If you do the work we do then being criticised by your enemies comes with the territory - indeed, it’s the most reliable sign of that work succeeding - but when your friends criticise you it’s worth taking note.
I’ve had a lot of respect for your social justice work but not in this instance. As a barrister, you should have said ‘no’ and reserved judgment until you were in full possession of the facts - or at least had a much clearer picture. Instead, like the signatories, you assumed the right wing media were being racist and Arday needed support and solidarity. This is exactly what the right hate about the ‘woke’ left and you’ve all played into their hands. It now seems to me that you're looking for ways to defend a position that, with hindsight, was poorly judged. I’m not on the right but the uncomfortable truth is that this whole, sorry affair has exposed fundamental issues with DEI, especially in HE. Hard lessons to be learned - regardless of your political beliefs.
Having left academia in 2024 after nearly 20 years it has been utterly clear to me what has happened here. Also given that the only two academics to be speaking publicly against Dr Arday are disgraced people who were fired from their jobs for biggoted views broughtbinto their work. I'm very relieved to see GLP supporting him and others who signed the letter. As a white person who worked in 3 institutions across my career, I never saw other white (particularly male) academics or students undermined and constantly challenged in the same way I did those of colour.
I don't question your personal experience but I do question your argument. Ultimately, the supposedly racist source of the allegations is irrelevant. The case has exposed fundamental flaws in DEI/HE that urgently need addressing.
The issue here is one of hypocrisy and holding people to different standards. I am not in the room and therefore cannot state whether Arday chose to resign or was 'forced'. I was in HE at senior management level long enough to know how these things work. If you work in academic misconduct you will also be aware that certain student groups are reported more than others due to bias and subjectivity of markers - which also means that others types of students constantly fly under the radar. The notion of 'prestigious' institutions is well, messy at most as Russell Groups named themselves special and gatekept. Tell yourself every day how special you are and you and then everyone else believes it.
I am not in a position to comment on Arday's actions or record but I am in a position to comment on what I experienced over a 20yr career in an industry that functions under it's own rules and bares little relation to the rest of the working world. The social contract of HE worldwide is based upon gatekeeping, nepotism, classism and fakery. I witnessed numerous hardworking academics with amazing teaching skills and ideas get nowhere against the thick tall ivory walls built to keep them out. I witnessed just as many mediocre or downright ignorant individuals whose face, social status and connections allowed them to be successful in a pre-defined system - lie, plaigiarise, claim student's work as their own, be first author on papers they never contributed to, claim ideas that first came from others, pay people to ghost right papers, bulk up cvs for promotion, build funding records of millions with little actual output, deliver keynote after keynote and never teach a seminar, earlier years get senior lecturer or professor chairs simply because they've been there for a certain amount time, bully others, harrass students the list goes on.
Academics rarely celebrate anothers acheivements they prefer instead to attack and attempt to prove a person's worth is always to be questioned. They hold others to standards they can never maintain themselves.
In this feeding frenzy of media based opinions, noone is stopping to ask how he was doing in the position and what he was acheiving having gained a professor role at a highly regarded institutution. Noone is refering to the well documented and published research on the poor experiences of minoritized identities in academia, the endless careers of more privileged academics who get exposed but not struck off, they just get put on gardening leave, move to another institution or dept - such as those being interviewed on media platforms about this.
Utlimately, my comments are on expectations and standards within racist systems that hold people who are non-traditional to higher account than others; and it emboldens those with traditional privilege to use their personal discriminatory motives to go to extraordinary lengths to attack others.
Cambridge's mistake in all of this was not considering all of the above when deciding to award such a public profile to an early career academic and not having the conditions in place to protect him when it matters.
Two things can be true at the same time: we live in a racist society and DEI hasn't been working well to counter this. However, if you criticise DEI you're often assumed to be racist. I have no problem commenting on Jason Arday's misconduct - the evidence is plain to see. Whether it is mitigated by mental health issues or neurodivergence is another matter.
A pretty simple rule if you want to keep your credibility: don’t get involved in a fight when you don’t know all the facts. Your bristly and defensive post suggests you haven’t quite learned this lesson.
"....the Times Higher Education Supplement had been approached to run the story and decided not to"
This is not quite accurate and needs clarification. THE had investigated the story way before Cofnas published his blog. They were ready to run with it. Journalist Jack Grove was reported to the police and THE was threatened with legal action if they reported the findings of the investigation.
Sorry, I can only agree wholeheartedly with Steve Turnbull. I have a lot of time for your work — and consider myself on the left — but GLP should have approached the Arday affair far, far more carefully.
Arday is clearly a plagiarist and fantasist. Even without the — very extensive — plagiarism, his resume was thin and hardly warranted appointment to a Cambridge full professorship. By carelessly appointing him, then doubling down on denial until the facts became simply undeniable (instead of initiating an independent & rigorous investigation early on) Cambridge has done tremendous damage to academia & trust in science. That you — like the various letter-signers— waded in before being in command of the full facts has only compounded the wider social-political damage. Serious & seriously self-critical reflection is called for, not posthoc self-justification.
That Cofnas has some rather off the wall & even repugnant beliefs is neither here nor there, incidentally. Whistleblowers are often oddballs — often morally-dubious oddballs to boot. Allegations stand and fall on the facts, not on who makes them. Otherwise everything is just politics (a politics you and I are likely to lose, btw: that’s why this matters.)
Thank you for this post. It’s obvious Arday is nothing more than the victim of a witch-hunt. One journalist harassed and threatened Arday to the extent where Arday was forced to involve the police.
Arday was also the victim of a violent crime - a deranged maniac broke into his office and menaced Arday by threateningly rattling a saber.
Again this is just an example of a racist witch-hunt, victimizing a young man whose only sin is caring too much and working too hard.
Would that be the intruder with the knife who somehow managed to evade CCTV and who Arday failed to report and warn his colleagues in the building about? Or the person who sent him the mysterious missing pig's head?
I’ve had a lot of respect for your social justice work but not in this instance. As a barrister, you should have said ‘no’ and reserved judgment until you were in full possession of the facts - or at least had a much clearer picture. Instead, like the signatories, you assumed the right wing media were being racist and Arday needed support and solidarity. This is exactly what the right hate about the ‘woke’ left and you’ve all played into their hands. It now seems to me that you're looking for ways to defend a position that, with hindsight, was poorly judged. I’m not on the right but the uncomfortable truth is that this whole, sorry affair has exposed fundamental issues with DEI, especially in HE. Hard lessons to be learned - regardless of your political beliefs.
Having left academia in 2024 after nearly 20 years it has been utterly clear to me what has happened here. Also given that the only two academics to be speaking publicly against Dr Arday are disgraced people who were fired from their jobs for biggoted views broughtbinto their work. I'm very relieved to see GLP supporting him and others who signed the letter. As a white person who worked in 3 institutions across my career, I never saw other white (particularly male) academics or students undermined and constantly challenged in the same way I did those of colour.
I don't question your personal experience but I do question your argument. Ultimately, the supposedly racist source of the allegations is irrelevant. The case has exposed fundamental flaws in DEI/HE that urgently need addressing.
The issue here is one of hypocrisy and holding people to different standards. I am not in the room and therefore cannot state whether Arday chose to resign or was 'forced'. I was in HE at senior management level long enough to know how these things work. If you work in academic misconduct you will also be aware that certain student groups are reported more than others due to bias and subjectivity of markers - which also means that others types of students constantly fly under the radar. The notion of 'prestigious' institutions is well, messy at most as Russell Groups named themselves special and gatekept. Tell yourself every day how special you are and you and then everyone else believes it.
I am not in a position to comment on Arday's actions or record but I am in a position to comment on what I experienced over a 20yr career in an industry that functions under it's own rules and bares little relation to the rest of the working world. The social contract of HE worldwide is based upon gatekeeping, nepotism, classism and fakery. I witnessed numerous hardworking academics with amazing teaching skills and ideas get nowhere against the thick tall ivory walls built to keep them out. I witnessed just as many mediocre or downright ignorant individuals whose face, social status and connections allowed them to be successful in a pre-defined system - lie, plaigiarise, claim student's work as their own, be first author on papers they never contributed to, claim ideas that first came from others, pay people to ghost right papers, bulk up cvs for promotion, build funding records of millions with little actual output, deliver keynote after keynote and never teach a seminar, earlier years get senior lecturer or professor chairs simply because they've been there for a certain amount time, bully others, harrass students the list goes on.
Academics rarely celebrate anothers acheivements they prefer instead to attack and attempt to prove a person's worth is always to be questioned. They hold others to standards they can never maintain themselves.
In this feeding frenzy of media based opinions, noone is stopping to ask how he was doing in the position and what he was acheiving having gained a professor role at a highly regarded institutution. Noone is refering to the well documented and published research on the poor experiences of minoritized identities in academia, the endless careers of more privileged academics who get exposed but not struck off, they just get put on gardening leave, move to another institution or dept - such as those being interviewed on media platforms about this.
Utlimately, my comments are on expectations and standards within racist systems that hold people who are non-traditional to higher account than others; and it emboldens those with traditional privilege to use their personal discriminatory motives to go to extraordinary lengths to attack others.
Cambridge's mistake in all of this was not considering all of the above when deciding to award such a public profile to an early career academic and not having the conditions in place to protect him when it matters.
Two things can be true at the same time: we live in a racist society and DEI hasn't been working well to counter this. However, if you criticise DEI you're often assumed to be racist. I have no problem commenting on Jason Arday's misconduct - the evidence is plain to see. Whether it is mitigated by mental health issues or neurodivergence is another matter.
A pretty simple rule if you want to keep your credibility: don’t get involved in a fight when you don’t know all the facts. Your bristly and defensive post suggests you haven’t quite learned this lesson.
"....the Times Higher Education Supplement had been approached to run the story and decided not to"
This is not quite accurate and needs clarification. THE had investigated the story way before Cofnas published his blog. They were ready to run with it. Journalist Jack Grove was reported to the police and THE was threatened with legal action if they reported the findings of the investigation.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/i-was-reported-police-over-arday-case-i-was-just-doing-my-job
Sorry, I can only agree wholeheartedly with Steve Turnbull. I have a lot of time for your work — and consider myself on the left — but GLP should have approached the Arday affair far, far more carefully.
Arday is clearly a plagiarist and fantasist. Even without the — very extensive — plagiarism, his resume was thin and hardly warranted appointment to a Cambridge full professorship. By carelessly appointing him, then doubling down on denial until the facts became simply undeniable (instead of initiating an independent & rigorous investigation early on) Cambridge has done tremendous damage to academia & trust in science. That you — like the various letter-signers— waded in before being in command of the full facts has only compounded the wider social-political damage. Serious & seriously self-critical reflection is called for, not posthoc self-justification.
That Cofnas has some rather off the wall & even repugnant beliefs is neither here nor there, incidentally. Whistleblowers are often oddballs — often morally-dubious oddballs to boot. Allegations stand and fall on the facts, not on who makes them. Otherwise everything is just politics (a politics you and I are likely to lose, btw: that’s why this matters.)
Thank you for this post. It’s obvious Arday is nothing more than the victim of a witch-hunt. One journalist harassed and threatened Arday to the extent where Arday was forced to involve the police.
Arday was also the victim of a violent crime - a deranged maniac broke into his office and menaced Arday by threateningly rattling a saber.
Again this is just an example of a racist witch-hunt, victimizing a young man whose only sin is caring too much and working too hard.
Would that be the intruder with the knife who somehow managed to evade CCTV and who Arday failed to report and warn his colleagues in the building about? Or the person who sent him the mysterious missing pig's head?
https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2026/aug/01/playbooks-plagiarism-pigs-head-new-claims-surrounding-cambridge-professor-jason-arday
And would that be the journalist who 'threatened and harassed' him by sending a few polite emails to give him the right of reply?
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/i-was-reported-police-over-arday-case-i-was-just-doing-my-job
Rigorous critical thinking is supposed to be the hallmark of the legal profession and academia right? But even common sense should have prevailed.