Jason Arday, Cambridge's youngest Black professor, resigns over plagiarism claims

Jason Arday, Cambridge's youngest Black professor, resigns over plagiarism claims

Jason Arday was the crown jewel of Cambridge's inclusion policies: the youngest Black professor in its history, an example of overcoming autism and poverty. Now, according to published reports, he faces a scandal over alleged plagiarism in his doctoral thesis and no longer holds his post. Comparisons with the Milli Vanilli case — passing off other people's work as one's own — were not long in coming.

The accusations claim that his thesis reproduced the work of a Dutch student without attribution. The methodology also comes under fire: shallow interviews and biased conclusions, far from the research standards expected of a doctorate. In the English-speaking academic world, the debate has stopped being academic: to what extent is diversity being placed above merit.

The official response does not reassure. Cambridge says it investigated the suspicions and dismissed them; a group of elite professors, including Simon Baron-Cohen, director of Cambridge's autism research centre, has circulated an urgent open letter against racism in support of the academic. His defenders speak of a racist attack; his critics, of years of protection given to a scholar who was not up to standard.

Details remain that fuel scepticism. The biography that turned Arday into a symbol — he did not learn to read until the age of 10 or 12, implausible athletic antiestéticats — has been called into question by several analyses. Some student testimonies claim they had been denouncing alleged incompetence for a decade and that their grades dropped after they complained. The university, which shielded him as a victim of racism, now faces an uncomfortable question: symbol or fraud? The case remains unresolved, both in the courts and in public opinion.