They must have updated their policies - I can access through a registration only account. I shall summarise and excerpt:
The article starts by discussing two other fabulists, both of whom gained fame through writing about their experiences as either Holocaust survivers or relatives thereof. Mischa Defonesca claimed that she survived because she was taken in and nurtured by a pack of wolves. Marie Sophie Hingst wrote about being the grandchild of survivors - she was not, nor was she in fact Jewish. She killed herself once the lie was exposed.
Before his death, Jason Arday had, similarly, been exposed as something he was not, with a series of lingering questions over aspects of his scholarship. From the beginning, however, something was different in how his story was talked about, the investigations accompanied by a cloud of excessive references to his race. One news bulletin described him as “the Black professor accused of plagiarism”: as if the most important thing was not the plagiarism, but the temerity to be simultaneously Black.
The unmistakable and, in some cases, explicit tone of all this was that if an organisation is gulled by a Black man, then the issue must be that it has been blinded by excessive wokery. If it takes a decade for an account involving being parented by wolves to be debunked, well, that’s life. But if a Black man can trick you without immediate exposure, then racial tolerance has been taken too far.
Arday was not the first professor to face credible allegations of plagiarism, something that he denied. One of his fellow professors at Cambridge, a historian, who is white, was reported by the FT to have been found to have copied more than 12 pages of an undergraduate’s work. He is still in post — fittingly for the social sciences, this is an experiment with a control. The difference here is the firestorm: in large part because, for many, this was not a story about Cambridge, but one about Black people in public life and “diversity, equity and inclusion hiring”.
…
In Defonseca’s case, no one suggested that public willingness to swallow the lupine philosemites story meant that our abhorrence of the Holocaust was too extreme. Arday’s stories, however, were taken as a specific commentary on DEI initiatives across academia, one with broad lessons about the treatment of Black people in higher education and the workplace more broadly. The difficult truth is that if Arday were white, a professor facing allegations of plagiarism would probably still be in post. And if Arday were white, then a father of two would probably still be alive. That first truth raises questions for Cambridge. The second for those who saw him only as a symbol even after he had exited the stage.
Quite so and that’s just piling up on the tragedy, it’s going to be hard for anyone to do a “lessons learned” introspection (and the Tabs won’t be interested in doing so anyway) lest it look like they are admitting wrongdoing.
Right - the idea that you must immediately, up front, hold every Black aspirant suspect and subject to Zero Tolerance. And that the disqualification was so bloody obvious it must have been deliberately ignored.
As mentioned, the record shows other academics are not brought down as hard over similar actual offenses – doesn’t make it right but the perception that some interested parties like Cofnas want to project is that this is because they are otherwise superior scholars and that excuses it, while Arday et al just got where they were as an unearned favor.
Not necessarily. If someone puffs up their resume convincingly with misinformation that is necked because no one wants to appear “racist” performing the minimum level of due diligence, that is also DEI.
Of course, in my observations, people in large institutions get (or don’t get) “opportunities” because the people in that organization want them to succeed (or not).
The history of scientific discovery is an separate matter. What Mirza and like-minded ideologues are proposing is not just giving credit to non-Western historical innovators, but infiltrating religion and mysticism into modern science. Students hoping to be leaders in professional fields that depend on understanding of scientific principles are poorly served by “educators” who are more interested in denouncing “secular materialism” and encouraging belief in djinns, than in laying a foundation for careers in engineering and biomedical research.
Re coverage of the Arday affair: the New York Times has a surprisingly balanced article that’s a good antidote to strident culture warriors on the right and left, focusing mainly on the need for reforms at Cambridge.
I wasn’t able to get far past the paywall on another Times article, but it’s good to see criticism of anti-press freedom advocacy by Arday defenders. There have even been demands for the firing of two reporters for the Guardian, which is being ranked with other publications as some sort of tabloid menace.
Did the Guardian reporters do things that would typically be unacceptable to and inimical to their profession? Or which would generally be regarded as seriously unethical? Or undermining of their qualification for their roles?
…the Guardian published an article titled " Playbooks, plagiarism and a pig’s head: new claims surrounding a star Cambridge professor"
From the Good Law Project:
Why is this even a story? They are calling up butcher shops and talking to doctors about a “hairline fracture in a fibula.” This along with over a hundred other stories from the media in a couple of weeks.
This was a witch hunt. And while the Guardian is on the less tabloid side of the media scrum, they have editorial discretion, they’ve got a limited budget, there are a a HUGE number of stories that deserve to be told INCLUDING the person who started all of this off, Nathan Cofnas. They made the editorial choice to cover the story the way they did. Including the “reel the Guardian posted of that podcast, where the claims within the article were played for laughs.”
I’ve seen plenty of criticism of the facts about Arday and I honestly don’t believe much of what is out there is true. But even if Arday is a serial liar and a plagiarist, it still defies belief that he garnered this much attention. The media knew he was in trouble. Here is Novara Media co-founder Aaron Bastani admitting that he was contacted by people to say that Arday was in bad shape, but he called him a “conman” anyway.
Novara isn’t the tabloid press either. But they are all very much the same in how they love punching down instead of going after the real bad people.
People demanded journalists get fired?
Just wait until you hear what people were demanding happened to Jason Arday.
This is indeed what conservative media in the US (and, to a lesser extent, in the UK) might mean, and is not the same thing as actual DEI (D&I in the UK); which is about trying to improve opportunities for qualified minority (race, gender, disabled) candidates. A qualified disabled person might not otherwise get a role due to needing some additional support. A qualified black person or woman might not otherwise get a role due to not looking like the typical person doing that role today.
“DEI hires” in the pejorative sense exist, but are far less common. Ironically, the places where you’re most likely to see unqualified people hired on the basis of their identity are the same places that talk about DEI hires. e.g. look at the current white house…are they qualified or do they just look the part?
According to @Jackmannii (I haven’t seen the source) there were calls for Guardian journos to be fired. You drew a parallel to calls for Arday being fired. I asked whether the Guardian reporters did things that would typically be unacceptable to and inimical to their profession, or which would generally be regarded as seriously unethical or undermining of their qualification for their roles?
Your response is (a) to engage in some sort of collective wrongdoing argument by posting stories by people other than the Guardian (b) quote someone complaining about the Guardian doing its job none of which comes even close to the sort of behaviour for which journalists are or should be fired.
You say you aren’t calling for censorship while implying a parallel between calling for journos who reported on this story to be sacked and calling for an academic who seems to have committed serious plagiarism to be sacked.
Academics - especially at the rarified level of Cambridge chairs - can’t commit plagiarism and expect not to get called on it. The whole affair is very unfortunate but unless that simple fact is accepted and excuses stop being made, all you are doing is adding fuel to the fire of racist, anti-DEI forces. The NYT article by Michele Goldberg describes the consequences better than I can.
I think it’s worth making the distinction between the original reporting and what followed.
Arday was hounded by the media long after he had resigned his position. Plus the amount of coverage was way out of proportion for something that is not actually rare. So, while I have no issue with the initial story being dropped (depending on how much editorializing / framing happened), the media can hardly throw their hands up and claim it was all in the public interest.
…I think the racist who started this witch hunt and the media that piled on bear collective responsibility for their actions. I don’t believe they are responsible for Arday’s death. But the British Tabloid press have been doing this for decades and they have countless peoples blood on their hands.
It should never have gotten to this point. He never would have killed himself without this relentless media and social coverage.
No I don’t see the commonalities between reporters doing their job and senior academics committing plagiarism. That you saw fit to draw that parallel has implications you are now running away from with sophistry.
The accusations were never seriously denied and from what I can see cannot seriously be denied. It’s not exactly hard to look at two papers and say whether large chunks are or are not copied from one to the other. Arday and his supporters would have dispensed with the allegations long, long ago if they could. Instead we get this:
But prominent academics of colour that the Guardian spoke to said the claims of plagiarism were legitimate, and that Arday’s alleged actions risked undermining others who study race.
Some of Arday’s peers said the fallout from the row could send shockwaves through academia and set the study of race in Britain back 20 years.
One academic, who has worked in the area of race and education for decades and spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, said the accusations against Arday were worrying. “I think it’s plagiarism and it’s obvious,” they said.
John Preston, an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Essex, said: “Having seen the evidence, it triangulates and there is, in my judgment, a case to answer here.”
Some have argued that Arday has come under unfair levels of scrutiny. But the academics the Guardian spoke to said it was “fair for someone at Cambridge”, in one of the most prestigious positions in academia.
The discourse is not fundamentally polluted as to the basic facts except in the eyes of those determined not to see. The key element of the discourse (plagiarism and a fantabulism) are utterly obvious. I daresay you would never question the reporting of the notoriously left wing Guardian or a self proclaimed left wing opinion columnist in the NYT if they said something that you didn’t want to deny.
Yes, some racist assholes were the first to publicise this. That doesn’t alter the facts.
The way Cambridge could best have killed the racists’ fun would have been to say “we are investigating the allegations” then do so robustly and sack the guy if required. Full stop.
Fabulists get mocked. It’s the price they pay. If it was a right wing fabulist you’d be doing so too. Get some perspective.
Decrying the process as a witch hunt doesn’t carry much moral weight when the accused was very likely a witch, when being a witch is (quite rightly, in this analogy) a sacking offence.
I shouldn’t have said this - I don’t know about you in particular.
But certainly there is regularly vast amounts of mockery of a right-wing fabulists getting caught out around here (including by me) with little consideration of the feelings of the fabulist in question.
The parallels are that internet randos were calling for Arday to be fired and internet randos were calling for reporters to be fired.
Do we start policing what internet randos do? Do we ban calling for reporters to be fired? I don’t see what we can do here. Both are going to happen. Both did happen. Do you want to police it or what?
That isn’t how the burden of proof works.
And Arday was a vunerable individual who was under media siege. They were digging into every single aspect of his life and people that were close to him said that he wasn’t in good shape.
Show me then.
Again: allegations. And again: even if it were true, this shouldn’t have ignited a media firestorm.
Yes, the discourse is polluted. That’s why the Guardian is talking about pigs and the other tabloids are quoting anonymous students who complained about him or he didn’t run in the marathons, and it wasn’t just about the allegations of plagiarism.
The Guardian (the UK version at least, both the Australian and the US branch are not guilty of this) is a transphobic rag and I don’t like them at all. I don’t believe in “left” and “right” wing any more. Not in the traditional sense. Labour is “left wing” but they are more transphobic than the Conservatives.
The fact that the rasit assholes are going to get a pass here?
Thats what they were doing.
But that wasn’t enough for the media or the racsits.
He got mocked. Now he’s dead. Get some perspective.
It was a witch hunt.
Just imagine if the media treated noted fabulists like Donald Trump or Boris Johnson this very same way. They don’t. Because the British media don’t punch up. They punch down.
Who is giving them a pass? Does me calling them assholes constitute a “pass” to you?
That’s what they did after being pushed by media pressure; having first sought to sweep things under the rug.
The fact that the two most vocal critics of Arday harboured controversial views on race appeared to inform Cambridge’s response, which was a robust defence of Arday. The university called the claims a “vile smear campaign to undermine his credibility”.
This, amongst PR and employment advisers and lawyers, is called “a textbook example of how to make everything much, much worse and bring a media firestorm down upon yourself”.
I’m sorry. I was laughing too hard to respond for a moment. There is a level of discourse at which I decide there’s no point continuing.
