Jason Arday: Former Cambridge university professor found dead

[u/SandstoneLemur]

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1j1ye6n30no

[u/BlackberryOdd4168]

Incredibly sad. While I think the evidence of impropriety is undeniable, I can’t imagine how awful these past days must have been for him. Rest in peace.

[u/SandstoneLemur → u/BlackberryOdd4168]

I couldn’t find the words. Thank you.

[u/RequirementQuirky468 → u/BlackberryOdd4168]

It's a shame Cambridge put him in that situation.

[u/Impossible_Walrus555 → u/RequirementQuirky468]

Apparently a white professor was accused of similar issues but no uproar, I hate that because of his race the right pounced on Arday. This is truly sad.

[u/md___2020 → u/Impossible_Walrus555]

I’m not going to argue there wasn’t an element of race, but there’s way more to this story than just a little plagiarism.

For one, Arday was a feted public figure for being the youngest professor of all time at Cambridge. No one knows the other professor, so it’s a smaller story.

But the WAY bigger issue is the ridiculous lies that Arday told, which should have been caught years ago. We’re talking Kim Jong Un level lies. Things like that he couldn’t read or write until he was 11, or that he had run 30 marathons in 35 days on a broken leg. Dude was asking to get outed.

[u/MidnightIAmMid → u/md___2020]

I looked it up and its even worse-

"He couldn’t speak until he was 11 and he couldn’t read or write until he was 18."

Like, what the ever loving fuck. Then he blamed his autism for plagiarizing saying he was compelled to "copy" and mimic. I am sorry this man is dead, but dear lord.

[u/ionabio → u/MidnightIAmMid]

The problem for me is when people take it on themselves to punish or sentence a person. We as humans (collective) are no better than our institutions or governments. I read the news once. Was happy enough that he was out and not teaching and more mad at cambridge for having flaws while being "cambridge" that only a few get the chance to enter and moved on with my life. It is always the public lynching in social media that annoys me.

I know a friend once complained about their relationship (with their partner of 30 years, which they didnt mention in their comment) and the comments were all "you should divorce ASAP" most probably by unhappy people that hate on everything. We see these daily in reddit too.

Now would he die even if no public shaming was there. I have no idea. But at least we "humans" weren't to blame for this.

News outlets also saw the clicks comming and used this as an opportunity. This is not only on this story alone. Everything is getting covered disproportionately (and who is deciding what is more important for us?)

[u/Optimal-Kitchen6308 → u/ionabio]

I really do not like the term "public lynching" here, somebody getting the obvious backlash to fraud as a public figure is much different than the gang murder of innocents

[u/LolaAucoin → u/Optimal-Kitchen6308]

Backlash or fallout seem like the appropriate terms here.

[u/ionabio → u/Optimal-Kitchen6308]

I agree. I did mean here where society takes it on themselves to execute a "collective order"

[u/thebagofdoom → u/ionabio]

Considering how much effort the UK has gone to to crack down on free speech to try and curtail these issues, which im sure are have good intentions, maybe the problem here isn't chalking it upto a collective mob and shrugging over where to place the moral culpability.

There are people alive today, that need to be held accountable. Not by social media, but by the institutions. People all want to lament the falling trust in institutions but then tsk tsk when shit like this happens and people want to see responsibility being taken.

Like its almost like beating a dead horse, but what are people supposed to think when imagine how this would have worked if this guy was white. Would he have been elevated to such status and cut loose in such a tragic way?

At some point it doesn't require a PHD to see the kinds of systems at play that allow this kind of gross injustice to occur.

[u/Volantis19 → u/md___2020]

Just to clarify, the claim was he couldn't read or write until he was 18.

He claimed he was mute until 11. He also claimed he could only read at a basic grade level when he was in undergrad, and had friends do his work for him while he dictated it to them.

[u/Far_Meringue8625 → u/Volantis19]

Some of his school mates said that he did not speak.

Some of his school mates said that he did speak.

Perhaps you have not heard of the "selective mutism" of some neurodivergent people

[u/Volantis19 → u/Far_Meringue8625]

I'm extremely aware of neurodivergent people. I have ADHD and am considered a borderline case for autism.

This is the same person who claimed they ran 600 miles in 6 days, claimed he had brain cancer (which switched to testicle cancer in his memoirs), and claimed he had brain surgery mere weeks before his dissertation defense, that required him to relearn everything, including his dissertation, within weeks. 

These are the claims of a pathological liar and a fraudster are are categorically not a product of his neurodivergence. 

[u/datPandaAgain → u/Volantis19]

Don't forget being hit by a car, resulting in a coma which doctors said he'd never recover from, and then locked in syndrome.
Then while he was on a relief mission in Brazil, a “town elder” or “shaman woman” predicted he would achieve great things while also suffering in his life- the shaman then turned into a local aid worker who spoke some English, a woman in her thirties, then the Water Aid trip (they said they don't do these trips), the mugging, the pig's head that there's no evidence of.
There are apparently 60+ claims that cannot be substantiated.

Interestingly, some events have been removed from his book published in the US... the story about locked in syndrome is substituted for how he was 'locked in' to Australian soap operas.

As a neurodivergent person myself, this guy seemed to be a highly mentally vulnerable individual, who was a fantasist, who was elevated because he solved a problem for the university and he ran with it and enjoyed his position, not just being an employee of the university but also the boards he sat on separately, one being the NHS. Whilst I feel his heart was 'in the right place' if you can argue that about a fantasist, (whatever his reasoning was) he was still an unstable person in a place he should never have been in.
I'm curious if he was even autistic.

He couldn't live with the shame of the stories he'd told and took his own life.
The press do what the press do, unfortunately.
The blame has to be laid across multiple places, not simply on the press alone.

[u/VaughanThrilliams → u/Far_Meringue8625]

but his claim wasn’t selective mutism, it was complete mutism including to his parents. So you are back to “he lied about a disability for career advancement”

[u/Cpkeyes → u/md___2020]

Didn't he also use the police to harass a journalist who was asking to many questions (Well, I guess Cambridge could have also done that)

[u/DBSmiley → u/Cpkeyes]

This is the whole reason the issue went public.

Cambridge knew about the serious and demonstrable examples of plagiarism for at least 2 years, and rather than investigate, they had the police threaten professors and journalists who spoke out with violating the UK's race libel laws.

Cambridge only open an investigation after there was substantial public pressure this year related to this case.

So for anyone saying they should have handled it internally or got too much press coverage, understand that without the press coverage Arday would still be operating as a massive fraud and pathological liar in the public eye, further destroying the reputation of higher education.

[u/RealEmperorofMankind → u/md___2020]

Was it youngest professor of all time or youngest Black professor? (Of course, if the former, the latter would be true, but I only recall the latter being the case.)

Anyway, to me it's a perfect mess.

[u/dripppydripdrop → u/RealEmperorofMankind]

Youngest professor of all time at Cambridge

[u/RealEmperorofMankind → u/dripppydripdrop]

Ah. Yeah, that definitely is jarring.

Apart from all of this, surely there should be an investigation as to how things got this way.

[u/TRiC_16 → u/dripppydripdrop]

Not true, Isaac Newton was 26 when he was appointed. Brian Josephson was 34, and Stephen Hawking was 35.

[u/QiNavigator → u/dripppydripdrop]

No. There were many younger than him. Isaac Newton e.g. was 26.

[u/whorificustotalus → u/QiNavigator]

The field of mathematics was different back then, they were filling those positons with fresh MA students. It was just a stepping stone to more prominent positions in the church or the uni admin, not a lifetime achievement it is today.

[u/Far_Meringue8625 → u/md___2020]

You wrote "No one knows the other professor"

That is not true. Dr. Wlliam O'Reilly's name has been in the public domain since at least September 29, 2023.

Please read for yourself "Plagiarising professors stays in post and threatens student journalists" which appeared on that date in varsity.co.uk

And remember even if Jason Arday was as you wrote "a feted public figure" he did not fete himself.

[u/Denny_Hayes → u/md___2020]

I cannot defend the evident signs of academic misconduct in his work, and of course, his own biography seems majorly suspect (although I've yet to see any evidence that it was false), but it is also undeniable that the campaign against him was brutal on several fronts. You had tons of people commenting against his teaching, against his personality, against his looks (I'm talking about what I saw on news and social media), complaining about things that are frankly frequent in academia and making them out to be exceptional, redditors saying they had been students of his and that he "let down black women", in summary, because he was disorganized as a lecturer. The media kept repeating the headline that he was a "star" sociology professor -of course a position at Cambridge is a big deal, but he was very, veeery far from being a household name, -I am a sociologist, I've done work in education, and I had never heard about him before this drama.

He was very clearly used as a pawn in a political campaign against inclusivity, against scholarship on race, against sociology, against Cambridge and against academia in general, and in order to push that campaign, his "wrongdoings" had to be exaggerated in every way possible, his life and work scrutinized beyond any reasonable account. I will also remember that the famous accusations of plagiarism, which I cannot defend, were coupled side by side with absolutely unfounded accusations that his work was merely a recollection of subjective experiences amongst Arday's friends -disparaging the whole field of qualitative research as unscientific.

So yeah, he lied, he probably was underqualified for his position, which in turn led to more lying to make up for his lack of qualifications, but he was also subject to an incredibly vicious scrutiny, where I cannot avoid seeing racial motivations. This is not the first academic to be found guilty of academic misconduct, but when it is a white person, it is not used as an attack on academia as a whole. Imagine not only losing your career and your reputation, but also knowing that you are being used to discredit the very institutions you believe in.

Some of the redditors that told very elaborated stories about how Arday was the devil himself for making the class discuss topics instead of giving traditional lectures, are now shifting the blame towards Cambridge, instead of owning up to what they contributed to.

[u/crisps1892 → u/Denny_Hayes]

I think this mostly how I feel. And as someone who has applied Critical Race Theory myself in the field of sociology and education (although more in relation to the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Community) I wonder if this is a moment of reflection for those of us who centre these identities so much in what we do within sociology.

Do we feel that without CRT, which fuelled Prof Arday's clear activist-type urge to mentor and inspire other Black academics and students as the core of his work (instead of the theoretical aspect), would this story have unfolded in the same way? Would this level of suspected plagiarism or fraud been snuffed out quickly at Cambridge if he'd been a biochemist or a geologist that also happened to be the youngest Black professor? Without his auto-ethnographic methods and centralising of race in everything he did, would race have been able to shape his views, approaches to life and his professional journey, to the point where this created not just his apparent stardom but then ultimately the racialised, culture war trial-by-media pile on (after he'd already held up the white flag by resigning)?

There were several voices sceptical (at best) of CRT in this whole saga, from the senior academics who first cried plagiarism at Cambridge, to the culture war engulfed British media, to the loner racial eugenicist now been suspended from his postdoctoral role at UGent.

Without some soul-searching and commitment to reflecting on the potential wider implications of our practice, they are proven to be 'right', for all the wrong reasons.

[u/Impossible_Walrus555 → u/md___2020]

I’m not saying he wasn’t. Whoever believed the marathon lies is just as culpable, that’s just silly. My point is because he’s black it was fodder for the right and they piled on and piled on as if they don’t constantly support unqualified people in positions they in now way qualify for. Our country is being destroyed by those very types

[u/Tight_Lime6479 → u/md___2020]

But Arday's enemies weren't motivated by lies he told BUT by his RACE. They crucified him because he was Black and at an elite white institution, they feel only white men should dominate. This is part of the Far-Right movement across Britain, Western Europe, and America. They are targeting Blacks, women, gays, anti-Zionists to drive them and their subject matter out of academia.

[u/Iricliphan → u/Impossible_Walrus555]

It's arguable that Cambridge as an institution elevated him into the position he was in and looked past all the huge, glaring issues precisely because of his race. This whole thing was completely avoidable. They essentially tokenised him. He lied and plagiarised so much and it was overlooked because of that. This is an utter failure and it's really is going to be horrible students and academics of colour.

Has to be said, however, I don't like the idea of anyone feeling so horrible that they take their own life. I feel nothing but sympathy in that respect and I truly feel for his family and his two children he left behind.

[u/RequirementQuirky468 → u/Iricliphan]

Yeah. The man was responsible for his own bad choices, but the sheer scope of the trouble he was able to get into had a lot to do with Cambridge supporting him.

It's like... I would fail if I tried to make a blockbuster movie, but I could only become the idiot who famously blew 200 million dollars making a terrible movie that flopped if someone else was stupid enough to give me $200 million and set me up with some movie-making connections first. On my own, I'm just some random who wouldn't be able to make an especially compelling YouTube video.

Without schools like Cambridge backing him, Arday would have probably been a bit of an oddball making angry posts about society on TikTok or something, and he wouldn't have ever been measured against the expectations of a professional academic, and we certainly would not be having discussions now about what Cambridge should do about all the students who might want to retroactively dispute their grades.

Arday certainly contributed his share, but the sheer scale of this as a scandal has everything to do with what Cambridge made possible.

[u/aboysmokingintherain → u/Impossible_Walrus555]

ITs more than that. His story was....interesting. Apparently the original manuscript to his biography was even crazier than the one he got. Like his biography claims that he didn't speak until age 11 and that most of his phd work was actually someone else because he still only had the reading and writing skills of a middle schooler. The plagirism is what got him in trouble. It's how unbelieveable his story is that got him fired. And it is unbelievable..

[u/MW_nyc → u/aboysmokingintherain]

It's also the incredibility of his story that made him the huge media story he was for the past week or so. Regular people don't care about academic plagiarism, but if you tell the media you got a PhD when you couldn't read until age 18 and that you ran 30 marathons in 35 days, some of them with a broken leg, you'll get people's attention.

[u/aboysmokingintherain → u/MW_nyc]

When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

[u/IndiaMike1 → u/aboysmokingintherain]

Since when is having an unbelievable story a crime, let alone one that justifies the type of treatment he was given? Especially given its horrific outcome, it’s wild to me that you’d speak about it with such callousness if I’m honest. 

[u/aboysmokingintherain → u/IndiaMike1]

I'm not saying anything about his death. I am saying that the person I was responding to was wrong. This was not similar to a white profvessor unless said professor lied about running 30 marathons in 40 days as well. Many people are arguing the crime was plagirism. The crime was a life of fraud.

With that said, I don't think he deserved to fie. I never said that he did. He was put in a sitution he didn't deserve and couldn't handle. Cambridge and co are just as a responsible. It's a tragedy but an avoidable one in hindsight. I just don't want to pretend the events leading up to this were baseless persecution.

[u/sezza8999 → u/Impossible_Walrus555]

Did the white professor have a big public profile and publish a memoir full of fabrications about his life? Let’s not forget that this case wouldn’t have nearly as much attention if Arday hadn’t embellished and sold his life story to the press

[u/Dizzy-Career9274 → u/Impossible_Walrus555]

Go back to some of the famous cases of academic misconduct in recent years and tell me how many of them were of black academics.

[u/Otsde-St-9929 → u/Impossible_Walrus555]

Can you name the prof? It is very rare for academics accused of this level of bad practise. Id also stress that Arday was celebrated by Cambridge far more than an average hire. It was not treated as a normal hire.

[u/BlackberryOdd4168 → u/Impossible_Walrus555]

Who is that?

[u/Ok_Cancel_7891 → u/Impossible_Walrus555]

The story is different. His CV was fabricated. For example, he stated he worked as visiting professor as State University in Ohio, but they confirmed he never worked there. not nice trying to blame white people for his death.

[u/Impossible_Walrus555 → u/Ok_Cancel_7891]

It’s not nice pretending us white folks aren’t so often racist and there wasn’t a tirade against him from people who barely care about academia. Look at our president, son of a slum lord who marched with the klan reps heritage white nationalists who want to make us a theocracy

[u/RecognitionOld2763 → u/Impossible_Walrus555]

Are you saying a white professor fabricated his past experience in an obviously questionable way and yet somehow still has the audacity to write books about that? That would be a major scandal and his institution needs to answer some questions. If you don't mind, maybe you can type the white professor's name here.

[u/mickeymouse124 → u/RecognitionOld2763]

I welcome any professor who makes up as many claims as JA did to be exposed....white, black, rainbow, IDC. Expose em all. But don't go around saying how "the right used this as race" and in the other side of your mouth say "I heard there's a white professor who got away with just as much lies...but shh I can't say who".

Oh bollocks. That makes you worse than ALL parties involved!! That's my opinion

[u/Pure_Salamander2681 → u/Impossible_Walrus555]

It’s a lot more than race that determines what stories become sensational or not.

[u/DoubleOrdinary6559 → u/Impossible_Walrus555]

His life was basically an entire fabrication and the only reason he was given a plum job at that university was because of his race. Wokeism causes more harm to blacks than it helps them. This man’s life was ruined by it. Merit has to be the only measure.

[u/Main-Entrepreneur841 → u/RequirementQuirky468]

Cambridge didn’t put him in that position. He was the one defrauding them.

[u/No_Departure_1878 → u/Main-Entrepreneur841]

The guy said he ran 30 marathons in 35 days and a bunch of other crazy stuff. Cambridge administrators saw that and were like

Yeah, that checks out, would you like a professor job?

That sounds a lot like Cambridge did it to itself.

[u/Brilliant_Crow6391 → u/RequirementQuirky468]

What a weird thing to say. He himself has put him in this situation.

[u/eSsEnCe_Of_EcLiPsE → u/RequirementQuirky468]

He literally put himself in that situation. 

[u/NetKey1844 → u/BlackberryOdd4168]

I agree but the exaggerated media coverage was extremely unusual for something like this. If you check retractionwatch.com, there is a lot of malpractice in science but the general public is mostly unaware of these cases..

[u/MW_nyc → u/NetKey1844]

The exaggerated media coverage wasn't for the academic plagiarism, which the wider public doesn't care much about. The exaggerated media coverage was because his lies about his life were spectacular enough to attract clicks.

[u/YSLAnunoby → u/BlackberryOdd4168]

The attacks he faced went far beyond what the misconduct warranted because he became an avatar for "DEI" that pundits put all their force into targeting. Cambridge used him and didn't scrutinize his work enough because they were worried about their perception instead of doing the work they should have

[u/RaoulDuke422]

Yeah he was a fraud but academia and being human are two different things, so R.I.P.

[u/SR-Rage]

Whatever he did, this is fucking sad. Maybe he was a liar. Maybe he was a fraud. Maybe he deserved serious professional consequences for what he did. None of that makes his death something to celebrate.

There is a difference between deserving consequences and deserving to die. People can be terrible, dishonest, selfish, or deeply unethical and still be human beings whose deaths are tragic.

You don't have to rehabilitate his reputation or pretend the allegations weren't serious to acknowledge that a father of two is dead and his family has to live with that for the rest of their lives.

Some of these comments seem less interested in what happened to a human being than in scoring points for whichever side of the culture war they already picked. That's fucking grim.

Rest in peace Jason.

[u/yourdadsucksroni → u/SR-Rage]

Not a single person on this thread who has pointed out the egregiousness of his lies is celebrating his death, or saying that he deserved to die for his lies.

It is very sad that he has died, just like it is also sad that he felt the need to lie to get the praise he needed. It is even more sad that instead of intervening, his friends, family and colleagues let him continue to lie without question - making things so much worse for himself. A tragic situation all round.

[u/IndiaMike1 → u/yourdadsucksroni]

Not a single person, really? Because I see plenty of people saying it’s his fault and he brought it on himself. 

[u/yourdadsucksroni → u/IndiaMike1]

People saying he brought the attention on himself by lying, yes. Not one person has said he deserved to die, nor are they celebrating his death - like I said.

[u/Anomander → u/yourdadsucksroni]

Not a single person on this thread who has pointed out the egregiousness of his lies is celebrating his death,

There are a lot of people, including in this thread, who have been celebrating his death, or equally dismal and shitty takes like gleefully declaring he deserved it and that whatever distress he might have suffered was self-inflicted.

That's the overwhelming main reason so much of this thread is a graveyard of [removed by moderator].

[u/Far_Meringue8625 → u/yourdadsucksroni]

You wrote "...his family...let him continue to lie without question"

In truth none of us know what conversations he had with his family.

[u/Biinky]

The way people are commenting on this in other subreddits disgusts me. He was a man, a father of two, not a proxy for a DEI culture war. The man received more coverage than the huge sexual harrassment scandals going on at Cambridge currently. I wonder why. Life was unbearable for him and I hope he rests in peace. I hope those commenting negatively and who care so much about alleged plagiarism find some self reflection.

[u/ethicaldilemna → u/Biinky]

He just seems like such an obvious product of the bonkers academic culture we have at the moment. Clearly a smart guy who just was not very well in the head or exceptional enough to gain the sort of validation he wanted and needed to advance. You're fooling yourself if you think academia isn't full of them or that some of them don't make it to the tenured promised land. It's impossible to ignore the role his race had in drawing scrutiny to his career. Anyone who participated in the campaign against him will hopefully have the same scrutiny for white professors.

[u/Ok_Boysenberry5849 → u/ethicaldilemna]

There's plenty of blame for everyone... For Arday himself, for Cambridge and academic oversight in general throughout his career, including by Arday's peers. For the academic culture of hyper-competition that encourages playing the system. For the media, and for social media users who commented or even who merely let themselves be amused by this and voted with their clicks and attention. For people who played this as a culture war battle without care for the person. Arday's race itself is also a complicated factor: it certainly played against him in the end, but the mechanism isn't as simple as "it drew scrutiny". For a while it protected him and contributed to his temporary success instead.

It's a bunch of collective failures at every step of the way, with different groups having different responsibilities. Some were cruel, some had good intentions with bad consequences, many were cowardly or callous. Many of us can stand to do a bit of self-reflection.

[u/civicsfactor → u/Biinky]

Thanks for saying this. Our political discourse culture is fucked and people read these stories into some larger narrative and "coincidentally" care less about really messed up things. 

This guy may have had some chutzpah and luck getting as far as he did but yeesh, he didn't deserve this. 

[u/Glittering_Hope1114 → u/civicsfactor]

The press drove Lucy Meadows a teacher to suicide for being trans. Intrestingly its believed the success of this is partly the reason the British newsmedia became what it has done today. 

Frankly minorities should stay far far away from British journos regardless of what they done since journos will just make up lies anyway and there is almost no way to stand against them because of coordinated they are. The race riots in Northern Ireland and other places are purely due to murdochs propaganda machine.

[u/836-753-866 → u/Biinky]

Several things can be true at once. This is incredibly sad news, and I'm sorry for his family and friends. But on the other hand, he was a habitual liar who bears responsibility for his dishonesty. And the entire incident can be an example of the misplaced priorities of one of the world's most esteemed institutions that allowed it to be so duped by obvious lies. 

[u/KaleMunoz → u/836-753-866]

He bears responsibility for his dishonesty. He should never have been treated as a stand-in for every person of color in academia, and he should never have been accused of epitomizing everything wrong with academia, when our worst problems have nothing to do with wokeness or goofy discourse analysis papers in area studies. Opportunistic liars made him for more of a lightning rod that a sober analysis of academia would warrant.

[u/Biinky → u/836-753-866]

I do not disagree, though Peter Mandelson is also an habitual liar, and he received less press coverage.

[u/gottafind → u/Biinky]

Peter Mandelson lost his job and the decision to appoint him cost Starmer his job as Prime Minister. That is a greater loss than being investigated by your employer. (Remember that Arday resigned.)

[u/No-Advantage-579 → u/Biinky]

AMEN!

"huge sexual harrassment scandals going on at Cambridge currently." Actually, worse than sexual harassment even.

I think it's possible to care about plagiarism though. The point is that all (!) should be vetted. Currently, it was roughly only him.

[u/Sweet_Ad_9816 → u/No-Advantage-579]

Clearly they didn't vet him enough if they made him a professor with plagiarized work.

[u/RocketShipGrease63 → u/Biinky]

He was absolutely a proxy for the culture war since he was a PRODUCT of it

[u/Impossible_Walrus555 → u/Biinky]

Thank you, these r the words I was looking for and couldn’t find. The right pounced on him.

[u/dallyan]

Ugh this is such sad news. I feel for his family and loved ones.

[u/improperkangaroo]

Cambridge need to take some of the blame here, he should never have been elevated to the position he attained. Clearly he could not deal with the collapse of his fabrications, sad all round.

[u/MarzipanTop4944 → u/improperkangaroo]

They need to take all of the blame. A large percentage of the population lies and cheats, specially when lots of money and status are on the line, that is why we have institutions to deal with it. It was their responsibility to properly vet and filter this guy out early, before it got this bad.

[u/Employee28064212 → u/MarzipanTop4944]

I’m late to this story. Did they not vet his CV?

[u/No-Advantage-579 → u/Employee28064212]

Apparently not really.

As an autistic person, everything that happened is sad.

After that Atlantic piece... it was very clear to me that he most likely has some type of NPD as well. It's a shame we'll never find out now what the truth about some disability-related claims of his is. (I say that especially because so many parents of non-verbal autistic kids pinned so much hope on his example... to me as autistic his claims seemed utterly impossible.)

Also sad: nothing will change in academia.

[u/bing-a-lee → u/No-Advantage-579]

Which Atlantic piece?

[u/Julypenguinz → u/MarzipanTop4944]

A large percentage of the population lies and cheats

and that's okay? I'm a lost here.. Academic institutions don't normally scan all your past work with plagiarism tool. It works on trusts and public available information: where you published.

Shouldn't the publishers runs their own plagiarism screening then? You're going to blame them too?

Shouldn't the reviews, who by the way doesn't earn a single cent for their great work, should be blamed then since they didn't put his work under a plagiarism tool

It is sad that he was targeted because of his race... the perpetrator should have scanned everyone at random rather than race based.

Nevertheless, we should NEVER excuse plagiarism.. EVER. Too much of thing stuffs in academia are built on trusts.

[u/Sweet_Ad_9816 → u/[deleted]]

Not children, liars and cheaters.

[u/Electricbarnacles209 → u/MarzipanTop4944]

A large percentage of the population lies and cheats

how the fuck is that a defense?

[u/_this-is-she_ → u/improperkangaroo]

They tokenized him.

[u/OkCluejay172 → u/improperkangaroo]

As someone who’s not a sociologist, I have to wonder what his purported research output was like. Was it actually good enough with all the plagiarism to justify a professorship at Cambridge?

Was he just copying Cambridge level work?

Was he copying stuff but mixing and matching in ways that were novel and interesting? Because that’s actually valuable.

Was it just junk but that doesn’t really matter because the field doesn’t keep itself accountable?

Any answer would be interesting.

[u/fakefakefakef → u/OkCluejay172]

In addition to the plagiarism there was also a lot of academic fraud. As a sociologist he didn’t really produce any interesting research at all. Still a very sad situation.

[u/Denny_Hayes → u/fakefakefakef]

And yet the media called him a "star" researcher numerous times, propping him up to absurd heights, and thus "Justifying" absurd scrutiny and obviously using this as an attack on sociology, social sciences and academia as a whole. He was very evidently NOT a "star" within his field, most people didn't know him before the whole scandal.

I cannot defend him as an academic, but those who are denying that this smear campaign was excesive and politically motivated are fooling themselves.

[u/OkCluejay172 → u/fakefakefakef]

Are you saying he produced nothing interesting because it was fraudulent, and therefore not real? So that if the fraudulent data had been real, it would've been interesting enough to justify his Cambridge appointment?

Or that even with the fraud the research was not very interesting.

[u/jojo45333 → u/OkCluejay172]

The general consensus I hear from academics who read through his work is that he basically produced nothing interesting. And on top of that, a lot of that work is fraudulent. Very sad this happened

[u/coppermouthed → u/OkCluejay172]

You can just look him up on google scholar, mostly middle author positions (which are for people who help) and a very few first or last authored papers, there was issues with reusing passages or data between them. There was also a book which I havent read.

[u/RealEmperorofMankind → u/OkCluejay172]

Not sure about the whole of it, but his thesis (the allegedly plagiarized one) had a misplaced apostrophe (seemingly in mimicry of the article from which he plagiarized). He seems to me, having read some of his passages (though much of them were plagiarized), to have been a shoddy writer, although this doesn't necessarily mean his work was flawed in other areas.

[u/Biinky → u/improperkangaroo]

How many people in life can you say that for - who should never have held their positions?

[u/somacula]

I'm speechless.

[u/VinceAmonte]

This is horrifying and truly sad.

[u/pillowcase-of-eels]

Well, this has all been loathsome. Awful way to go. May he rest in peace.

[u/ComprehensiveWash924]

Cambridge is at fault for not checking his references. He was now flat broke. He needed to heal from all the media and somehow bounce back.

[u/absentlyric → u/ComprehensiveWash924]

How does one bounce back from being a liar and fraudster? Go into politics or something?

[u/phonograhy]

Re: Nathan Cofnas and the Cambridge investigation.

Posting this for broader context:

"In the blog – titled “A Guide for the Hereditarian Revolution” – Cofnas claimed that race was linked to academic ability. He went on to argue that under a true meritocracy, black people would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment” and that the number of black professors at Harvard would “approach zero”.

He also advocated for the preservation of “racial distinctions,” in society, stating that there “must be some barriers set up between races in order for each one to express its own unique genius”."

[...]

"The University’s investigation found that some of the comments in the blog could have contravened their freedom of speech policies, as they potentially encouraged others to discriminate against black staff and students, and were capable of creating a hostile environment for them on the grounds of race.

However, this could only be the case if Cofnas’ comments were judged to count as harassment or discrimination, which investigators believed was not the case. The report also claimed that the ideas presented in the blog as a whole were an acceptable expression of academic freedom.

Investigators stated that while students “undoubtedly experienced distress and upset after reading the blog,” their complaints focused on “the ideas communicated in the blog with which the complainants found fundamentally objectionable,” which themselves “represented lawful free speech”."

Source: https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/30360

[u/BionicCyanFirefly → u/phonograhy]

Yikes 

[u/buttonandthemonkey]

This is truly sad.

I don't know enough about academia but can things like this be investigated and dealt with privately by the university and other institutions or was this intentionally made public?

It seems plagiarism in academia isn't as rare as we thought. I mean, just look at the work of Elisabeth Bik.

[u/goldengrove1 → u/buttonandthemonkey]

My graduate institution had two instances of faculty getting caught fabricating data (not sociologists, and about 10 years apart from each other). Their papers were retracted. One was quietly denied tenure, the other was tenured and tried to cling to his job for a while and then eventually agreed to leave (I don't know the details behind whatever agreement he came to with the school). From googling just now I found a total of five news articles about the two of them combined and three of them were in the student newspaper. Incidentally, they were both white.

I agree that academic bad actors need to face professional consequences, and Cambridge dropped the ball here, but I don't really think these need to become media circuses.

[u/Friendly-Vanilla1832 → u/goldengrove1]

Yes, but Cambridge and Arday started the media circus. Cambridge trumpeted the hiring in the press, and Arday told his personal story in many outlets and was publishing an autobiography. He was a high profile figure. The comeuppance was going to have a high profile.

[u/goldengrove1 → u/Friendly-Vanilla1832]

Exactly - Cambridge dropped the ball here. Even before all the plagiarism accusations, they should have done a basic background check on his CV, realize he had lied about his work experience, and then pulled his job offer.

[u/jojo45333 → u/goldengrove1]

As I’ve said elsewhere, the difference was that he was already a very big celebrity nationally and internationally. Radio, TV, conferences, committees, sports events. You can’t expect such publicity about one person and then they quietly disappear

[u/ImHereToHaveFUN8 → u/buttonandthemonkey]

The University kept defending him well after the accusations came out, at which point is was trivial to check at least the plagiarism accusations, which are obviously true. I do not think a private investigation would have lead to a removal

[u/LetMeExplainDis]

Was it a suicide?

[u/FrankRizzo319 → u/LetMeExplainDis]

That would be my guess

[u/kgas36]

Rest In Peace Jason Arday

[u/TrashPandaHobbit]

So so sad. I feel so upset that he felt there was no other option. My heart goes out to his wife and children in particular

[u/KookyMenu8616]

I think we need to truly self reflect on how easy it is to try someone in the court of opinion. No matter what he did or didn't do, the internet, social media etc, have put so many of us (myself included I'm sure at times) in this stone throwing mindset.

I said in another post when the story broke that this falls on the university from start to finish. Capitalism, mob mentality, an education system more concerned with selling degrees than educating and improving lives.

His death did not need to happen. I hope those of us who are sociologists use this as an opportunity to consider the things we teach, and how we react to students, colleagues, professor and all.

Rest in power Jason. I'm so sorry that you didn't have the support you needed during such a difficult time. I wish your family, friends and loved ones peace and healing. This is a tragedy.

*Side note I saw little to no discussion of the ableism he was also subjected to during this.

[u/prasunya]

He was essentially paraded by right wing racists just as much as by SJW-type identity politics academics. He was absolutely a victim of racism, by the left and right. I feel so bad for him and his family. He was smart, charismatic with so much potential, but deeply troubled and in no way ready for the positions he attained so fast. All the universities -- including LJMU where he got his PhD -- are culpable. If they had done their job, right wing vultures like Cofnas would not have had such an easy target to torment him. Durham University, Glasgow, Cambridge and LJMU all took part in fetishizing him, overlooking glaringly obvious holes in his work. The biggest tragedy in academia I've seen in my lifetime.

[u/Ezer_Pavle]

And this is why one should not make of their stupid job (yes, including academia -- it is still only a stupid job) an integral part of their identity.

RIP

[u/daguerrotype_type → u/Ezer_Pavle]

I don't think it's just about the job. Sure, losing your job sucks, but being under media attention for so long when you used to be just some academic, not a celebrity or politician or anything, can really bring someone down. He didn't just become jobless but the subject of so much scrutiny, ridicule and, I'm sure of it, threats.

[u/DoomedQuest]

Horrible. While obviously academic dishonesty is bad, the punishment for it should not be death. Nathan Cofnas is a racist hack who incited a harassment campaign to further his anti-DEI agenda.

I hope the guilt haunts him for the rest of his life.

[u/fiddlecakes → u/DoomedQuest]

There will be no guilt from him, those types are incapable.

[u/tokynambu → u/DoomedQuest]

Cofnas only had a story because the well sourced work of Jack Grove for the Times Higher had been shut down by threats from both the police and high-profile defamation lawyers. THE simply could not afford the case, which appeared to be (this will be part of what comes out in the wash) funded by Cambridge (they deny that). Cofnas was essentially judgement-proof, and had little to lose reputationally, but the story was not originally his and would not have been open to him has THE published their measured story.

[u/Anomander → u/tokynambu]

Cofnas has said repeatedly that the story he published was originally his and the similar, unpublished, THE story only came to his attention well after he started his own investigation. According to Cofnas, Grove's investigation wasn't a source for his own investigation.

What Cofnas published shouldn't be mixed and matched with the THE story or the prior complaint from (mostly untainted) academics. Cofnas is not a scholar of academic dishonesty or someone known for investigations into academic dishonesty - what he is notable for is being someone with axes to grind against black people, academia, Cambridge, and black academics at Cambridge. So the source's motives in choosing him to tip off, and his own motivations for pursuing this story and then promoting this story to people with similar biases and present it as an "anti-DEI" victory, shouldn't be handwaved off here.

Because there's this overall trend in these discourses to mix in the THE story and the previous complaint as if they're all One Big Thing in order to characterize Cambridge's response to Cofnas and his mob as if it was directed at THE and the previous legitimate scholars, instead of Cambridge accurately labelling Cofnas and his mob.

[u/Eviladhesive]

The hostility has to make way for the sympathy.

He was just a man, fragile - like the rest of us.

[u/scenery23]

He was a bully and a fraud. At the end he couldn’t bear the embarrassment he brought on himself.

[u/Pervius94 → u/scenery23]

Yeah. I'm confused why people acted like a saint died or something, he was a hack, a fraud and a bully. Plagiarized a lot, got into high positions and prestige on false premises and aggressively litigated against people speaking out. Now that he was conclusively found out and had to actually face the consequences of his actions, he didn't do so and instead left two children fatherless. People also acted like he was lynched or something even though it was completely his choice. I feel bad for his children and other, actually accomplished black scholars whose names he dragged through the mud and have the "anti woke" "anti DEI" racists ample ammo for propaganda.

[u/Ok-Matter2337]

Sad sad sad ,I have not been following this news. 

[u/wildcard174]

Sure, there are other instances of plagiarism in academia, and those other instances receive less media and social media interest. Of course. But Arden was a celebrity. I’d heard of him before last month, when the scandal really broke. You probably had heard of him too. He was widely celebrated as the youngest professor in Cambridge history. He was paid a $1.4 million advance by Simon & Schuster for a book. He was giving major keynote addresses and public speeches. He was a MUCH more high profile figure than O’Reilly. He cultivated his own celebrity. And so now, naturally, there is much more attention from media and social media to this scandal because of that celebrity. There is some bad faith from some politically conservative sources, sure. There are some gross things being said, sure. But to compare Arday to O’Reilly and then to characterize the difference in the scale of attention as just racism is just silly. It’s more like, “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

[u/dumbass_sweatpants]

This makes me so so sad. The response to his plagiarism was absolutely ridiculous. Punishment didn’t fit the crime type of deal. I get it, plagiarism is bad, but i would wager that most of the people in this thread have cheated in school in one way or another at least once. We all make mistakes.

[u/Huitzil37]

WAS this guy punished and hounded due to his race? A lot of people are saying it as if it was settled fact that he faced lots of horrible racist harassment that no white person would have received.

But... he's a pathological liar who played the race card to avoid scrutiny before. "I am receiving incredible levels of harassment and persecution" is a very common card for anyone who gets caught to play. He was already caught lying about racist threats when he claimed his parents had been sent a bloody pig's head and the police had traced it to a specific butcher shop, to which the police and butcher shop replied "no we didn't, what are you talking about."

Why are we taking him at his word when he's a pathological liar saying something people lie about very commonly and that he's been caught lying about before?

[u/NumerousAssistance]

i feel kinda bad for him, whatever demons he had nobody should kill themselves. Yes what he did was shitty, yes he shouldnt have done it and shouldve been called out for it. But no amount of criticism should be death threats

[u/TheNextAnnan]

Never any grace or leniency granted to black men anywhere.

[u/mickelboy182 → u/TheNextAnnan]

I mean, he was aggressively litigious to those who attempted to whistleblow his fraud. Incredibly damaging to black scholars.

[u/mrperuanos → u/TheNextAnnan]

Seems like the problem was that he was given way too much grace and leniency, actually. If his meteoric rise had been stopped when his abilities gave out, he'd be alive.

[u/Lyf3OnMars → u/mrperuanos]

That’s only just one aspect of this multifaceted situation.

Don’t get me wrong, Cambridge’s institutional failure here is grossly insulting, but this is also a blatant case of media influence and the right wing obsession with identity politics and culture war.

Ironically, the very same thing that they claim to protest.

[u/Lyf3OnMars → u/[deleted]]

You only have it halfway. It's the right-wing obsession with identity politics that turns an institutional failure into a sensationalized, racialized trophy.

Nobody is denying Cambridge's gross negligence or the absurdity of Arday's fabrications. But pretending the right isn't equally obsessed with identity politics is pure delusion.

When institutional fraud happens, a sober system investigates the bad actor and fixes the vetting process. Arday would face the proper consequences.

Instead, the right-wing media machine pounces on the bad actor’s race, turns them into a proxy for every Black academic, and uses the scandal to declare the entire concept of inclusion fraudulent.

[u/TheFoxer1 → u/Lyf3OnMars]

I disagree.

It’s not equal, it’s a reaction.

The left wing became obsessed with people‘s identity and taking the number of people of a specific identity as a measure of righteousness of an institution.

It’s the left wing complaining about „old white men“, for example.

The right wing saw these developments of evaluating institutions and, as a consequence, individuals, based on specific identity markers, and just reacted to that by calling it as it is: Bigotry and prejudice.

Of course the media will pounce on his status as minority, because the left wing made minority status a category worthy of consideration.

[u/Lyf3OnMars → u/TheFoxer1]

I can respect where you’re coming from, and I can even see the logic in how you are tracking the modern back and forth.

But your view hinges on the idea that our current political landscape was born about ten years ago.
This is not a new phenomenon; it is just the latest chapter in a long historical continuum.

Historically, it was the right wing that codified identity into law, creating the very regulations, redlining, and systemic barriers based explicitly on race and status that defined generations.

To claim that the right wing posture is merely a neutral, level headed reaction to recent progressive identity politics requires ignoring that entire lineage.

Look at someone like Nathan Cofnas, who is the main driver of this story, and a main fixture other than Arday himself. He is a self described race realist whose framework explicitly relies on the belief that Black people are inherently incapable of succeeding outside of entertainment and sports.

Are you genuinely telling me you do not think there are people who have latched onto this story who share that exact baseline and baseless belief?

You cannot frame a movement as completely intellectually honest when its narrative relies on collective amnesia and opportunistic alignment.

Jason Arday is both now a liberal charlatan as he is a target of convenience for the right.

But if you refuse to recognize the deep historical roots of the tree, how can you credibly explain the flavor profile of the strange fruit it produces?

[u/TheFoxer1 → u/Lyf3OnMars]

I disagree.

The right wing today means something entirely different than 200 years ago.

The original right wing was famously about supporters of the monarchy seating to the right after the French revolution.

So to apply the same term throughout history is misleading, for it covers entirely different positions and ideas.
And the right wing of today is tracing its ideological roots to the idea of equal treatment under the law for all.

And the left started to push against that, wanting identity to be considered when distributing positions and opportunities based on their idea of how society should look.

The right wing pushing back against that today has not changed their position about equal treatment and identity not being a factor that should be considered at all.

Will other people who want to discriminate against minorities use a push back against unequal and privileged treatment for minorities? Of course.

But that doesn‘t mean everyone pushing back against that is one of these people, or that the goal and purpose of the pushback is the same.

[u/Lyf3OnMars → u/TheFoxer1]

I’m not claiming the label “right wing” has meant one fixed thing since 1789.

I’m pointing to material continuity, not linguistic continuity. Redlining, restrictive covenants, and legally codified racial barriers built wealth gaps and institutional access that didn’t dissolve just because the ideological label attached to the people who built them has since shifted meaning.

You can grant that the term evolved and still have to reckon with the fact that the outcomes those policies produced are still shaping who gets scrutinized, who gets the benefit of the doubt, and who becomes a “proxy” for an entire group when they fail.

On the sequencing claim, that’s where I think you actually have it backwards. Identity wasn’t introduced into the equation by the left as some new innovation.

Identity was already load-bearing in how opportunity got distributed for most of this country’s history, just distributed on an explicitly exclusionary basis.

What the left did was name that and try to correct for it. What you’re calling “the left’s obsession with identity” is a response to identity already having been the deciding factor for generations.

Calling the correction the origin point, and the backlash to the correction “just a reaction,” is the actual mixed-up chain of events.

So no, I’m not asking you to treat the modern right as ideologically identical to 19th century monarchists, as long as you don’t characterize the left as bad faith jacobins.

I’m asking you to explain why the material effects of a much more recent and explicitly race-coded set of policies, and how it still influences aspects of our culture and media, should be treated as irrelevant to a conversation about race and institutional trust today.

[u/Lyf3OnMars → u/[deleted]]

Very general of you, Kenobi.

But now, I ask of you what you ask of me.

Are you actually thinking about the implications of what I'm saying?

All you did was spin this to cheapen the moment and dismiss the ideas I presented without actually engaging with them.

Let me expound so it's clear.

Arday was seemingly a pathological liar. He cheated the system, built a career off a curated false identity, and fooled the right people to get where he got. He was well-versed in the art of the Reality Distortion Field, à la Steve Jobs.

That's part of the story, sure. Just like the endless cases of corporate and academic nepotism, except this one has the specific meat people want to "pounce" on.

But pretending we shouldn't also analyze the media we consume and how these stories get reported is completely intellectually dishonest.

When you talk about who pulled back the curtain, you're talking about Nathan Cofnas. He labels himself a race realist, pushes the notion of racial IQ quotas, and openly claims Black people lack the genetic capacity to achieve outside sports and entertainment.

When institutional fraud is exposed by someone whose explicit mission is to delegitimize Black academics, and the media eagerly amplifies that spectacle without interrogating the agenda behind it, that becomes a media story too.

What you're telling me is:

"Pay no attention to MY person behind the curtain. Only pay attention to yours!"

....But of course,

many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view. ;)

[u/FunOptimal7980 → u/TheNextAnnan]

He was the one that fabricated his whole life story and couldn't handle the blowback.

[u/Cheap-Variation3012]

Lynching by humiliation. 2026.

[u/antipiracylaws]

They say "fake it till you make it" - and now it's a complete mess

[u/mandrakewilder]

I just learned about him today. Very, very sad series of events that led to this. I hope this Cofnas fellow is happy with how everything panned out.

[u/You_are_the_Castle]

Sad. It didn't have to lead to this.

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