British academia absolutely will not let go of Jason Arday, which is widening the crack that unexpectedly opened this summer in the long-united Elite Front of universities and news media.
For a century or more, reporters would call up professors to get free quotes for their articles. In return, professors would get to see themselves called “experts” in the newspapers. Everybody was happy.
Now, though, academia, or at least the huge number of DEI hires employed within it, remains at war with the press over the Arday fiasco.
Britain’s top dog media spokesmagazine for academia, Nature — the British science journal most famous for publishing this concluding understatement in Crick and Watson’s 1953 paper announcing their discovery of the DNA double helix: “It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material” — gives academia’s view in an editorial this week:
The death of Jason Arday must prompt deep reflection
02 September 2026
Universities and media organizations need to scrutinize their roles in the events that led to this tragedy.
“The years since my appointment have also been marked by an unrelenting level of public scrutiny and personal attack. While criticism is an inevitable part of academic life, what I have experienced has gone far beyond scholarly disagreement.”
These were the words of Jason Arday when he resigned as professor of sociology of education at the University of Cambridge, UK, on 5 August, amid claims of research misconduct. He explained that he had “reached the limits of what any person should reasonably be expected to endure”.
Nine days later, Arday died after relentless media coverage of his professional and personal life.
It was very sad. I was looking forward to Dr. Arday making a worthy life for himself going forward as a high school Physical Education coach, the job his skills were suited for, the way George Psalmanazar, who had similarly hoaxed English high society for a few years in the early 1700s by claiming to be a blond-haired, blue-eyed Taiwanese aristocrat went on, after renouncing his lies, to live a long life of obscure hard work as a Grub Street ink-stained wretch, impressing his young friend Samuel Johnson a half century later as one of the best men he’d ever known.
But Arday lacked Psalmanazar’s strength of character. Arday took what he saw as the easy way out, further confirming the allegations against him, obviously.
The appropriate next step would be a major inquiry into how deep the rot goes in academia. Was Arday just a one-off, an entrepreneurial chancer like Psalmanazar? Or was he merely the funniest, most artless embodiment of long-term trends during the affirmative action era of academia filling up with plagiarists, frauds, and other BS artists?
It is an enormous tragedy for his family, friends, students and colleagues. It is also a catastrophe for the research community. The death of an autistic Black scholar who inspired a generation is shocking.
Oh, boy …
By the way, how much evidence is there, other than Arday’s worthless word, that Arday was ever autistic, as opposed to just generally low IQ?
As a journalist, for decades I’ve relied on the reputation of Professor Sir Simon Baron-Cohen as the expert on autism. But the knighted boffin’s credulous behavior over his friend Arday calls that into question.
The persistent media attention, the racism that pervaded much of that coverage and the plagiarism allegations against Arday, and the University of Cambridge’s handling of his case all raise difficult questions. These are concerns not only for the institutions involved, but for everyone in higher education and the media.
Two questions
In this Editorial, we focus on two issues in what is a complex and evolving situation. One is how academic institutions should treat investigations into research misconduct amid unrelenting media attention. Investigations need to be carried out according to transparent processes with appropriate confidentiality for those involved, including whistle-blowers, whose testimony is often central to the outcome. These processes exist to ensure that all concerned are treated fairly and protected from harm, but were they followed? The other, related issue is how the media should ensure fairness when reporting on research misconduct and how it can do so without causing harm.
Uh, the only way for the press to not cause harm to fraudsters is to never expose their frauds.
Arday’s fate is distressing, and especially so for Black scholars and those from other communities that are under-represented in academic research, many members of which report feeling vulnerable and unsupported at this time.
Presumably, a lot of DEI hires in fields like Arday’s Sociology of Education obtained their Ph.D.s on the assumption that nobody human would ever go through the skull-crushing boredom of comparing their dissertations to the countless equally tedious ones on similar subjects just to find the one they copied from.
For example, here’s the abstract of a woman’s Ph.D. dissertation for which Professor Arday served as an external examiner. The lady interviewed her aunt and five friends about their feelings of being oppressed, and, for added excitement, did some Me-search into her own feelings .
Rebecca Loy, University of Liverpool, 2023.
Searching for Critical Consciousness; in the Pursuit of Freedom
“This thesis will illuminate and add to a deeper understanding of the pervasive and suffocating nature of oppression experienced by people racialised as Black in the Liverpool 8 community. The framework of critical consciousness given by Freire will be analysed, embedded and developed through the literature to understand the nature of oppression and how actors transform their state of oppression from a place of conscientisation. To understand the nature of oppression structural and symbolic violence will be delved into through a variety of literature. The literature will incorporate topics such as racial capitalism, zero sum thinking, and dog whistle politics to evidence that evolution of structural violence over centuries to maintain a system of dominance over people racialised as Black in the Anglophone West. Symbolic violence will be evidenced through historical memory education, the politics of shame, and the phenomenology of the body to illustrate that symbolic violence is a political tool of oppression utilised to dehumanise marginalised groups as deviant to societal norms, leaving them in an objectified state of oppression. Black feminist thinkers building upon the work of Freire will espouse the route to liberation through a critically conscious, reclamation of radical subjectivity. Analysis with activists from the Liverpool 8 community and case study will highlight the necessity of radical subjectivity to be embodied. A theory of the experiential journey of transforming from objectivity to subjectivity will be positioned as Critical Subjective Black Phenomenology, a practise in the pursuit of freedom.”
Do you really think Jason Arday read this woman's entire dissertation about how she and her friends feel victimized?
I bet that on p. 2, Professor Arday put on his favorite Oasis album.
On p. 3, he turned the stereo up loud.
On about p. 4, he probably snuck off down to the pub to play some snooker and watch the footer on the telly.
(By the way, judging from his popular music tastes, you can’t say that Arday, the son of Ghanian immigrants, failed to assimilate into Regular English Blokehood. I should look into the broader phenomenon: it seems like England has (or had, I’m not up to date) a lot of blacks like Arday who assimilated pretty enthusiastically into the indigenous working class culture. In contrast, American blacks were seldom into, say, Van Halen and watching baseball.)
But, all of sudden, along came AI. Tireless robots will now track down your sins.
That must be worrisome.
There is systemic racism in academia.
Lately, against white men.
It is an unwelcoming place for many who enter it through hardship and struggle, as Arday’s story illustrates.
No, Arday was welcomed with absurd enthusiasm.
It is not acceptable that these barriers persist. On top of this, scholars from Black and other under-represented communities fear that the intensity of attention Arday faced could one day be focused on them. The question many are asking is: ‘Could I be next?’
Well, how guilty is your conscience?
In February 2023, when the University of Cambridge appointed Arday, it issued a statement that included a description of him as the youngest Black professor in its history, news that became a global media event.
So, when 2023’s global media event turned out to be a hilarious hoax, it became 2026’s global media event.
In his memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things, published last week, Arday wrote: “I was thrust into the public eye in a way that someone can’t really prepare for or predict. If I’m being honest, it’s something I’m still getting used to.” He also began to report incidents of racism and hate speech directed at him after his arrival at Cambridge.
And if you can’t trust Jason Arday’s reports of incidents of racism and hate speech against him at Cambridge, like the Pig’s Head Story, who can you trust?
Paywall here.
