Jason Arday, Cambridge professor: too good to fact-check
Jason Arday’s story was always unbelievable. But if you want to believe, you better not look too deeply into it, because you might be sorely disappointed.
Arday became the youngest black professor at Cambridge. But he seems to not only have been guilty of plagiarism but also of a series of lies that sound preposterous:
We have a fantasist in an environment where, for political and social status reasons, everyone takes his claims at face value, or pretends that they do because to express doubt would be to invite unwanted attention. In such fertile ground the fantasist’s claims (which he continues to deny fabricating) inevitably become increasingly outlandish – epic marathon runs, prophetic blessings, an appearance in a television programme that began 20 years before he was born – because he is increasingly secure that they will never be questioned. This is what inevitably occurs when a fantasist encounters people who want, for whatever reason, to believe his fantasies. …
Such scandals can often be mistaken optimistically for an end to the whole shebang of progressive nonsense – for who could ever take them seriously again? But the roots of progressivism are too deeply embedded in the soil of public life. These hilarious exposures – see also Jussie Smollett – are not strong enough to dislodge them. The daring young man on the flying trapeze may fall to the ground with a splat, but the progressive circus is so big that it just moves on.
You can read some of Arday’s claims in this article from 2023. And you can find some of his debunked statements here. I think, however, that if checked, a great many other “facts” in his biography might be unsubstantiated as well.
Will Arday lose his position? Or will the wagons circle until the furor dies down, and will he remain?
Jason von Munchausen. It’s classic.
It’s the UK, so the narrative may prevail over the now-revealed facts.
Complex systems will not survive the competency crisis, an axiom Cambridge just proved.
I’ve seen some of the plagiarism accusations and have memory of some of the Claudine Gay stuff. In her case she could at least claim she neglected to attribute. But is directly copying multiple paragraphs of content really plagiarism? You can’t really even attribute, you’d get laughed at. Seems like we need another word.
And then there’s “a visiting professor at Ohio State” vs. “visited a professor at Ohio State”. “Don’t criticize him, he’s dyslectic” LOL. A complete train wreck.
It’s bigger than Cambridge. When this came out I went back to some of the original news stories that reported on his various accomplishments like the 30 days of marathons. For example, this one from 2010.
I could find no evidence that any basic reporting was done: no “who”, “what”, “when”, “where”, “why”. All the information in the articles was seemingly sourced only to Jason Arday and a representative of the fundraiser. No dates, locations, and times for these marathons, no quotes from any “supporters” or other marathon participants (he mentions there were about 50 other people), nothing, not even the name of the fish and chips shop where Arday celebrated, and the undated photo is Jason Arday standing around with some others in T-shirts with the charity’s logo in an unnamed location.
At the bottom it says:
What this illustrates is that news journalism has completely given up basic reporting. They are handed stories by people and they just run them. The only things they check up on at all are things they intend to discredit, and of course they do that selectively.
And this should, but won’t, make us very skeptical of pretty much anything we read on any topic whatever that’s reported in the news, how Iran is going, whatever. It won’t of course, that’s what Michael Crichton called “Gell-Mann amnesia”.
This Substack article goes into what was reported about Arday’s charity work when. It is extremely revealing. Most of us are just hearing about this guy now as it’s all falling apart, but he was on Good Morning America three years ago, for example. The media outlets reporting on him never even bothered to see what’s been reported about him in the past.
Ahh, Arday is a professor of “education”, a Leftist sinecure above all others. And he is black (not capitalized), so he is holy.
@ Niketas > “What this illustrates is that news journalism has completely given up basic reporting. They are handed stories by people and they just run them. The only things they check up on at all are things they intend to discredit, and of course they do that selectively.”
Now multiply that by all the LLMs that are being trained on this garbage and regurgitating it as fact. Do the AI algorithms even have a circuit for “these claims have been disputed”?
@AesopFan: Do the AI algorithms even have a circuit for “these claims have been disputed”?
In this case the media is in “now it can be told” mode. Or possibly “we’re all trying to find the guy who’s responsible” mode.
The LLMs will pick up on it because Regime Approved Sources have picked up on it.
It’s another indicator that faculties and administrations are shot-through with liars and frauds. The interesting question is, why is it so important to them to have these decorative pieces around that they pretend not to notice obvious yarn pulling and the reality that the papers he’s published use a nonsense methodology. (See Nathan Cofnas substack on this last point).
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We suffer in every occidental country from the low character of our professional-managerial bourgoisie, especially those in institutional management.
Western Academia, at all levels is filled with DEI hires. A society that chooses virtue signaling over merit is a society committing civilizational suicide in slow motion. Effectively complying with the Left’s ‘message’, one long promulgated in the mass media, academia and most of all in grade schools… that the only way that Western societies can ‘atone’ for their ancestral ‘sins’ is through civilizational suicide.
Arday is a professor of “education”
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Supposedly a sociologist for whom schools are a research subject. See Cofnas on the content of his papers.
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The social research disciplines are more and more dominated by people whose business is narrative manufacture and maintenance.
Western Academia, at all levels is filled with DEI hires.
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The DEI hires are embarrassing, but often the ordinary hires stink too. Non-quantitative sociology, cultural anthropology, American history, studio art, non-quantitative geography, teacher training programs, social work programs, library administration programs. Bleeech.
Arday has now resigned.
https://nypost.com/2026/08/05/us-news/cambridge-professor-jason-arday-accused-of-plagiarism-resigns/?utm_campaign=nypost&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
Good, good good Kate!
It sounds as if he finally resigned because Cambridge itself was investigating him — the fact that he lied about publishing two entire books was a bridge too far. (That’s in addition to him claiming academic appointments he didn’t actually have and university degrees he didn’t actually earn — not to mention the lies about his athletic achievements and raising money for charity.)
Of course, if it weren’t for the plagiarism, no one would ever have bothered looking into the multiple falsehoods about his life and career. So in some ways, he was just unlucky — if AI had been available earlier in his career, it would have made it much easier for him to rewrite the plagiarized material so it was more difficult to detect. (Or he could have just gotten AI to make up the data and write his papers for him, which I guarantee a large number of academics are doing now.)
If he had been capable of rewriting the material, TR. It’s not clear he was. An update at the Instapundit says analysis indicates his letter of resignation was AI-written.
Not to worry.
Harvard will offer him immediate tenure.
That is, if Yale or Columbia doesn’t sweep him up first…
There’ll be the usual book deals, kids’ mascots and action characters together with video games on how to best screw the system.
No doubt, Christopher Nolan’s planning an interactive biopic as we speak…
Nope, wouldn’t worry.
This fabulous fabulist is set for life.
There’s a strong rumor his resignation letter is Ai generated.Kate beat me to it.
In my twenties I trained for a marathon. I got as far as 7:45 min/mile for ten miles. Not bad. Then I discovered I had blown out my ACL in high school PE so a marathon wasn’t happening without surgery and a lot of PT.
In any event I know that running a marathon is serious business involving genetic endowment and much serious training.
When I read Arday’s blithe claims that he had run 30 marathons in 35 days and 600 miles in six days, I knew he was a BS artist and no one had bothered to check.
Throw in his charity claims and not being able to read and write until he was 18, and it was obvious Arday was in total fabulist territory.
The University of Cambridge will be shamed, but I doubt enough to change.
Kate beat me to it.
He ran 600 miles in six days? That sounds like back to back to back to back ultramarathons.
Nope.
Just goes to show how formidable the shield of DEI is in rue Brittania.
But the woke have no shame.
At least he didn’t claim that he had long jumped across the English Channel. That would have been stealing a skit from Monty Python.
From NotTheBee:
https://notthebee.com/article/british-cops-tell-journalist-to-stop-questioning-cambridge-prof-accused-of-plagiarism-because-it-was-hurting-his-mental-health
Did anyone supposedly “vetting” this clown even lay out the timeline of his supposed life and accomplishments to see if it held together, and made sense, read through his biography, his thesis, his paperwork, the things he claimed to have written, his CV, made a few calls, checked to see if he actually attended the institutions he said he did, got the degrees he claimed to have earned, taught where he said he taught, ran the fantastic number of marathons he claimed to have run–in succession–been autistic, and unable to read until he was a teenager–do even a cursory check of any of this?
Or, did they only pretend to actually “vet” him, his skin color and presentability sufficient, trumping all, and generating the freest of free passes?
The only thing “world class” about Cambridge after this massive “beclowning” is the beclowning itself, as the obviously easily gulled leaders of Cambridge–wokeness overcoming any possible common sense and any “bull shit meters” they might have formerly possessed–very concretely and publicly demonstrated far less common sense and skepticism than the average working man, musing over a Pint in any pub in England.
Everyone involved in hiring, praising, and elevating this all too obvious charlatan should hide their heads in shame–slink along in the shadows of the supposedly “hallowed halls.”
But, of course. they won’t, and, my guess is that, inside the University, they will probably pay no price at all.
I’m sure all involved hope that this whole sorry incident will just be shoved down the “memory hole,” and soon forgotten but, I bet, the stench of this whole affair will linger, and “perfume” the air of the once mighty Cambridge University.
I am sure that Cambridge still contains many excellent, competent, and learned scholars who do serious and important work but, after this major fiasco, as Cambridge has so publicly demonstrated, it looks like its headed into clown car territory.
Everyone involved in hiring, praising, and elevating this all too obvious charlatan should hide their heads in shame–slink along in the shadows of the supposedly “hallowed halls.”
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Again, our professional-managerial class is shot through with liars and frauds, and the faculty and administration in higher ed may be the worst of all.
Occam might say that they were simply unwilling to be automatically—and loudly—labeled “RACIST” by their colleagues and friends, students and journee—and/or the usual bad actors.
They may well have reasoned, “Is calling the dreadlocked emperor NAKED worth losing everything I’ve worked for over the past [fill in the number] years?
(Or maybe just maybe, through eyes wide shut, they WERE in fact able to see the emperor’s glorious, luxuriant robes…)
What would we do?
“…who could ever take them seriously again?…”
“…The dog returns to his vomit, and the sow returns to the mire,
and the burnt fools bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the fire…”
Rudyard Kipling, The Gods of the Copybook Headings
Certainly not base a multi-year meadia smog machine on it like the 1619 Project.