What could Cambridge be hiding? Is Martin Bormann hiding in the faculty lounge? D.B. Cooper? Did they just add Stephen Glass? Is Clifford Irving, who wrote Howard Hughes’s fake biography, hanging out on the Cambridge faculty after faking his own death? Maybe Joe Biden is at Cambridge as Distinguished Professor of “Asufutimaehaehfutbw.”

Joking aside (I could riff on this forever), Samuel J. Abrams, a legitimately credentialed professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College, really and truly a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a genuine scholar with the Sutherland Institute writes what’s so wrong with Cambridge’s faculty going undercover now, and the essay doesn’t appear to have been authored by ChatGPT:

“…To arrive at the truth, we dig through data and collect evidence, we have to ask uncomfortable questions, and we challenge explanations and each other not out of spite but because we are searching for facts. Historically, we look for stories and truths that some would prefer not to discuss or reveal and that mode of operation is why higher education is so important.

But any commitment to truth and reality has to work in both directions. Increasingly, when scrutiny turns toward those inside the university, people turn inward and questions are treated as attacks and criticism is characterized as harassment. Outsider attention and questions are viewed as threats and institutions founded on the idea of open inquiry seem deeply uncomfortable with people asking about it.

This is where higher education is today and helps explain why public trust in education is so low.

The University of Cambridge is not a private institution either; it is a public institution in the United Kingdom with public funding and is subject to public regulation – it cannot ignore public questioning and accountability.

Certainly, professors should not be harassed and should be protected from genuine threats. However, too many in academia believe that harassment and scrutiny are essentially interchangeable and they are not.

Reading and then questioning someone’s published work is not harassment. Nor is asking about a credential. Asking how one of the world’s most prestigious schools made a senior appointment is not persecution either; it is scrutiny and being able to defend ideas and choices is exactly what universities exist to do.

Thinking about the Arday appointment, maybe Cambridge did everything right or maybe it didn’t. I suspect Cambridge failed to do its due diligence and ask the appropriate questions because it is hard to understand how Arday went through any serious review and was so widely praised and celebrated given what is now known about his record and background. But I have no idea – I wasn’t there and I don’t know and neither do Cambridge’s critics or defenders.

That is precisely my point now. A transparent and thorough investigation should reveal what happened, with the records to prove it. How was the appointment made? What questions were asked and what was missed? The faculty who were part of this process need to explain what happened and taking down their page is telling and the circumstances around the appointment cannot be beyond scrutiny.

So put the faculty information back online and let people ask questions and examine the evidence. Cambridge must explain what happened; that is accountability. And it is the only way Cambridge can prove that it is honestly interested in academic excellence and the pursuit of truth.

Right.

But basically, its just stupid.