Merged Arday life and death

[Planigale]

Unfortunately for those who chose to defend Arday AND attack those who raised concerns as racists it appears that not only was much of his research plagiarised, but some of it was fraudulent.

White people shouldn't feel inhibited from raising concerns / whistleblowing about coloured people because that will be seen as being racist. But that is the consequence of the attacks on their intent in raising concerns.

This is the same issue that led to the Asian grooming gangs being unchallenged for too long. Perhaps why Al Fayed and brothers got away with trafficking and exploiting women.

ETA
If his research was fraudulent and that was why he obtained a chair at Cambridge that may have been a criminal act. Given he has died, I suspect the police will not investigate, but Cambridge should audit his research records, and interview his co-authors.

 

[smartcooky]

Unfortunately for those who chose to defend Arday AND attack those who raised concerns as racists it appears that not only was much of his research plagiarised, but some of it was fraudulent.

White people shouldn't feel inhibited from raising concerns / whistleblowing about coloured people because that will be seen as being racist. But that is the consequence of the attacks on their intent in raising concerns.

This is the same issue that led to the Asian grooming gangs being unchallenged for too long. Perhaps why Al Fayed and brothers got away with trafficking and exploiting women.

ETA
If his research was fraudulent and that was why he obtained a chair at Cambridge that may have been a criminal act. Given he has died, I suspect the police will not investigate, but Cambridge should audit his research records, and interview his co-authors.

I agree.

Cambridge should make every effort to learn from this debacle in order to lessen the chance of this happening in future. However, I feel there is no appetite for it. Cambridge is part of the ideological wokerati... I think they will just go through the motions and tie this off as quickly as they can.

 

[dann]

Jonathan Howard on bsky, Aug 28, 2026
Harvard professors Stephen Pinker and Jeffrey Flier are really meeting the moment, calling out the grave threats to universities and scholarship- a NEJM editorial they didn’t like about Jason Arday. Really great of them to use their voice this way at this moment.

 

[Rolfe]

I saw the same article being lambasted on Twitter. I couldn't get more than a couple of paragraphs into it. It was absolute twaddle.

 

[Planigale]

I saw the same article being lambasted on Twitter. I couldn't get more than a couple of paragraphs into it. It was absolute twaddle.

I think this was probably a visceral response without looking into the facts. Like so many she mentions Cofas who does have outlying views that could be regarded as racist without understanding he was effectively the last on the scene. Others had tried to raise the issue quietly and non-confrontationally but Arday response was to report them to the police and send a lawyer's letter.

It is partly Arday's fault everything escalated, and partly Cambridge's, it could have been going through a quiet internal review with little in the way of media involvement.

 

[Rolfe]

Cofnas, whatever his faults, was simply the one who went public and damn the consequences. Everybody else (right up to the Times Higher Education) who had come to the same conclusions was gagged by the police and/or Carter Ruck. Then once Cofnas had drawn back the curtain, others who knew what was really happening were emboldened, and it all snowballed.

 

[theprestige]

Sights are beginning to be turned on Hilary Cremin.

Revenge of the Blob: good teachers are under siege

Jolyon Maugham has a point. There is a need for an inquiry in the aftermath of Jason Arday’s tragic death. But, not for the first time, the Good Law Project director has identified the wrong target. It’s not the press that needs to be investigated and held to account. If newspapers and...

spectator.com

(Reader View works.)

View attachment 75170

Your Hideous Strength reference got me thinking. Maybe Arday wasn't really an EDI hire. Maybe he was a postmodern hire. Maybe his skin color was only an incidental consideration.

And yes, I'm being serious.

 

[Rolfe]

By Jove, Jeeves, I think you've got it!

 

[Ziggurat]

Maybe Arday wasn't really an EDI hire. Maybe he was a postmodern hire.

I'm entirely willing to believe that.

It isn't actually any better if he was.

 

[smartcooky]

Your Hideous Strength reference got me thinking. Maybe Arday wasn't really an EDI hire. Maybe he was a postmodern hire. Maybe his skin color was only an incidental consideration.

And yes, I'm being serious.

I'm entirely willing to believe that.

It isn't actually any better if he was.

Unsurprising. The link between postmodernism and EDI/DEI is strong
Michel Foucault claimed that knowledge and language are linked to the power embedded in everyday language and culture, i.e. the policing of pronouns, microaggressions and inclusive jargon. EDI/DEI looks to move and invoke this very power, just as Foucault described.

 

[a_unique_person]

That all sounds like so much philosophical claptrap to me .. My American friend from Show Me Country would call it "just a bunch of hooey".

These elite institutions have spent 100s of years becoming elite and prestigious, only to throw it all away for the sake of woke ideology in less than a couple of decades.

I've even heard there's this really dumb white guy who got an economics science degree from an Ivy League University once. How did that happen?

 

[smartcooky]

I've even heard there's this really dumb white guy who got an economics science degree from an Ivy League University once. How did that happen?

Did he lie about his upbringing?
Did he make exaggerated, outrageous and false claims about his feats of athleticism?
Did make bogus claims about raising millions of £/$ for charity?
Did he falsely claim that he did work in foreign countries for charity organizations?
Did he plagiarize the thesis of another degree candidate?
Did he copy large swathes of others' work and claim it to be his own?

No?

Then where's the problem?

 

[a_unique_person]

Did he lie about his upbringing?
Did he make exaggerated, outrageous and false claims about his feats of athleticism?
Did make bogus claims about raising millions of £/$ for charity?
Did he falsely claim that he did work in foreign countries for charity organizations?
Did he plagiarize the thesis of another degree candidate?
Did he copy large swathes of others' work and claim it to be his own?

No?

Then where's the problem?

He lies all the time including about his athletic achievements. He should never have got in to the course list let alone graduate. He's not the only one. Numerous rich kids get a pass and everyone knows it.
He's got idiots on his team who are supposed to be University lecturers who are as dumb as him at economics.

 

[smartcooky]

He lies all the time including about his athletic achievements. He should never have got in to the course list let alone graduate. He's not the only one. Numerous rich kids get a pass and everyone knows it.
He's got idiots on his team who are supposed to be University lecturers who are as dumb as him at economics.

Then investigate him. If you find something dodgy, publish it.

 

[angrysoba]

Unsurprising. The link between postmodernism and EDI/DEI is strong
Michel Foucault claimed that knowledge and language are linked to the power embedded in everyday language and culture, i.e. the policing of pronouns, microaggressions and inclusive jargon. EDI/DEI looks to move and invoke this very power, just as Foucault described.

Huh? This is gibberish. Foucault died in the mid-80s. He said nothing at all about pronouns, microaggressions and inclusive jargon. To the extent he talked about institutional power, you may as well say his claims could be equally applied as critical of DEI etc... I wouldn't be surprised if someone has.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Unfortunately for those who chose to defend Arday AND attack those who raised concerns as racists it appears that not only was much of his research plagiarised, but some of it was fraudulent.

White people shouldn't feel inhibited from raising concerns / whistleblowing about coloured people because that will be seen as being racist. But that is the consequence of the attacks on their intent in raising concerns.

This is the same issue that led to the Asian grooming gangs being unchallenged for too long. Perhaps why Al Fayed and brothers got away with trafficking and exploiting women.

ETA
If his research was fraudulent and that was why he obtained a chair at Cambridge that may have been a criminal act. Given he has died, I suspect the police will not investigate, but Cambridge should audit his research records, and interview his co-authors.

Equally it doesn't cancel the fact that Cofnas is a racist who's made it his life's work to get as many non-cis-het white males out of academia as he can.

The main source of the claims against Arday are a big reason why they were ignored for so long.

 

[Rolfe]

This is completely back to front. The people who originally raised concerns about Arday were silenced by internal institutional pressure, police complaints about harassment and intimidating legal letters from a heavyweight (and very expensive) reputational management law firm.

Subsequent to that, Cofnas picked up on the issue. He published the facts on his blog, and once that had happened the other parties came out of the woodwork and gave voice to their concerns too. That's why it seemed to become a sudden pile-on.

There was no period where people were saying, well this is just Cofnas, ignore it. On the contrary, Times Higher Education was all set to go with an article about Arday's transgressions well before Cofnas became involved, but spiked it when Arday paid Carter Ruck to write a threatening letter and reported the journalist concerned to the police. Which resulted in him being the subject of a months-long police investigation.

The whole thing was simmering under the surface for two or three years, but Arday (aided by Cremin and the rest of his fan club) managed to keep the lid on it until Cofnas finally published his article.

 

[theprestige]

Equally it doesn't cancel the fact that Cofnas is a racist who's made it his life's work to get as many non-cis-het white males out of academia as he can.

The main source of the claims against Arday are a big reason why they were ignored for so long.

LOL. Calm down. Nobody's trying to rehabilitate Cofnas' reputation.

Attacking Cofnas is not the play, here. It just makes it look like you're part of the problem.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

In support of Rolfe's point: people warned Cambridge about Arday since 2023. Cofnas didn't even get into it until July 2026. Arday was found dead the next month. That's not enough time to count as "for so long."

 

[Rolfe]

It's amazing the way some people will imagine a scenario that suits their prejudices and then simply announce that that's what happened.