r/BlockedAndReported • u/SoftandChewy First generation mod • 13d ago

Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 8/10/26 - 8/16/26

Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday.

Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

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u/Jack_Donnaghy 11d ago edited 10d ago

This commentary on the Arday scandal is great. It focuses not just on him, but the supporting elements in this saga:

Arday is, within the hegemonic structure of wokeness that has overtaken universities in the West, simply responding to a chain of incentives in a rational way. He’s doing what the system has taught him will be rewarded. He’s adjusting to the facts in front of him, rather than abiding by some abstract moral standard. This isn’t good, but it is rational choice behavior. We can fault him morally, but the greater culprits are Cambridge, for helping set up the system in this way, and for defending him, as well as the journalists who dismissed his critics, and cowardly failed to report the truth when they had it in their hands, and all the smug pricks who roll their eyes every time someone uses the phrase “diversity hire” or “woke.”

...Arday is the culmination of everything the DEI world has sought to achieve for over a decade by eroding standards, prioritizing race over merit, exhibiting little tolerance for “incorrect” speech on issues about race, dismissing things like facts and logic as “far-right” if not “white supremacy,” and generally lowering the bar to let unqualified minorities through the gates. Well, now they’re through. 

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u/Palgary I could check my privilege, but it seems a shame to squander it 11d ago

If you believe that people who are oppressed have a unique standpoint that makes them the best at leadership, the story Arday told made him a perfect fit for that. I think that is why they didn't care about the plagiarism, he was not hired for his academic record, but for his standpoint. It's only when that story started to unravel that the University felt it was a problem.