This is another ethics story that I delayed writing about. The Jason Arday Ethics Train Wreck is yet another of the sub-wrecks under the umbrella of the long-running DEI Ethics Train Wreck, and a particularly gob-smacking one.
Jason Arday became the Cambridge University’s youngest black law professor in 2023 (remember what I wrote yesterday: in the DEI era and the plague of The Great Stupid, beware of “firsts”). Recently, however, as Simon & Schuster prepared to publish Arday’s memoir, “Great and Unfortunate Things,” allegations of everything from plagiarism to outrageous lies about his background began emerging. In some respects, his sudden fall from academic rock-star status mirrors that of Claudine Gay, Harvard’s underqualified DEI president who was forced to resign after being exposed as engaging in the level of plagiarism that would get any Harvard student expelled. Arday, however, is in his own disturbing category.
It was a series of seemingly incredible claims about his background that drew attention to his scholarly work. He claimed in a 2022 interview that he had been part of the British documentary series “The Seven Ups,” which began before he was born. He claimed in interviews to have raised millions for charities over a 20-year period by running 30 marathons in 35 days He also once claimed to have run 600 miles in six days. When asked about his seemingly impossible fund-raising prowess Arday “clarified” that the money was raised with the help of “many fundraising collectives over a two-decade period.” He said he couldn’t name any names to corroborate his claims because he had signed NDAs preventing him from disclosing that information.
Ethics alarms ringing!
Arday had fake credentials on his faculty web page. He claimed to be a visiting professor in Glasgow’s School of Education, but a school spokesman said that Arday “was never a visiting professor here.” He said he was a visiting professor at the University of Ohio. A university spokesman said the school had “no record of an employee by that name” and that “visiting professors appear in our employment records.”
He had a fake book listed too. Arday claimed that he was the author of “Being Young, Black and Male: Challenging the Dominant Discourse,” exploring stereotypes about black masculinity, and included the title in his biography’s list of publications as well as in promotional material for speaking events. No such book was ever published.
There is so much more—too much to list in one post. He claims to have been so autistic that he didn’t speak until he was 11 and couldn’t read or write until he was 18. Several experts in the field have opined that nothing in his speech patterns suggests neurodivergence. My favorite may be the “Pig’s Head Story.” Arday claims a pig’s head was sent to his parents’ home and that he intercepted the package and threw it away. He said that the police had investigated and identified the source, a local butcher shop in south London. When reporters checked those details with the local butchers Arday had named and the police, they were told by the butchers that the story was mistaken and by the police that no investigation had taken place.
Ethics Alarms 
If you need yet another example of academia as a whole (especially the liberal arts) becoming an outright joke, look no further.
It’s obvious to me that Jason Arday is very likely delusional and clearly a bonified pathological liar, he needs some serious psychological help.
Mr. Arday looks like a pirate out of Pirates of the Carribean.
The reason why universities like Cambridge fall for con artists like Jason Ardley is the same why some people are more vulnerable to fall prey to scam artists, namely a gullibility created by the desire for certain things to be true. People who desire to get rich quickly have a greater tendency to fall for crypto scams. Lonely widows fall for romance scams. Critical thinking is suspended because of a beliefs that are flattering to the ego, soothing to the soul, based on ideal pictures of the future, but not on reality. Universities should not operate on the basis of beliefs, but aspire to knowledge solely based on fact and logic, question all dogma, and be bastions of critical thinking. The hiring of clowns like Jason Ardley is on more proof that universities have lost sight of their essential mission., and exchanged critical thinking for dogma, cant, and ideology.
You are assuming that they didn’t know all along. Hint: they knew, they were just hoping that no one would find out. They needed exciting black faculty that will parrot the narrative. You can’t hire 1st rate researchers, because they tend to find out that the official narrative is garbage and say so. Actual black researchers keep finding out that extensive welfare programs actually aren’t good for the black community in the long run, that police overall aren’t racist against blacks and aren’t killing them in large numbers, and that there are serious problems in the black community that aren’t being caused by racism.
Because of this, the only option is to hire propaganda experts who will push the party line.
“Actual black researchers keep finding out that extensive welfare programs actually aren’t good for the black community in the long run, that police overall aren’t racist against blacks and aren’t killing them in large numbers, and that there are serious problems in the black community that aren’t being caused by racism.”
By no means do I disagree, but am not having much luck finding documentation; you?
PWS
Two that come to mind off the top of my head are Carol Swain and Roland Fryer.
Carol Swain’s early work was well received. When she decided that racial preferences were not good for Black Americans, suddenly she needed diversity training and there were student protests demanding that she be fired from Vanderbilt. Now, if you look up info on Carol Swain online, her career seems to start in 2002, when she turned against the liberal establishment. Her important pu
You can hear Roland Fryer talk about what happened to him when his results didn’t match the narrative at Harvard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FefEVH-Cxl8
When you look at what happened to them, you can see that they are cautionary tales for black scholars who want to engage in actual scholarship and for universities who might try to employ people like them. Better to just hire activists.
It would seem obvious that fostering generational dependency and lessening/rationalizing accountability would be detrimental. But as Michael notes, that doesn’t fit the narrative. I’d be surprised if many were brave enough to buck the system, or get any widespread coverage when they do.
Stats say blacks commit the majority of murders in the U.S., and that most of their victims are other blacks. It’s not the police they should fear. (Aside: given that stat and demographic voting patterns, it could easily be posited that democrats commit most of the murders in the country.)
Was that wrong? Bing Videos
And cue a Nelson for Cambridge.
Jason Arday was a sociology professor, not a law professor. Arday taught critical race theory.
jvb
Cambridge charges $75-135,000 per year, room and board. Why does anyone lay out that kind of money to be ‘educated’ by people who are that stupid?
At least it only took three years to discover his Arday’s disqualifications. Claudine Gay was at Harvard for nine years before her dishonesty came to light.
The Cavendish laboratory is the most lauded Physics institution on the planet. Built under the direction of James Clerk Maxwell (probably the most important physicist for the 21st century lifestyle), it has produced 30 Nobel Prize winners. It is located at Cambridge.
There is no way that Arday’s lies were unknown to the faculty. Many of them kept quiet for the ‘greater good’, others for self-preservation, and still other willfully refused to see it.
I am convinced Claudine Gays’ plagiarism was strategic, intentional, and supported by her entire field to rid them of the legacy of Carol Swain.
She’s still at Harvard, and earning over 1 million a year. She resigned as president, but not from the faculty.
I wish you were kidding. Keeping a blatant plagiarist who has no academic qualifications (if you removed the plagiarized works) to stay on your faculty with a $1 million salary just supports my gut instinct that her plagiarism was planned and supported by her field.
The last time I looked, we were up to 58% of the public thought college was a waste of money. I have been warning colleagues and administrators for several years that academia needs to address the concerns of the public that college is taking vast amount of student loans in exchange for giving students degrees in useless (or worse) subjects. Most of academia seems to be in denial. They seem to think that the public doesn’t matter and they have some sort of right to have most high school graduates go to college and give them student loan money and they don’t have to worry about market forces or what society needs. It comes off as a socialist elite arrogance bordering on delusion.
That’s a tragic statement. If Jason had just been truthful on his resume and then got a job at a fast food place in town, all that public scrutiny and personal attack?…gone.
Wait wait wait, someone in higher academia isn’t teaching the truth?