Professor Jason Arday - plagiarism etc

Plagiarism in his PhD is the reason the whole story came out in the first place.

The Mumsnet threads (two lengthy ones) are interesting because there are a lot of active academics on there.

Gracey

An enquiry has been called by academics shocked that he was ever appointed.
This highlights the stupidity of box ticking and DEI.
Shame on those smug and stupid people who appointed this Walter Mitty.
Arday has revealed that he was surprised his background was ever checked. That is the supreme arrogance of relying on his skin colour to give him a free pass.

Cambridge is one of the bastions of academic excellence. This fiasco has highlighted the idiocy of a woke initiative favoured over rigorous scrutiny and appointing on merit, and heaped shame and ridicule on one of the most prestigious Universities in the world. Rightly so.

I hope lessons have been learned. No pun intended.

Good post.

The real racists were those who chose on grounds of the colour of a person’s skin. It should have a no influence whatsoever on who they chose. Clearly.

Agreed.

Some people dont seem to be able to do a balanced and middle ground on lots of things.

Including DEI protagonists.

I obviously an not defending Arday in any way however, I can understand why a university would want to have black lecturers in a department that was teaching critical race theory, particularly is an educational context. I doubt many universities would consider it acceptable to have women's studies taught by an all male team. However, I would expect all potential appointments to be subject to scrutiny, regardless of their gender, ethnicity or disability. IMO the fault was not in DEI but in the sloppy way that Cambridge University made the appointment.

Have you been around universities lately. A man teaching woman studies would be pretty much mandatory.

I for various reasons have been involved second hand with 2 universities, one a former poly and one a russel group uni ( I would say on the evidence I have seen I would pick the former over the latter every time).

Sorry random brackets

Galaxy please read my post properly,
"I doubt many universities would consider it acceptable to have women's studies taught by an all male team."

I agree with you Foxie, I can understand why they want more black lecturers but there would be well-qualified black candidates who'd worked hard on their PhDs & would have made good professors.

They wanted the "too good to be true" candidate who had a Learning Disability, educational disadvantage, & the kitchen sink of equalities buzzwords & still had managed to suceed. Only - they should have checked that it was true.

I did read it properly! It is my faith in universities that is the issue not my faith in you.

I spent part of my career as a member of a team responsible for training senior management in educational establishments in recruitment and selection. My work was always concerned with ensuring that recruitment and selection was fair, it was never about promoting one group of people over another or giving anyone an unfair advantage but it was about eradicating bias. DEI is not about promoting black people unfairly, it is about giving everyone an equal opportunity for success regardless of race, gender, age, religion or background and tbh I am furious that an institution like Cambridge university does not adhere to good recruitment practices because it tarnishes all their appointments. Arday should never have been appointed, he's clearly told lies about his background but he won't be the first or the last to tell lies, Cambridge U, however, should have checked his credentials properly as they should for every appointment.

What about the other universities where he worked and their recruiting practices? It seems the tip of a big iceberg. Im sure there are many similar stories yet to be heard. Not just in the educational sector.

But have you been in universities lately foxie, people have been raising concerns about the culture in many universities for some time, I could have predicted with 100 % accuracy the 'slogans' I heard in my latest visit.

No, not recently Galaxy but I have no doubt that the recruitment and selection practices in some universities are extremely suspect. My concern is that DEI is being condemned rather than the misuse of practices that underpin it. Unfortunately few people seem to understand what good DEI practice looks like.

He is still fault, he is a liar, the Cambridge elite who orchestrated this should be investigated and removed. Unlikely to be the first time it's happened. Is this going on at all Universities?

Allsorts of course Arday is at fault, I'm certainly not defending him and have made that clear in my posts. If the university had made his appointment conditional on a few simple checks, it could have avoided this mess entirely. I've sat on more interview panels that I care to remember but appointments were always made subject to satisfactory checks and some applicants were found to have told lies on their CVs so their appointment was not confirmed. There does have to be an element of trust but it's pretty easy to find out if someone has been a visiting professor or not and any decent PhD supervisor should have been able to spot plagiarism that was as obvious as Arday's seems to have been. It seems a lot of people have been both lazy and sloppy!

foxie48

Allsorts of course Arday is at fault, I'm certainly not defending him and have made that clear in my posts. If the university had made his appointment conditional on a few simple checks, it could have avoided this mess entirely. I've sat on more interview panels that I care to remember but appointments were always made subject to satisfactory checks and some applicants were found to have told lies on their CVs so their appointment was not confirmed. There does have to be an element of trust but it's pretty easy to find out if someone has been a visiting professor or not and any decent PhD supervisor should have been able to spot plagiarism that was as obvious as Arday's seems to have been. It seems a lot of people have been both lazy and sloppy!

Or willing to turn a blind eye in the pursuit of diversity but in this case it has come back to bite them. Hard.

I think some of it is to do with diversity but I also think there us something about some people who are able to say a lot whilst actually saying nothing at all, I think he was probably one of these people. Russel Brand operates a similar technique.

Top post foxie

Look, its still happening for example that the "old boy" network is alive and kicking in some appointments in academia.

Or simply, because of limitations of time to do due diligence, and appointment is made from with in the department - or someone known well by someone in that department.

Pinning it always on diversity of one kind or another is what I really object to on this thread

It's quite straightforward to me - Cambridge made a massive and culpable mistake in this appointment, this time it was diversity:

it's a huge lesson for them and indeed all universities, and so much the better the lesson coming from one of the Russell Group.

But the other issues I alluded to above can prevent "outsiders" of one kind or another being appointed: and that includes gender and race which I think does need a balance.

.... and this is where the issues of time for due diligence really really matters.

It would be best imo for a person specifically appointed to do in depth searches to prepare the ground, not an academic unless they really have the search skills and time.

LemonJam

I agree Wyloow3 but accept the question of why him and not others is not of particular interest to the majority on this thread.

I also accept there is little interest in any discussion of the reasons why Cafnas chose to scrutinise Arday particularly, how his motivation maybe driven by his racist beliefs, any interest in Cafnas academic history, the reasons why Cambridge University sacked Cafnas and the reasons why Cafnas lost his court case against Cambridge University.

Isnt that an example of whataboutery?

Well no, as the Cafnas attacks were so very, very, virulent, exceptionally so, and relevant pages ago

but tbh I think we have covered that, (several times) it's now on page 13!

"Or willing to turn a blind eye in the pursuit of diversity but in this case it has come back to bite them. Hard."

If this was the case then whoever was responsible for the appointment needs to go on diversity training because they clearly don't understand what it is about.
Nathan Cafnas, who was one of the people to question Arday's qualifications for the post IMO demonstrated why diversity training is so important to ensure fairness and equality. When there are people around with the racist views that Cafnas holds it is important to have a proper understanding of what good recruitment and selection looks like and to have practices that underpin that practice. Cafnas deserved to lose his post.

"In a 2024 blog post titled "A Guide for the Hereditarian Revolution," former Cambridge philosophy researcher Nathan Cofnas claimed that under a true meritocracy based purely on academic qualifications, the number of Black professors at elite institutions like Harvard would "approach zero per cent," and Black people would "disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment".