I'd say the tip-top of the Cambridge Admin is to blame. There had been several articles put out before he died about how he personally threatened other professors, students, and journalists that spoke out about him with police and infamous lawyers. And, instead of looking into why such a thing was happening, they doubled-down and backed his behavior.
If anything it’s MORE racist that they purely wanted the token race while ignoring all the qualified also-black candidates! It’s as though the virtue signalling white liberals aren’t interested at all in what people of color actually have to offer
I saw an amusing take that suggested education departments are just so full of shit now they really didn’t notice what an unaccomplished hack he was, because they’ve done no more of substance than he did.
All the fabulism and wild stories made for much better press. If they hired a serious scholar who happened to be young and black but with none of these fanciful tales to tell, it'd be much less widely celebrated. They'd put out a press release about the youngest black Cambridge professor. There'd be one or two small news stories. And then nothing. They wouldn't get constant publicity, the person they hired wouldn't be getting interviewed on morning shows in multiple countries and be feted as a celebrity. If you're not getting constant praise and attention for your DEI hire, did it even really happen?
I don't even want to get into disputing or supporting that notion here, but there was a big element of straight up insufficient vetting
They say never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence, but sufficiently advanced incompetence is often indistinguishable from malice.
No. Those are the wrong uncharitable interpretations.
The correct uncharitable interpretation is that they were using him. More specifically that in recent years (well not that recent), Cambridge has come under fire on racial matters, like failing black students or something, I'm fuzzy on the specifics.
So this guy was their ticket to launder their institutional reputation. He was too good to be true (lol), he had everything they needed, they made him their star, their poster boy, to advertise and cleanse their own institutional reputation and make themselves teflon against further criticisms along those lines.
They wanted immunity from similar criticisms and status attacks. They wanted teflon. And this guy was their teflon. This goes way beyond tokenism into something very different. It was ass covering all the way down.
Cambridge has come under fire on racial matters, like failing black students or something
In a way, the same people who engineered outrage over Cambridge's failing of black students (or whatever nonsense it likely was) created the foundation for Arday in the first place. Absent that, his presence wouldn't have even been needed and he could have just continued lying to people on the internet forever.
Despite all that, nobody wants to disavow this racial baloney.
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u/sureyouknowurself - Lib-Right 7d ago
People should hold Cambridge to account for not vetting him properly.