I don’t blame them; his professorship was a scam for which the university is responsible. It showed a mindboggling absence of due diligence.

Apparently Arday was a tough grader, too:

A number of Mr Arday’s former students have complained that they received lower grades than expected after “inadequate” supervision by the professor. In one case, a student who asked to change supervisor was accused of being racist.

Separately, Prof Deborah Prentice, the university’s vice-chancellor, is facing demands to refund the tuition fees of students who were taught by Mr Arday after they were “deceived about the nature of their education”.

A mass refund or large-scale retrospective grade changes would be unprecedented in the university’s 800-year history.

I would be nice if they had to give refunds out of their own salaries, but that will never happen. I actually don’t think any refunds will happen, although every student Arday taught should get a pro-rated one. If not, his former students should sue the university for some cause of action involving fraud.

It would be a fitting logical consequence if Cambridge was made to pay, but although that probably will not happen in the monetary sense, I think it’s already happened in terms of the school’s reputation. Also, not only Arday should be losing a job over this. It could start with these two ladies:

Prof Prentice is also facing criticism for failing to grip the crisis engulfing the university, which has damaged its reputation on the international stage. The academics have accused the £507,000-a-year leader of the university of “inaction”, having made no public comments since The Telegraph first reported on the plagiarism row around Mr Arday a fortnight ago. He has now resigned.

It has also emerged that when Cambridge was sent fresh evidence of Mr Arday’s alleged plagiarism last year – having first been alerted to it in 2023 – the “responsible person” allocated to the case was Prof Hilary Cremin, the head of Mr Arday’s faculty who had told him he was “the best in the world” when he was hired.

Were they DEI hires as well? Both are white women; Prentice seems to have a conventional background in social psychology, whereas Cremin seems profoundly granola-esque.

Ann Coulter has pointed out the prevalence of women among Arday’s champions, boosters, and helpers:

All the people promoting Arday seem to be women – agents, editors, co-authors, professors:

Arday’s book editors—Dawn Davis and Kris Doyle

Eve Claxton – co-wrote the book with Arday

Jennifer Gates – Arday’s book agent

Prof. Hilary Cremlin – called Arday’s research, “the best in the world”

So his memoir was “co-written.” Interesting. The book supposedly got an advance of 1.4 million dollars (I wrote “supposedly” because, as far as I can tell, that’s based on Arday’s own report; and we know how reliable that is). Guess what? It’s going to be released anyway; my guess is that it may sell even better because of the notoriety:

Despite allegations against Arday, Simon & Schuster said earlier this week it was planning to go ahead with the publication of his memoir on 11 August in the US and 27 August in the UK. Simon & Schuster US told the Guardian on Thursday night it was “proceeding with the publication of Great and Unfortunate Things by Jason Arday as planned”.

In a previous interview with the Guardian, Arday said Simon & Schuster had offered 1.4m for the book in a “pre-empt”, a type of deal in which a publisher is so keen on a book they put in a high offer to take it off the table before it can go to auction. Arday did not specify whether the 1.4m figure was in pound sterling or US dollars. Simon & Schuster did not respond to a request to comment on the sum. …

One senior publisher said it was an utterly mad number, but that “madness sometimes happens”, so it was conceivable.

It seems that “madness” is happening more and more as time goes on.

The book’s title is Great and Unfortunate Things, which I think is nearly perfect as a description of the entire debacle – not that the book goes into that; I’m going to assume it does not. There’s also this great promotional material:

In comments reported by the Bookseller in April, Kris Doyle, the nonfiction publisher at Simon & Schuster UK, said: “I can promise you’ve never read a story like this – even the viral news headlines don’t do it justice.”

Arday’s lies were entirely egregious, and it doesn’t seem as though the simplest checks were brought to bear. There was totally and complete trust, a willingness to believe that was fervently intense, and a self-congratulatory glow for having done so.

Some of the Cambridge faculty seem to be angry and want an independent investigation:

The signatories want an independent investigation into the circumstances of Arday’s appointment, and any risk assessment made by the university’s management “when crafting a media narrative focusing on his youth, his race, and his transformative potential”.

It also wants details of the university’s handling of allegations of academic misconduct against Arday, including whether the university was involved in efforts to deter journalists from reporting on the allegations.

The university has denied supporting Arday’s efforts to stop publication of critical coverage in the Times Higher magazine last year, or funding his use of lawyers.

The signatories also call for an evaluation of the “enormous damage this episode has done to people of colour within and beyond the Cambridge academic community, and what can be done immediately to reassure them – and the wider public – that anti-racism and academic integrity at Cambridge are both essential and mutually reinforcing.”

It seems to me they want to have their cake and eat it too. Are “anti-racism and academic integrity both essential and mutually reinforcing”? Yes – if and only if the anti-racism is based on equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome.

Lastly, the more I think about the Arday case – and I’ve though about it a great deal – the more I think he wasn’t a DEI hire because of race alone. That was an element, of course. But I think the even-greater element in his story was his supposed profound autism and recovery to ascend the heights of intellectual thought. The two had a synergistic (shall we say intersectional?) effect, making him the perfect candidate for a university position based on sympathy, virtue-signaling, and wishful thinking.

[ADDENDUM: Some details on the complaints of some of Arday’s students:

Former Cambridge students who contacted The Telegraph complained that Mr Arday gave them minimal supervision, telling some they did not need supervision because they were so outstanding, only for them to get lower grades than predicted.

Interesting.]