When Jason Arday became the youngest black professor in Cambridge’s history in 2023, he was “lionised by the academic world” and became a “poster boy for the university’s diversity drive”, said Gordon Rayner in The Daily Telegraph.
Then only 37, he had defied “almost impossible odds” to get there. Raised on a council estate in south London, he was diagnosed with autism at the age of three. He couldn’t speak until he was 11, and did not read or write until 18. Yet he’d managed to obtain a bachelor’s degree, followed by a PhD, and had gone on to forge a remarkable career in academia. Now, though, the sociology professor – who has tendered since his resignation as a fellow at Jesus College – is “the subject of a bitter row over plagiarism that has pitted his peers against each other”.
Long-standing concerns
His critics note that his PhD thesis contains passages that are strikingly similar to those in other academic papers. His defenders say that these were innocent errors, resulting from a lack of formal supervision when he was doing his PhD, and insufficient support for his complex learning disabilities. They say he cited the sources in question in his bibliography, but failed to do so within the text proper.
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Concerns about Arday’s work have circulated in academic circles for several years, said Jennifer Schuessler and Alexandra Alter in The New York Times. But they “exploded into public view” last month, when Nathan Cofnas, a self-defined “race realist” who was sacked from Cambridge in 2024, published a lengthy blogpost about them.
As journalists dug deeper, said Guy Adams in the Daily Mail, other aspects of Arday’s “Hollywood-style life story” were also called into question. For instance, doubts were cast about his claim to have raised £5.5 million for charity, including by running an astonishing 600 miles in six days. He has since said it was actually 12 days, and that the £5.5 million was a collective effort.
Fraught topic
“Academic integrity matters,” said Daniella Maison in The Independent. But Arday was officially cleared of plagiarism some years ago. That he is still being pursued over his PhD, and other achievements that are not even related to his job, suggest that legitimate scrutiny has shifted into something more “punitive”.
Yet leading academics told this paper that the scrutiny was “fair” for a professor at Cambridge, said Lanre Bakare in The Guardian. This is a fraught business, and the stakes are high for all concerned. The university – which appointed Arday at a time when its own track record on race was being scrutinised in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement – is facing questions about its judgement. As for Arday, he could lose his reputation, and his career.
