There should be lots of topics to discuss on today the Friday Open Forum, which is going up next, but first, despite having promised to never post on the nauseating Jason Arday mess again, events dictate that I have to break that promise, because not doing my job regarding the EA mission would be more unethical than breaking a promise based on a premise that turned out to be false. It’s an ethics conflict. (I wonder why MAGA types have so much trouble with the concept. President Trump has delivered on a higher percentage of his campaign promises than any President since James K. Polk, and yet defectors like Tucker Carlson and Margery Taylor Greene—who would want to be a member of that club?— are furious because he started a necessary war that should have been started about 50 years ago. Morons.)
But I digress. Over in Europe, which stands as a frightening example of how quickly cultures can lose core values, Nathan Cofnas, who was the first to extensively expose Arday an academic fraud, announced that he has been suspended by Ghent University in Belgium and expects to be fired. His offense? “Discrimination”—-meaning that pointing out that a black academic star that Cambridge University had created out of DEI nothingness was in truth a serial plagiarist was racist. The school rector, Petra De Sutter issued a statement on l’affaire Arday asserting that freedom of speech “is not unlimited. It goes hand in hand with responsibility and may be restricted in order to protect the rights of others.”
Tell us more about the freedom to lie to the public and jump in line in front of genuine scholars because of one’s color, Petra!
“You know, don’t you, that the next step will be a tsunami of op-eds and essay criticizing and condemning the conservatives—racists, all of them— who “killed” Arday with their determination to drive a neurodivergent “of color” out of his remarkable position. So he puffed up his resume a little bit— Everybody does it. How else was someone like him to break through the societal barriers white society has erected to impede people like him? I will be shocked if Arday isn’t quickly canonized as a victim. It is the perfect way to deflect attention away from the real issues behind this tragedy.”
I just finished a cup of coffee and two yummy hot biscuits, and saw these:
Morons. Look at the “loves” for the first one, by Sadiq Khan, whoever the hell he is.
It’s early yet. Those op-eds are probably just being finished now. I certainly wasn’t the only one who knew this would be the reaction by many on the Left. Here’s a quote from another “X” post on the topic: “The story that will be spun about Jason Arday will be that his death lies at the feet of the people who called out his serial fabulations for being what they so transparently were…”
All outlets are reporting that Jason Arday, the DEI academic fraud whose career and reputation were spectacularly derailed the same week his autobiography was published by Simon & Schuster, has been found dead. Details are slowly emerging, but if his death was not a suicide, it will stand as one of the most spectacular coincidences of all time. I’m going to write this with the presumption that the 41-year-old took his own life. [The New York Times report is here.]
Ethics Notes:
1. I learned of this tragic development (from Young Bill) literally as I was preparing to write a post called “Stop Making Me Defend Jason Arday!” My trigger was a Washington Free Beacon article titled, “Fallen Cambridge Star Jason Arday’s ‘True Life’ Memoir Appears To Poach Life Events From His Favorite Soap Operas, ‘Spartacus,’ and ‘Forrest Gump’ : A Free Beacon review of Arday’s memoir, out this week from Simon & Schuster, shows that his melodramatic autobiography tracks closely with plotlines from popular TV shows and movies.”
The message of the EA post was to be that we should learn the lessons of the Arday debacle and be clear about its causes and villains: the woke obsession with DEI, especially in institutions of higher education, is the main cause, and the villains are the Left’s culture warriors and race hucksters, particularly those who have infested the faculties and administrative ranks of our colleges and universities, specifically the irresponsible, incompetent fools at Cambridge. Then, I was going to write, leave poor Arday alone. He had been humiliated on the world stage, he was bound to be blamed by the real villains, who exploited him, his life was, if not ruined, would take a very long time to be livable, and he was obviously a disturbed and unstable individual. There was far too much glee in the long article by Benjamin Ryan finding suspicious parallels between Arday’s alleged life story and the plots of movies and TV shows he had seen. I also found some of the parallels contrived: life imitates art and art imitates life: any remarkable life is likely to resemble memorable drama and fiction to some extent.
The article was piling on, beating the metaphorical dead horse, kicking a man when he’s down. There was no need for that. Dismantle Cambridge and the indefensible void in academic integrity that made this tragedy possible. Flog academia, flame it, broil it. Expose and destroy everyone involved. Arday was the tool of unscrupulous, reckless, smug and intolerable people.
“In light of the focus on this troubling case [Jason Arday scandal] and the widespread commentary around it, I want to be very clear that we do not need the outcomes of an investigation to clearly and loudly affirm that our staff of colour are highly valued, for their scholarship, their achievements, and the contributions they make to the institution and the wider academic community. This particular case is an aberration and should not be used to cast aspersions on their work or the legitimacy of their roles at Cambridge.”
—-Cambridge University Vice-Chancellor Deborah Prentice,sounding stupid and making it clear that the investigation Cambridge announced it will be undertaking will be butt-covering exercise and that nothing it uncovers will dissuade the university from its education integrity destruction due to ideological commitment to DEI above all else.
She just couldn’t do it! She just couldn’t say that the Jason Arday appointment was a profound embarrassment for Cambridge and obviously represents a breakdown in the University’s standards, values, evaluation and recruitment procedures as well as administration and oversight of faculty, and that serious reforms need to be instituted and will be instituted once an investigation uncovers all the elements of the humiliation for the school the Arday episode represents.
Yeah, we know your “staff of colour” are highly valued, because they are badges of virtue to the DEI cult the educational community has become, symbolizing Cambridge’s conformity, loyalty and commitment. That’s how a sociopathic fraud like Jason Arday got his position in the first place.
The Arday mess is not an “aberration.” It is signature significance. No competent and respectable institution of higher learning hires a faculty member like Jason Arday even once. Eric Rasmussen collected the names and published the bios of the eleven distinguished scholars, professors and administrators who thought hiring Arday would be a boon to Cambridge. They couldn’t have checked his credentials. They didn’t think carefully about his claims which were absurd on their face. They allowed him to be hired because he was “of colour,” and that was what mattered. They should all be fired, but Prentice’s letter proves that 1) that won’t happen and 2) Cambridge’s cultural and ethics rot goes far deeper than just those directly involved.
X-user “Smirkly” posted the most extensive list of the flaming, pulsating red flags in Arday’s claims and performance, and it is impressive:
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.
An exchange yesterday between Democratic Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass) and Republican Representative Brandon Gill during a House hearing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives is rapidly going “viral” this morning, no thanks to any left-leaning news aggregators and the Axis media, which are trying to ignore it.
During the hearing, Representative Pressley criticized Republican anti-DEI policies as harmful to women (translation: not discriminating against men is harmful to women) and in her usual obnoxious “I wish I didn’t have to deal with these racist idiots” air asked Representative Gill to support her legislation to support the justly dead-in-the-water Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Gill immediately responded, “Does it define what a woman is?” and was met with crickets by Pressley, who pretended he hadn’t said that and muttered weakly, “I look forward to your signing on.” Gill, triumphant, replied, “I just was hoping for some analytical clarity, but thank you.”
Gil’s question was deft and significant. It instantly drew attention to the intellectual dishonesty, internal contradictions and the procrustean nature of so many progressive obsessions, including affirmative action (violating laws against discrimination in order to remedy discrimination), trans-female sports competition (harming biological women by warping Title IX) and, of course, DEI.
Above is the résumé of the woman discussed in today’s earlier post. With this, I have no sympathy for JP Morgan at all. Or Angie, though it can’t be pleasant having your worst moments (or at least one of them) splashed all over the web.
I have done a lot of hiring in my time, and I have vetted a lot of résumés. That one would have set off all my “B.S.” alarms like the Chicago fire, and adding to the things I don’t understand about this mess is that Angie was hired in the first place. Her education credentials are beyond weak, and the stated markers of skill and accomplishment are pure puffery. In cases like this, not only should the employee be fired but whoever hired her should be dumped too. All right, I’ve sometimes taken a flier on applicants who seem to have a certain spark, “un je ne sais quoi” as the French say when they aren’t too hot, and I’ve suffered for it on occasion. However, when someone gets a job and the hiring supervisor says, “OK, I’m going to take a leap of faith with you, but you better not let me down,” that employee has to be on notice that, for example, engaging in public theft during basketball fan riot is not consistent with the admonition. If ever a hire pulsed with a DEI-hire-to-fill-a-DEI-job vibe, this is it.
Meanwhile, JP Morgan seems to have a bit of a culture problem with its personnel decisions, no? Have you been following this story, the viral lawsuit by a JP Morgan employee who alleges that his JP Morgan manager, 37-year-old Lorna Hajdini, drugged him and turned him into a sex slave?
Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist and author of, among other works, “The Coddling of the American Mind.” he has been vocal on criticizing attacks on campus free speech for more than a decade, warning that the American education system is handicapping generations of students by allowing them to avoid ideas, opinions, and even facts that they find unpalatable. Last week he gave the guest commencement speech at NYU, but not before students, including the Executive Committee of the NYU Student Government Assembly, angrily protested his selection…because they found his ideas and opinions opposed to their “values.”
As Mr Rogers would say, “Can you say ‘irony’? Sure you can!” Below is the hilarious letter they sent to the school’s administration. Frankly, I don’t know how any student with the sense to come in out of a lightning storm could read this and not think, “Wait a minute…doesn’t this letter prove that this Haidt guy may be on to something?”
But no. Read this thing without your head exploding or dissolving into giggles. I’ll try to keep my comments brief at the end:
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY): “Truly what America is all about. I think about the civil rights and voting rights movement and how black Americans really created democracy in this country.”
AOC says once illegal immigrants are all deported, corporations will repurpose ICE detention centers for rounding up other groups of people so their profits can continue to grow.
Podcast host Ilana Glazer agrees, says people are "turning the dial up on the genocidal framework"… pic.twitter.com/orYhiWUVkN
Imagine: that woman blathering such nonsense in the clips above is considered a Democratic Party “star.” By what possible measure can blacks be called the creators of democracy in the U.S. ? What color is the sky on the planet where I.C.E. is as AOC describes it? Meanwhile, the podcaster, Ilana Glazer, just nods and agrees with everything the illiterate socialist Congresswoman says.
I won’t make a habit of focusing on just unethical progressives in posts like this, I promise. But the party and ideology of nascent totalitarianism and its Axis allies had a particularly unethical week, and attention should be paid.
1. Virginia Democrats, led by House Speaker Don Scott and Attorney General Jay Jones (you know, the one who said the he believed killing the children of political adversaries could be justified?), filed a motion asking the state supreme court to pause its ruling from taking effect while they appeal for an emergency hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court. Good luck with that. They have to know their Hail Mary to SCOTUS is futile (among other reasons, it is doubtful that SCOTUS has jurisdiction), but they are doing this solely to be able to complain later that the Supreme Court is partisan and needs to be “packed.” I’m sure the Justices will be impressed by a motion that misspells Virginia as “Virgnia” and, below that, Senator as “Sentator”…
2. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), concerned about the “humanitarian crisis” in Cuba, traveled to the Communist country last month and says she spoke with foreign ambassadors about getting oil to Cuba despite US sanctions. This is illegal. The Logan Act, rarely used but still on the books, bars unauthorized individuals from negotiating with foreign governments in disputes involving the United States. Conservative commentator Andrew McCarthy, a former U.S. Attorney, said this week that he thinks the ballot box is the way to punish Jayapal and not prosecution, but Jayapal’s voters are actively hostile to the current government of the United States, just like she is. Such figures as Jesse Jackson, John Kerry and Jimmy Carter have defied the Logan Act with impunity, and should not have been allowed to get away with it. Jayapal presents an opportunity to revitalize the law.
3. Tennessee’s House just passed a redrawn congressional map to eliminate the only Democrat seat in the state by eliminating a district that was racially gerrymandered, an act that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional. Democrats are ethically estopped from complaining about such moves—not after their foiled outrageous attempt in Virginia and the current rigged maps in New England, which make GOP representatives all but impossible. But they will complain anyway, even when it makes no sense. The sole majority black district in Tennessee didn’t even elect a black Democrat to the seat, but the Axis is calling the new map “racist” anyway.
4. Here’s an interesting chart…guess which side of the ideological spectrum is less tolerant of opposing political views? (I know you know…)
Nice!
5. Here’s another:
Getting rid of DEI is like getting rid of bedbugs, but bedbugs are not as insidious.
6. Actor Mark Hamill posted the vile meme and message below. It demonstrates how sick the Left has become that any public figure would dare publish something like that about an American President. In a healthy and ethical political environment, condemning such a sentiment would be bipartisan and unanimous, even if it didn’t follow close on the heels of another assassination attempt.
Ethics Alarms 