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.
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.