of fabricated quotes in a high-profile address

Facts are not important, it's getting the right message across

Ahh, so following the template, that was an example of a transphobic attack

In a statement to The Cambridge Tab, Cofnas explains that whilst he reportedly said that admission of black people to Harvard would be at zero per cent if it were based solely on academic merit, the actual figure he gave was “0.7 per cent.”
😐

This is interesting…

I guess JA spun a few different yarns publically but i still think he is the only male fraudster to use a medical/developmental condition as a backstory which seems more common amongst women.

Elizabeth Holmes also was intent on performing criminality as well. As far as I can tell nothing JA did was criminal?

He's lucky nobody called the police when he claimed to have been threatened by a man with a knife. It's surprising Cambridge didn't involve the police at that point.

I think they’ll struggle. From the bits I’ve seen it’s classic sociology ramble-bollocks.

I couldn't really say if there are differences between male and female fraudsters. 🤷🏻

Most of what I know about Elizabeth Holmes comes from the TV dramatisation The Dropout, which portrays her as someone who genuinely believes she has a product that can revolutionise medicine. When it turns out that her prototype device doesn't work, she starts faking test results in order to secure funding.

OK, that's a fictional representation, but it also fits what I've read about Bernie Madoff. That is, he started out with a legitimate trading business but turned part of it into a Ponzi scheme to cover short-term trading losses. So both turned to fraud in an attempt to dig their way out of a hole.

As far as I can tell nothing JA did was criminal?

No, but I think it's the context that's different rather than the underlying psychology. Engaging the services of Carter-Fuck looks a lot like a desperate attempt to climb out of a hole.

The unkind response is that, in a field like sociology of education, is that most of the non-plagiarising academic staff are not that much more capable than Arday.

There has actually been a massive talent collapse in the academic world over the last thirty years. There are a lot of reasons for this, and I could write a long (and non-plagiarised) essay as to why this is the case, but one significant factor is the precarious nature of academic employment, and the low wages; you're not necessarily going to get the most capable (because it's a really bad deal on paper), you are going to get the most determined people. Some are very talented, but a large number are just those people who fancy themselves as an academic, and are willing to put up with the terrible and unpredictable route into academia.

I honestly don't think that many people in the sociology of education have the ability or wherewithal to pick up that one of their number is producing poor quality and plagiarised work, because it doesn't really stand out from the general level of academic production in the field.

I am interested to see if JA received unfair backlash and attention for being black which would justify the outrage and the redirection. The academic said they didn’t speak out because of this reason not because JA was a swindler.

I think an appropriate group of people to use as a control would be people who main attraction was to promote themselves and used allegedly fake medical conditions to build their identity on.

However, the issue with JA is that clearly he used his race as a way of differentiating and promoting himself as “special” and to claim false victimhood to detract from his lies. In that regard Elizabeth Holmes would be appropriate because she used her sex to do the same. It would be good to have a white man who did the same as the control- maybe Gilderoy Lockhart is the closest? Ha ha ha

Let's test the criminality idea. Fraud in the UK is defined (via the Fraud Act 2006) as gain to oneself or loss to another by dishonest deception. We can work through the various activities of Jason Arday, and see if they qualify.

Plagiarism in PhD: This is straightforward in terms of deception; Jason Arday presented the work of another as his own, which is objectively an act of deception. It is probably dishonest; in a courtroom, one would apply the Ivey test, which would need to show that Arday knew that plagiarism was wrong, which would rely on what he was taught in his studies at university, but possibly not much of a challenge. However, a fraud needs a gain or loss, which is a financial consequence of an action. Merely plagiarising the work of others as part of a PhD would fail this test, so this activity would not be considered a fraud (still absolutely disgraceful behaviour, though).

Representing oneself as having a PhD: Once Arday was awarded his PhD, his use of this in seeking employment would not be a fraud offence; although he might have gained it via deception, his PhD aware is an objective fact, so there is no deception. A person might reasonably believe that an individual with a PhD has gained it through honest research, though I think it would be incredibly challenging to prosecute on this basis.

Gaining employment through deception: When Jason Arday obtained employment at the University of Cambridge, he had a CV which appears to have contained information which was untrue. This is likely to have been supplemented by statements during the employment process which were also untrue. Lying about one's achievements in a job application is deceptive (pretty much without question) and dishonest. The dishonesty aspect, moreover, is an objective point as, if one has not been employed in certain roles, this should not be used to obtain employment. Gaining employment through deception also fulfils the loss/gain aspect, as one gains a salary as a result. There is a considerable amount of precedent for fraud prosecutions for against individuals who have gained employment by deception. It isn't normally worthwhile for an employer to pursue criminal charges against an employee who acts in this way, but it is not unknown. There would be a strong case for a fraud prosecution against Arday here.

Random lying: We can be pretty certain that Arday didn't raise the amount of money he claimed for charity, but he gained nothing out of it (other than a bit of status), so unlikely to be something that could lead to a prosecution.

A couple of questions

1. Has anyone been prosecuted for lying about their qualifications for a university professorship? I don't think there is a register for professors in the way there is for other professionals.
2. Would the report he made to the police be considered a false report for harassment?
3. I guess we don't know if he took any of the money he supposedly raised, and considering his deception and the pattern of other people who deceive, this is a real possibility.

About that plagiarism, was it work by Nathan Cofnas that was copied? If not whose work was it and have they spoken out? It is they who have suffered most. Their University should be supporting them publicly.

Yes but is that a handicap or a benefit?

I don't think anyone has been prosecuted in the UK after gaining an academic position through deception; but this type of fraud is very rarely prosecuted (most people found lying about their qualifications would just be dismissed). The existence of academic qualifications is fairly easy to check, though, and a university registry will confirm a qualification (I had to get my PhD verified for my current, non-academic job). The registry will not confirm anything more than what would appear on your certificate, so will say almost nothing about the quality of the qualification.

I think there would be challenges in prosecuting Arday for wasting police time for the harassment reports (though this would depend on exactly what information he told the police); a person could genuinely believe that he or she is being harassed, even when no harassment was taking place.

I actually doubt that Arday raised much money, but suspect that this was genuine. If he benefited from the funds he was raising, it might be a criminal offence, but this would depend on circumstances.

1. Has anyone been prosecuted for lying about their qualifications for a university professorship? I don't think there is a register for professors in the way there is for other professionals.
2. Would the report he made to the police be considered a false report for harassment?

Oh yes, it is fraud. you get a job and salary that you are not entitled to. There was a conviction reported this week, an Afghan and a £100,000 job in the NHS. I think. Arday was not paid that much.

“I think there would be challenges in prosecuting Arday for wasting police time for the harassment reports (though this would depend on exactly what information he told the police); a person could genuinely believe that he or she is being harassed, even when no harassment was taking place”

It would be unlikely for a person to genuinely believe they had been threatened by a masked man with a knife when they hadn’t. If there had been police involvement he’s certainly pushing the boundary of criminality if he maintains the allegation and it turns out to be false.