Nellie Bowles has fun with Arday story

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I’m sure one day, elite institutions will not allow themselves to be conned so thoroughly by hustlers that everyone, including the con man, is humiliated. Today is not that day.

Jason Arday—professor of sociology of education at the University of Cambridge, the youngest ever black professor there—has resigned amid scandal, and it is a doozy, folks. He appears to have been a serial fabulist of the classic variety, but because he was black and had beautiful dreadlocks that fell below his hips, everyone around him just took what he said as The Truth.

Those who looked askance at Arday and his dumbfounding achievements were clearly jealous and motivated by bigotry. It was the easiest, silliest con of all time. His story began to unravel with simple plagiarism claims, which I didn’t care about last week because all sociology professors just copy-paste their fake studies, back and forth. For me, it doesn’t matter if “A history of the London fashion scene through a transracial lens, 1914–1916” was plagiarized because it actually doesn’t matter at all. But this week things escalated: First, it looks like Arday truly just invented his research, and quite clumsily (read this from a University of Toronto professor digging through it, or this from the UK Times). Then it snowballed.

People started looking into his super believable bio: He says he has autism and didn’t speak until he was 11, then at 18 he learned to read and write and went to university. Seems odd. Kind of miraculous. The claims go on. He says he did volunteer work overseas for a particular water charity (the charity says it never sends volunteers abroad). He says he ran 600 miles between Edinburgh and London in six days. Oh! Also that he ran 30 marathons in 35 days, adding that he did the last nine marathons on a broken leg. Right. Prior to his Cambridge appointment, he claimed he was a visiting professor at the University of Glasgow, Ohio State University, and an honorary professor at Durham University. All of these institutions have denied that he held such positions. The man is freestyling extracurriculars. The list goes on. Was he even a mute? How much of this is a lie? And how come I had never heard of Arday, who is apparently one of the most accomplished athletes of all time?

When people started to question all this, the defenses were robust, with a group of famous professors, politicians, and other luminaries writing indignantly: “We stand in unwavering solidarity with Professor Arday. We call on universities not only to defend academic freedom and robust scholarship, but also to confront racism wherever it manifests itself, whether overtly or through persistent attempts to discredit exceptional Black academics.” I’m not sure you want to stake all of black academics on Jason Arday and these broken-leg marathons.

In the perfect British escalation, police investigated an education reporter who had simply emailed Arday normal questions. They told him not to contact Arday. I’m dead serious. Jack Grove, a reporter for Times Higher Education, had emailed Arday about the plagiarism allegations. Here’s what Jack says happened to him:

The officer told me that I shouldn’t contact Professor Arday again because his mental health had been affected by my actions. I asked him what I had done, and he said there had been online posts about Professor Arday. I said I’d never posted anything about him and asked him if he realized he was speaking to a journalist who was investigating a story. He didn’t really respond but repeated his request for me not to contact Professor Arday again, citing his mental health.

Probably someone was bleeding out on the sidewalk while this bobby made a call to tell a reporter to please stop reporting before someone’s feelings get hurt. Arday eventually resigned, citing simply “the relentless accusations, speculation, and public commentary.” But his rise tells you everything you need to know. Academics are so hungry to appear in good standing progressively that they will humiliate their universities and themselves. None of the people who blindly promoted this fabulist will suffer career repercussions. Only because it really was so egregious did any of it stick. Think about all the half-fabulists! The people who ran only 300 miles between Edinburgh and Birmingham in six days! Arday, it was a good run.

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