A Lot of the Attacks on Higher Ed Are Unfair. Not This One.
It’s easy to see how Jason Arday held on to his University of Cambridge professorship until Wednesday, despite facing significant accusations of plagiarism and dishonesty for years. After all, his story fit quite neatly into certain culture war grooves.
On one side was a scholar born to working-class immigrant parents in South London public housing who rose to become the youngest Black professor in the university’s 800-plus-year history. On the other were the forces of reaction, seeming to target him as part of a wide-ranging attack on tolerance and progress. In many academic circles, he was clearly the good guy.
Then, soon after Cambridge volte-faced from its longstanding insistence that there was nothing to see here, and announced its own investigation into Mr. Arday, he swiftly responded with an announcement of his own: He would resign.
If interest in this story peters out, that would be unfortunate, because what’s needed now is genuine accountability. This was a prime example of academia’s maddening tendency to embody the worst caricatures painted by its critics. The available evidence strongly suggests that, when faced with the allegations against Mr. Arday years ago, Cambridge and the other academic institutions connected to him responded not by genuinely investigating them with integrity and transparency, but acting in ways that helped him avoid scrutiny. Their decisions were both wrong and further damaged the reputation of higher education at a time when it has come under withering and sometimes unfair attack.
Mr. Arday was appointed in 2023, just 37 at the time. He tells a remarkable life story. Mr. Arday says he has autism, that he was nonverbal until he was 11 years old, and that he couldn’t read or write until 18. Nonetheless he claimed impressive achievements, including raising millions of dollars for charity via feats such as running 30 marathons in 35 days. At one point, he claimed that he ran 600 miles in six days.
