WHO HAD TO LOSE FOR JASON ARDAY TO WIN?
A few days ago, I had lunch with a friend. An exceptional scholar, and a genuinely nice man, he had once again failed to secure a permanent academic position, despite a stellar publication record and a strong résumé. Now, having spent years in the halfway house of the postdoctoral world—neither fish nor fowl—he is ready to throw in the towel. He plans to spend one last year on the academic job market and, if nothing concrete materializes, he will leave academia forever.
As I offered the usual platitudes that were offered to me when I was in his shoes—you’ll get something, it’s a numbers game, they would be crazy not to hire you—I could not help but think of another young scholar, who had won spectacularly, while my friend had lost.
Jason Arday is a professor of sociology of education at the University of Cambridge and, as Cambridge’s press office keeps reminding the world, the youngest black person ever to hold a full professorship at the university.
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Of the whole saga, one line that has struck me was Arday’s remark to The Times last week that “We’re talking about academia here. I didn’t murder somebody.” He added: “I think the cruelty that I’ve experienced, and the positioning of me as this kind of liar and fantasist, is totally unacceptable.”
No, Arday did not commit murder; on this we don’t have a good reason to doubt his word. But I could not help but to think of my friend who, having contributed earnestly to the total sum of human knowledge, was left out in the cold while Arday, who is at best a mediocre researcher and at worst a serial liar and fabulist, enjoyed the highest prizes our profession offers and an institution willing to stake its thousand-year-old reputation on defending him. At the time of writing, [August 4th, before Arday resigned – Ed] the university is still standing behind him, and his book, warts and all, will still hit shelves in the coming days.
Undoubtedly, along Jason Arday’s road to the top of world academia, there surely were more qualified candidates for the academic positions he won. Given the zero-sum nature of the job market, this certainly meant that somewhere out there, a deserving researcher’s career was cut short, because Arday got the job they deserved.
They might even have been a member of an ethnic minority group, though perhaps with a less “inspiring” backstory. Their grief was almost certainly private, but their loss was that of the entire academy. Arday is a villain, but so is everybody who enabled his ascent without a second thought.
Related: The Jason Arday farce is an embarrassment to black Britain. “The ultimate casualty of the Arday scandal isn’t one man’s career, nor the bruised egos of those who rushed to his defence. The tragic reality is that Jason Arday has potentially done far more damage to black Britons than any racist agitator ever could. External critics and bad-faith actors can only ever attack from the outside – their prejudices are expected, discounted and easily identified. But Arday’s unchallenged rise, if the allegations turn out to be true, has handed our harshest detractors the ultimate weapon. It provides a silver bullet to anyone looking to roll back equality legislation or widening-participation schemes, or to question every rightful appointment and call professionals like me ‘diversity hires’. No external opponent could ever inflict as much damage as this case potentially has.”
