Thanks for the correction.
Personally I do think it was his (claimed) life outside of academia that swung it for him. And I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with that, often you are making marginal decisions when recruiting so you need to look beyond the academic qualifications, you are looking for what someone can bring to the role and given what we know he could spin a good yarn. If he'd only claimed half the things he later claimed during the recruitment process I can see why Cambridge employed him.
The only issue I think that has any legs in this tragic story is whether Cambridge applied an appropriate level of due diligence or not, and what is the appropriate level of due diligence for such a role.
Here's my view of the situation, and why it lands strongly for me. This is my opinion, nobody else is obligated to share it.
It's a perfect ◊◊◊◊ storm. One one hand, you've got a prestigious school which has historically had very rigorous standards for both their students and their professors. That school is experiencing pressure from many different directions who wish the school to diversify its racial composition, on the assumption that a difference in outcomes is evidence of a difference in opportunity. That's one of the fundamental implicit assumptions behind DEI and it's underlying premise of intersectionality - that some people have privileges just for existing that are denied to others, based on an unspoken constellation of presumed oppressions. So Cambridge folds to this pressure, and limits their pool of applicants to non-white applicants... and the more difficult the background of that applicant, the better for Cambridge. While I admit it's faintly possible that the only applicants were racial minorities, I find it implausible. The fact that all three of their finalists were non-white suggests (but does not prove) that Cambridge was placing race at the top of the list of what they were looking for in a professor.
Now - that right there is a problem for me. I don't think that a person's race should be a sought-after characteristic in a professor. I don't think that white professors are innately better at teaching than black professors, and I don't think the opposite is true either. I think that skin color should not be a consideration at all - neither for nor against. For a while, there was an argument to be made that race had been used as a demerit for hiring and promotion, and that there needed to be an effort to overcome that discrimination in order to demonstrate that skin color was irrelevant to capability. But that was 60 years ago - two generations in the past. At this point, I don't think that's a material driver outside of very rare cases. I don't think there's some great barrier of racism that still needs to be overcome - and I say this as someone who has lived in eight different states, worked in multiple industries at varied levels across many years, and comes from a mixed race family. I've been watching and looking and seeing this my whole life, and it just isn't there. I've never seen or even suspected that someone's race was being used to exclude them from a role they were otherwise qualified for.
On the other hand, you've got a person with an arguably mediocre (or at least not stellar) academic background. Someone who relates the perfect bait for Cambridge - a black autistic person who has overcome monumental challenges to rise to the top in life. Academically Arday wasn't bad, but wasn't great. But the back story! Oh my, that's the exact kind of "get out of diversity jail free card" that Cambridge needed. The problem is that the back story itself is pretty unbelievable, and full of holes. This is someone who tells us that they were severely autistic to the point of being nonverbal and unable to read... but was still in regular public school (or whatever term you brits use) with neurotypical kids throughout their elementary school years. That right there is highly unlikely, and would be a severe departure from the supports that autistic children with special needs are provided. According to Arday, they started talking at age 11... but was still unable to read until age 18. That's all the way through middle and high school... and again, that's a normal high school full of normal kids, where they presumably passed all of their classes and exams despite not being able to read? Go ahead and pull the other one.
On the gripping hand, Cambridge helped prop Arday up, helped put them in the limelight, and centered them as an academic celebrity of sorts. Arday gladly leaned into that.
And the result is that Cambridge is complicit in reducing trust in academic institutions as well as eroding trust in minority academics across the board.
Arday was not truthful. It may have been intentional self-aggrandizement with no consideration for the fallout. It may have been pathological mythomania. I don't know, and realistically it's not relevant to my perspective on this. Whether Arday was a pathological liar, delusional, or just a shill doesn't actually alter my view, except perhaps to the degree of sympathy I feel toward them.
My issue is with the culture that has promoted race as an important and impactful characteristic of a person that is elevated above merit and skill, paired with a university who caved to that cultural pressure to the extent that they would promote and laud a middling and disingenuous person in order to assuage that pressure despite the clear and obvious risk to their own very valuable reputation, as well as the impact such an action has on all other minority academics.
Arday I could give or take. Obviously they were full of crap regardless of intention. And clearly they were mentally ill in some fashion or other. it's unfortunate that they committed suicide, and their remaining family has my sympathy.
But Cambridge, and the culture that caused this, has my full ire.
Okay, most of my ire - because some is reserved for those people who absolutely insist on defending Arday and pretending that they were truthful and honest and deserving of accolades, and that neither Arday nor Cambridge did anything wrong... simply because of Arday's skin color. That is a degree of posturing for social virtue points that I find exasperatingly embarrassing and damaging.
