De Sutter went on to say that the episode “should prompt reflection. We hope that lessons will be learnt from what has happened regarding the way we treat one another both within and outside the academic world, particularly when people become the subject of public controversy.” Utter, irredeemable garbage. The scandal had nothing to do with how we treat one another except to wokified cognitive cripples who embrace the fallacy that there should be minimal personal accountability for wrongdoing, especially if your group has been anointed as “oppressed.” Across the pond, they really are going to run with the Bizarro World narrative that Arday’s sad fate was the fault of the news media that did its job for once, and that Arday was driven to suicide, not because he was mentally ill and the jig was up, but because media scrutiny made it impossible for him to see a path to redemption after his “mistakes.”
“He couldn’t see a way out because of this avalanche of stories,” Arday’s friend Kehinde Andrews told the UK’s Channel 4 News. “A man was lynched yesterday,” Andrews said. “He’s now dead because he’s black.” Let me correct that for you, Kehinde: Your friend is dead because a prestigious university decided to exploit a mentally ill black man to gain DEI brownie points while discarding its academic and scholarship standards, and when the hoax collapsed under its own weight, the school’s poster boy for “inclusion” couldn’t cope with the consequences.
A U.K. nonprofit group wants a government inquiry into the media’s coverage of the story, and many members of Parliament support the demand. An online petition signed by over 100,000 people calls for “legislative action to impose limitations on the number of news articles published about a single individual within a defined time frame” to “ … work towards creating a framework that balances the public’s right to information with an individual’s right to privacy and mental well-being.”
Wow. 1776 looks better and better every day.
Meanwhile, Simon & Schuster, the publishing house that released Arday’s novel-as-autobiography even after it was clear that the book was a dog’s breakfast of lies, incredible claims and stolen plot lines, has been caught redacting some of the book’s most blatant falsehoods to try to make it seem a bit less like Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The publisher also removed the video and audio from the book’s promotional page, but at last checking, still is promoting “Great and Unfortunate Things” as a “memoir of overcoming remarkable challenges and responding to adversity with resilience.” This after the New York Times reported that Arday’s foundational claim to have been non-verbal until the age of 11, a major section of the book, is pure tommyrot.
Oddly, when journalist Ross Barkan was caught in 67 instances of plagiarism at New York Magazine and was fired as a result, Penguin Random House pulled the plug on the book by Barkan it was going to release in October. Huh. Yet Barkan’s ethical misconduct pales—no pun intended—next to Arday’s. Why would publishing ethics require Penguin Random House to ditch his book as untrustworthy and unpromotable while allowing Simon & Shuster to go ahead with Arday’s book? A hint: This is Barkin:
Let’s not call that white guy a victim of discrimination, though. When his plagiarism was exposed, he claimed that the allegations constituted “character assassination.” Then he apologized, badly, calling the 67 steals “mistakes.” “None of them, genuinely, were willful or intentional,” Barkan said. “I never intended to crib from anyone’s work.” How do you do something 67 times accidentally?
Still, that excuse might have worked if he had been Jason Arday.
Ethics Alarms 
I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around the reaction to Jason Arday’s fraud, unmasking, and suicide. This should have been a clear case where everyone involved should have been horrified, humiliated, and swearing to whatever divine entity they believe in that they would make sure something like this never happens again. And yet, that isn’t the case. There is a remarkably staunch defense of Arday among the academics. Maybe this is a blatant effort to gaslight in order to protect the prestigious reputation of Cambridge, and while they know the Arday situation is a massive debacle, they’re in for a pound now in order to save what face they can.
(As a tangent, the world at large seems to be more forgiving to someone who earnestly confesses wrongdoing, genuinely apologizes, and then works to rectify the situation. In converse, the world grows enraged when people lie, obfuscate, and pretend they never did anything wrong in the first place. And yet, people in important positions keep falling into the trap of worrying far more about their reputations than honesty, as though one’s reputation can be maintained by further breaches of integrity. Is this what is happening in Cambridge in particular, and the academic world at large?)
On the other hand, given the DEI trends, the progressive invasion of Critical Theory in all institutes and walks of life, it may actually be the case the academics believe that Arday was right where he needed to be, and revealing his fraud was inexplicable outside of racist motives. After all, we know that concepts like “merit” are racist. If I understand this mentality correctly (and I am open to any correction anyone wants to offer), merit is something we should discount when it comes to any profession. Results like profitability and production are frameworks meant to suppress the poor and the minorities. Since there is a dearth of black people in British academia, the situation can only be rectified by putting a black person into academia. Arday’s inclusion in Cambridge was entirely about achieving the equitable end of more black people in the faculty, and thus taking any steps that would try to show he does not deserve to be there is fundamentally wrong. His position is guaranteed by his skin color, because the results of his teaching and research aren’t what is important. Ending the under-representation of minorities is what’s important.
What about Arday’s fraud, plagiarism, and lies? To even construe the situation as such is racism. Keep in mind, if academia is fine with men identifying as women, with women identifying as men, with people identifying as animals, adults identifying as babies, what is wrong with someone who identifies as a ultra-marathon runner and charity donor? If underlying reality is secondary to how one views himself, and if results don’t actually matter, then it should be readily apparent that all that Arday claimed is valid. One cannot question Arday without inflicting violence on him, because questioning whether he actually ran 30 marathons in 35 days, or donated millions of dollars to charity is impugn how Arday sees himself, and how he sees himself is paramount. Who are we to say any different?
To focus in on the plagiarism, let’s not forget that so much of academia seems unconcerned with plagiarism, and it continues follow the progressive mentality. After all, if it is right and just to take the fruits of someone’s labor and hand it to someone else economically, how is doing so academically any different? We’ve seen jokes about teaching a child about communism by asking if he would share part of his “A” grade with a failing student so that they both get a “C”, and supposedly the child is horrified at the concept. But why should that be the case? It is only horrifying if one accepts the premise that one is entitled to keep what one produces. To each according to his need, after all. He needs that “A” less than the failing student needs that “C”.
My whole point is that that maybe, just maybe, the unbelievable reaction in academia to Arday’s unmasking and suicide make a perverted sense once one really follows the progressive mindset to its illogical conclusions. Maybe these academics, far from cynically using Arday as a mascot and a checked box in diversity hiring, truly believe all the things they preach and see absolutely nothing wrong with what Arday did.
Cynical ass-covering, or true belief — I’m not sure which is worse.
Terrific discourse, Ryan.
“Terrific discourse, Ryan.”
Second!
PWS
Ryan,
An outstanding response. One thought on this great statement:
My mind went immediately to the Bible’s book of Second Timothy, where Paul wrote that in the last days, people would become lovers of themselves rather than, ultimately, lovers of God. We now see this all the time. An increasing number of people in general – and those like Mr. Arday in particular – now believe their perception of reality, regardless of whether or not it stands in complete opposition to how the rest of the world sees reality (to say nothing of how a transcendent God views it), has become the only truth that matters. If truth goes no farther than my own eyeballs or what my mind believes or desires to be real, then objectivity on nearly any subject, even the most fundamental things, becomes impossible. In fact, as you wrote, to suggest a different reality is now tantamount to an assault on someone else.
Anyways, maybe you or others can expound more eloquently, but yours was an excellent read. Thanks so much!…and thanks again to our host for bringing these to this forum for discussion.
There is so much going on here that exposes the rot of academia that they want to keep people focused on the racial angle of the whole thing so you don’t notice the rest.
(1) DEI corrupts the institution. There is no doubt that Arday was hired because of his race. It wasn’t just his race, however, he had to have the correct doctrinal beliefs and had to have the right dawah. So, his hiring shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Cambridge isn’t hiring for merit and it isn’t even really hiring for race. It is hiring to further the needs of the indoctrination factory.
(2) There is no useful knowledge or skills taught in many of these areas. Arday seems to have been completely void of any expertise or knowledge in his field at that level. His teaching seemed to be mainly blaming Western Culture and white males for everything wrong, real or imagined, in the world. How can someone who has nothing to teach be in a senior position at one of the top 10 universities of the world. In other words, how can someone with no ability or knowledge be a world leader in an academic field without everyone in the field revolting? It tells you that the field doesn’t matter. The field isn’t generating knowledge or understanding in anything. This is just a field that babbles on about nonsense and insists it has deep insight.
(3) Many academic areas serve no benefit to either society or the student. Education is supported by the government because it benefits the economy, it trains people with essential skills, or it educates people in such a way that benefits society overall. How many of these majors just turn out people trained to tear down society? Why should such areas of study even be legal?
Academia has refused to admit that it has lost its way. It forgot what its purpose even was. Instead of focusing on the hard work of discovering new knowledge and passing on the accumulated knowledge of civilization, colleges went into the PR business. Advocacy became the new purpose of the university, and they didn’t run it by the people who pay the bills. Indeed, they generally have nothing but contempt for the people who pay the bills. Much of the university in the US has been co-opted by the Democratic Party and open Communists to further their political aspirations. As society slowly has begun to realize this, academia’s response has been to attack the public as ignorant and racist. I don’t think that approach is going to work much longer.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rrsYnCBSFG0
“Academia has refused to admit that it has lost its way.”
Bravo India November Golf Oscar!
PWS
Let’s not throw ALL of academia overboard. Western universities are still doing a fine job of educating foreign students in science and engineering. On the other hand, Arday was a professor of the Sociology of Education. We’ve all heard it: If you can do it, you do it; if you can’t do it, you teach it, and if you can’t teach it, you teach teaching. Jill Biden, for example, was a Doctor of Education.
And her husband hasn’t learned to talk yet. It only took Arday 11 years…
Excellent comments Ryan – and horrifying!