civics: On Veracity
Incredibly, no-one holds Arday responsible for lying and plagiarizing. The Good Law Project ignores Arday’s multiple lies, and the NEJM author actually says that Arday’s behavior doesn’t matter: “I don’t care whether or not any of these allegations against Prof. Arday were true.” Nor is she alone: “I have no idea if, how, why, or to what degree Jason may have done or not done what he is accused of having done. And I do not care. At all,” writes Steven Thrasher, a journalism prof at Northwestern University.
Depicting Arday as an innocent victim of White supremacy forgets how Arday did his level best to silence the critics. After Prof. Davis Harris about “puzzling similarities” between one of Arday’s articles and an earlier study by someone else, Arday told him that he should pay more attention to dismantling racism, and to not contact him again. But Arday wasn’t done. He reported Harris to the police, who, to their credit, took no action.
Jack Grove was not so lucky. After Arday found out about the article Grove was writing for the Times Higher Education about Arday’s plagiarism, Arday hired Carter-Ruck, a law firm known for intimidating journalists and whose previous clients include Qatar and Russian oligarchs. Grove’s article was spiked. Someone then reported Grove to Scotland Yard, which spent four months investigating before closing the case. Who paid for Carter-Ruck’s services remains a mystery.
Some of Arday’s defenders go off the wall entirely. The distinguished political philosopher Jason Stanley asserted that plagiarism isn’t “the mere overlap of sentences,” even though that’s exactly how universities define plagiarism.” Others fall back on conspiracy theories.
