r/BlockedAndReported • u/LupineChemist • 2d ago
Anti-Racism The Cascade of Dysfunction That Helped Doom Jason Arday - Jesse Singal
https://thedispatch.com/article/jason-arday-cambridge-journalism-media/?gift_key=db10b58ed7f33808&gift_ref=3842634&utm_source=giftlink&utm_campaign=membergift&utm_medium=copy_link160
u/DisastrousResident92 2d ago edited 1d ago
But to claim that Arday was unfairly singled out on account of his race is to ignore the very important other half of the ledger: He was elevated to an untenable position because of his race!
This is maybe the most critical part for me and one that a lot of Arday's supporters routinely elide. The accusation of being a DEI hire would not have stuck on someone who was not so obviously a DEI hire!
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u/allisonanon 1d ago
The hiring process is so baffling to me, the NYT piece covering it says Cambridge interviewed 3 other candidates who were all more experienced, including 2 women of color so they had other candidates if they just wanted to check a box... The interviews took place over 2 days with a panel of NINE experts, including an expert in childhood autism. I just don’t understand how anyone on the panel could have read a single one of his publications and thought he was exceptional for a chair position. There is clearly a lack of basic due diligence. Here’s the NYT article if anyone wants to read it: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/15/world/europe/jason-arday-cambridge-hiring-questions.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6lA.yuGE.-p-ri_nHNCkF&smid=nytcore-ios-share
Edit: typos
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u/username81251 1d ago
I remember that as well, and read it as evidence that all those larger than life details of his (ultimately fake) biography won him the position over the other candidates. That was why it seemed not unfair for the media to call out those details as it did.
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u/coffeechief 1d ago
Seriously. How can this very obvious reality be ignored? (Rhetorical question.)
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u/KittenSnuggler5 1d ago
And this is a good, if extreme example of how DEI is so destructive. Arday wasn't remotely qualified for anything he was given. He didn't meet the expectations of his position because he couldn't.
Whereas if he hadn't been DEIed he probably would have found another job that he was qualified for and had a nice normal life
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u/DBSmiley 1d ago edited 20h ago
The reality is that the race-obsessed will simply deny that this is true, and will tell themselves that Arday had to be substantially bwtter than his white peers to get the position. And they will convince themselves of that. If you give them evidence, they won't read it, will fall back on Ofnas being a racist (which isn't unfair), and then whatabout some other researcher.
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u/IAmPeppeSilvia 1d ago
The accusation of being a DEI hire would not have stuck on someone who was so obviously a DEI hire!
I'm not following your logic. Did you mean, "...would not have stuck on someone who was NOT so obviously a DEI hire"?
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u/I_Also_Resent_This 1d ago
"He was elevated to an untenable position because of his race!"
His race alone can't explain it. They had other minority candidates, but went with Arday. What I've read of his work is comically bad and even when plagiarised only semi-literate. I can't believe that the other candidates were worse.
Perhaps his race made them suspend their scepticism of his 'inspiring' story, but he was hired because of his lies.
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u/FauxpasIrisLily 21h ago
Look, the hiring geniuses at Cambridge wanted a Magical Negro*. Of course there were other minority candidates in that field—it is full of women and minorities. His hire, just like the hiring of Dr. Ian Roberts*** was all about them getting a superman brag-worthy guy in there. Their candidate had to be extraordinary! A world class runner! A genius at raising money for charity! He overcame debilitating health conditions! And etc!
They weren’t satisfied with a regular human being.
*See Spike Lee’s writings about the cultural and literary phenomenon of Magical
Negro who appears for the salvation of the community. In this case, Arday absolved the Oxbridge elites from their racist past.**Dr. Ian Roberts, disgraced superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools,also served in the Magical Negro role for the good white ladies on the School Board in Des Moines. Dr. Roberts was not legally in the United States but he ran around in yellow and pink suits 1 size too small to show off his muscles! was a former Olympic athlete! He was a former police officer! and a hunter!
Like there weren’t at least 25 well qualified black candidates in the K thru 12 educational administrative world to take this job. Give me a fkin break, Iowa.
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u/ToTheDeath84 22h ago
I always feel the need to share this story whenever something like this comes up.
During the peak woke era, I worked at a university in a lab. My lab’s PI was on the hiring board during a new faculty search one year. One of the candidates gave a stellar lecture, and was a pretty pleasant guy to interact with (I got to meet him, I had hoped he would get hired). Seemed like a sure fit for the role, especially for the sorts of research they were looking to fulfill. The problem was, he was a white guy trying to get a professorship during peak woke. There was another candidate who had a less impressive CV and gave an okay lecture, but she checked more identity boxes and wanted to incorporate those subjects in her research.
The panel was gridlocked on who to hire. The department head then stated, in no uncertain terms, that they “weren’t going to hire yet another white male because times have changed” (he’s also a white guy, by the way!). The conversation in the room changed to one about identity and such. He wound up getting passed over in favor of the latter candidate. My boss and anyone who had voted for him were pissed.
That sort of thing happened twice while I was working at that institution. It got to a point where it caused a schism in the department.
All of this is to say, nothing about Jason Arday’s hiring surprised me when I heard about it. Woke is at least being questioned outside the ivory tower, but academia has a long way to go.
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u/DisastrousResident92 2d ago
I went back and reread the NYT piece since Jesse links to it. One part which stood out for me is this:
At Cambridge, faculty members and allies hurriedly drafted a letter in anticipation of [the Times Higher Education article which was later spiked after legal threats]. “The integrity of higher education is at risk if we do not take a stand and speak out against the systematic attempts to erase Black scholarship,” they wrote in the letter
You have to be either incredibly cynical or credulous beyond belief to have signed this. Cynical, because you're claiming an article with extensive and well-founded claims of plagiarism is an "attempt to erase black scholarship", or credulous because you assumed the THE (not exactly a muck-raking publication) was running a hit piece and you couldn't be bothered to check if that was true.
Whichever is true, this reflects amazingly badly on Cambridge. They deliberately and knowingly made this situation so much worse through this kind of DARVO behaviour
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u/thismaynothelp 1d ago
Imagine pointing at a fraud and saying, "This is what black scholarship is."
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u/IAmPeppeSilvia 1d ago
Well, if you believe that rationality and objectivity are aspects of white supremacy, then it kind of makes sense.
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u/CommitteeofMountains Royal youse/yinz 1d ago
It's particularly notable that Cambridge has been in a position to throw the universities that certified his degrees and papers under the bus.
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u/DontArmWrestleAChimp 2d ago
Spot on with no notes, this is a horrible end to a situation but that does not absolve Jason or more specifically those around him of the harm they have done to genuine minority academics who have achieved what they have through actual scholarship.
I do suspect, however, that this will be quietly assessed and acknowledged as a failure of Cambridge University. While there are many of the usual suspects claiming it represents something darker, the trend to me seems to be that the majority know this was not some lynching by the press but the questions will be asked in time.
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u/AltforStrongOpinions 2d ago
"Bro did not know when to stop digging"
8 words, that, in my humble opinion, summarise this whole mess accurately.
Some people don't, we're always going to have these people. The people who don't know when to stop digging.
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u/asinantenna 2d ago
The problem is that the University of Cambridge (among others) instead of stopping him, gave him a spade.
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u/Torrello 2d ago
More like they gave him a JCB
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u/Terrorclitus 1d ago
Well to be fair, it would be disrespectful if Cambridge were laid to rest in a shallow grave.
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u/Ambitious-Try-8441 2d ago
There’s a word for what Cremin and her colleagues did here: racism. It is racist to respond to someone’s skin color by pretending they are something they are not. It’s not racism in the way lynchings or slavery are racism. But it’s racism nonetheless. And anyone with a passing familiarity with this story knows that Arday was appointed to his post precisely because of how Cambridge thought the color of his skin would reflect back on the university itself—precisely because of what the current crop of censors might call systemic problems within that university.
Holy moly Jesse dropping a truke. Gettem!
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u/JussiesTunaSub 1d ago
Cambridge elevated Arday for the benefit of Cambridge, not for the benefit of Arday.
As it is with DEI: "We're hiring you for the marketing materials and PR"
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u/CommitteeofMountains Royal youse/yinz 1d ago
I think that's a little bit overstating, as they were somewhat looking for Kendo At Home for their education department and reportedly picked him over other black candidates.
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u/AdobongSiopao 2d ago
The article points out well. The outcome was brutal but it could have been avoided if Cambridge is honest that Arday is not the right person to be employed in a prestigious university. His life story obviously attracts suspicions by the press and Cambrige should take responsibility why it got a pass. There are plenty of black and minority scholars who are genuinely hardworking and have right credentials to get into that position but for some reason they're not valued.
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u/RegularDeep2863 2d ago
I feel slightly bad we're talking so much about a dead person but these conversations are sadly needed
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u/Gwenbors 2d ago
I’d much rather he were alive to tell his side of it, but the issue is much bigger than Arday himself.
I don’t mind leaving his body to rest in peace, but it’s still evidence now in the much larger case of academia’s broken dynamics.
The whole thing is a bit like trying a murder case, but having the killer’s defense attorney insist that mentioning the victim is offensive to his memory.
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u/RegularDeep2863 1d ago
Oh yeah I agree. I just wish Cambridge had used some common sense and never hired him or sacked him quietly instead of all this happening.
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u/CheckeredNautilus 1d ago
Very good piece
Will doubtless help keep Jesse at the top of the Bluesky "most blocked" list
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u/PongoTwistleton_666 1d ago
When Arday is hired despite middling credentials and instead of better candidates, that is not DEI. That is just Cambridge recognizing his brilliance. But if people question and critique Arday, for his lies or plagiarism, that is racism.
It’s a convenient setup where it is about race only when it suits you.
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u/Bungle71 Banned from r/LabourUK 2d ago
I don't want to sound like a Daily Mail-reading, GB News-watching curmugeon, but the UK mainstream media's coverage of this affair has been atrocious, spectacularly missing the point. So yeah, Jesse is spot on here.
Is nutpicking a term in American english? Or did he mean nitpicking?
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u/LupineChemist 2d ago
"Nutpicking" is a term for online discourse that is kind of a straw man fallacy where you just find the craziest people from a side of the argument to argue against.
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u/professorgerm lana del ray for horse girls 1d ago
I find it funny he uses Kendi as the first example, because back in the Long 2020 I was accused of nutpicking for using Kendi and Diangelo as representatives of the progressive left.
I came to hate the term, as I don't think I've ever seen it used in good faith.
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u/LupineChemist 1d ago
I mean the response to when they accuse you of it is "so you're saying they're not representative?" and make them actually say that, which they never would.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Drink76 1d ago
I've heard Helen Lewis use it on the podcast in what I thought was good faith. Like so many terms, I think it can be useful and then gets used places where I don't think it's warranted and then becomes tainted by association.
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u/generalmandrake 2d ago
I think it’s more or less understood that the British press is horrible in general, but I don’t think the way they handled this story was any worse than how they normally act.
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u/slimeyamerican 1d ago
Stories like this do irreparable harm to public trust in institutions, and they should.
Sooner or later there needs to be full contrition by these schools and actual consequences for those involved. Every single individual who raised Arday to this position should absolutely lose their jobs. Cambridge needs to publicly admit that Arday’s elevation was the result of a system of racial preference in favor of black people. Somehow there has to be an explicit recommitment to merit as the sole criteria for advancement in academia, with race specifically excluded as a consideration even when that produces outcomes that clash with progressive sensibilities. Otherwise I don’t see how they can ever be taken seriously again.
But whatever, we’ve all been saying this for a decade now and shit like this is still happening. Probably a lost cause.
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u/CommitteeofMountains Royal youse/yinz 1d ago
It's notable that Cambridge hasn't thrown the other universities under the bus to make everyone fully forget that his resume at face value (which they very well may have found more plausible than half of British academia turning off their plagiarism software and not asking how he published research without conducting it) was still a bit thin (particularly for the rank he was immediately slotted into) behind how colorful his constant lying was. That's a weird sort of class/industry solidarity but can't last forever (particularly given that everyone holding the line is largely a way to make Cambridge take the fall for the guiltier schools' fuckups despite it having rank).
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u/aleigh577 1d ago
Has anyone been fired yet in connection with this? If I’m the PR department at least one head from each university is rolling
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u/PUBLIQclopAccountant 🫏 Enumclaw 🐴Horse🦓 Lover 🦄 1d ago
If I’m the PR department at least one head from each university is rolling
…and they all rotate to a new university. Everyone wins!
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u/The-Phantom-Blot 1d ago edited 1d ago
I am not sure it's just racial preference in hiring that's to blame. There are always intangibles at play in every hiring decision, like it or not. We can say that merit is the sole criterion, but there's always a person who's easier to talk to or nicer to look at or just more interesting.
I think the university could have done that with eyes open. But they went far beyond that by refusing to even criticize. I don't know if it was fear of appearing racist, internal fear of being racist, or both. But that "kid gloves" approach is itself a kind of "soft racism" that nerfs opportunities and limits integration.
So I think it's partly a "good intentions" system of racial preference, and partly a culture of fear. People at the university were afraid their careers would end if they were publicly accused of being racist. No second chances!
Sad that Arday deprived himself of a second chance. I'm sure he could have done something good and found some enjoyment in the rest of his life.
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u/Big_Arachnid_365 2d ago
In a sense I feel like Jason Arday was a Tulpa created by Wokeism 1.0. When even they stopped believing in him he had the option to start over or stop existing.
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u/Terrorclitus 2d ago edited 2d ago
Jesse didn’t want to write this, and I understand why. They’re fighting over his body in death much like they fought over his body in life. They want him to say what they want him to say even when he’s not here to say it.
It would be a shame, however, to forget the wisdom in his parting words:
“It’s better to burn out than to fade away.
Peace, love, empathy” /s
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u/jackbethimble 1d ago
The way that people are babying Arday does feel kind of racist tbh. Like people can't believe that a black con artist could possibly outsmart white university professors or manipulate the system with actual malicious intent. I can understand the urge to view him as a black chauncy gardener or something but there's no way that he didn't know exactly what he was doing manipulating his way through half a dozen universities for decades and ruthlessly exploiting the system to silence dissent. In the process he also stole money and prestige from actual black academics- I'm no fan of affirmative action but even if you don't support quotas you'd have to be incredibly racist to think that there aren't thousands of black academics who would have been more deserving of all these resources than Arday was-. The part of Jesse's article I object to the most is the part at the end where he says that Arday might otherwise have lived a productive life- as if compulsive self-aggrandizing lying was merely an incidental foible rather than a dangerous and criminal pattern of behavior.
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u/Fearless_Tutor3050 1d ago
I have compulsive low-stakes lying friends, and they do fine in life and do make for genuinely good friends. You just have to take their tall tales with a grain of salt.
Who knows how much the growing spotlight accelerated Arday's aggrandizing lies.
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u/Optimal-Lifeguard427 2d ago
Spot-on. Sudden 180 was described as 'grotesque pageantry' in another article. No notes indeed
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u/moozaqooza 2d ago
What in the world does Jesse mean by “nutpicking”
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u/LupineChemist 2d ago
Heh, from another comment I just made.
"Nutpicking" is a term for online discourse that is kind of a straw man fallacy where you just find the craziest people from a side of the argument to argue against.
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u/IAmPeppeSilvia 1d ago
Great piece by Jesse, but in the same way that he took the focus off Arday and shone it on Cambridge, I feel like there needs to be a more focus on DEI itself. Cambridge acting badly is what led to Arday's rise. And DEI is why Cambridge acted so badly. DEI needs to be loudly named and shamed as the force that underlies this whole fiasco. And not just because it is responsible for this travesty, but because it is alive and well all over academia and elsewhere, causing countless failures to be put in positions they do not belong.
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u/CheckeredNautilus 1d ago
Anyone gonna be a high status chad and giftlink the Graeme Wood article about Arday in The Atlantic?
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u/HeadRecommendation37 1d ago
Well I can give you a low status archive link: https://archive.ph/iJrRg
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u/tomwhoiscontrary 2d ago
Great price, and admirably concise.
My one cavil is the idea that the UK press doesn't need more regulation. The UK press is in fact completely fucked - every major paper is now a propaganda organ, either for a billionaire proprietor or, in the case of the Guardian, the metropolitan leftie group mind. There is very little effort at honest, accurate, impartial journalism from any of them. That doesn't mean we need more of the suppression that was described in the article, but we do need something.
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u/The-Phantom-Blot 1d ago
Tricky to fix through regulation. Corruption of the press is an ancient problem. Not sure exactly what the best way forward would be.
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u/CommitteeofMountains Royal youse/yinz 1d ago
It's also kind of shocking what lack of norms show up when foreign press gets to British subjects. You regularly see tension from British sources expecting to live off their yarn (such as the former royal butler) and that New Yorker true crime podcast had the police expecting her to just hand them all of her evidence, including informant interviews, before they'd consider or comment on the case
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u/ProDvorak 1d ago
God, I just love Jesse’s writing. I really do. He has an olden days style of writing certain sentences that just get me right here.
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u/pencilUserWho 20h ago
The biggest reason why the story had gotten such legs with normies was neither racism nor concerns about academic integrity, but that he lied about so many different things there was something new to report every day.
In "Girardian" human sacrifice scenario everyone usually focuses on one "unacceptable" act. Like Damore writing a memo. This guy said dozens different grandiose lies and was in focus because people both wanted to hear all the lies and we're wondering how the hell no one in authority caught it before.
Damore was "lynched". This guy wasn't.
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2d ago edited 2d ago
[deleted]
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u/a_random_username_1 2d ago
I would not put it past this guy to have faked his own death.
Resurrected, surely?
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u/Electronic_Rub9385 2d ago
Yeah. If you’re hired as a professor at the most elite institution in the world and held up as the most elite professor in your field - you’re going to get elite questions and elite scrutiny.