Here's my controversial 2 cents.
In my view, a big aspect of why this story got legs was because there was an air of "how dare you look into this black academic".
Those who looked into him risked being called a racist, having law enforcement called on them for harrassment, and if I recall correctly Arday used the "white privilege" shtick against those critical of him. And so there is a sense, right or wrong, that there is a deeply unhealthy level of fetishization of minorities to the extent that even scrutinizing a black academic was risky for those doing it.
It shouldn't have come this far and I would say Cambridge takes most of the blame for that.
But the above are my ramblings for this Saturday morning. I know it's slightly controversial but on the other hand, the right wing press got their ammunition because of this elevation of Arday to a level of prestige he did not deserve.
Context is needed.
Black academics (and more broadly academics of colour) are constantly investigated and their credentials questioned.
UK academia has obvious structural racism issues.
246,930 academic staff were employed at UK higher education providers on 1 December 2023.
26,110 academic staff employed with the specific contract level of "Professor" across UK higher education providers.
32% of professors are female.
In 23/24, the proportion of professors who were Black remained at 1% , with numbers rising from 210 to 250 (70 female and 180 male ). This is grossly underrepresentative in relation to the population as a whole.
https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/28-01-2025/higher-education-staff-statistics-and-data-202324
https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/19-02-2026/sb274-higher-education-staff-statistics
We are also aware of a long-standing 'attainment gap' amongst students:
https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/sites/default/files/field/downloads/2021-07/bame-student-attainment.pdf.
Universities in England are required by the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (HERA 2017) to address awarding disparities, more commonly known as attainment gaps. The Advance HE Report 2019 analyses data from 2017–2018 and shows that overall, 80.9% of white students received a first/2:1 compared with 67.7% of BME students, representing a BME degree attainment gap of 13.2%.
https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/equality-higher-education-statistical-report-2019
Non-white students and staff who excel have been subject for
years to snide comments and assumptions, including reactions of surprise that someone like them could perform so well, given the fact that non-white students and staff are just assumed to be less able and less capable.
If the reaction to Arday was a one-off, then I would agree with the characterisation of the response.
But it isn't.
In fact, the one thing we can absolutely be sure of is that this started with racism.
The report followed a Substack post by Nathan Cofnas, an academic who was previously embroiled in a free speech row at Cambridge after he suggested in a blogpost that, in a meritocracy, there would be “close to zero” black professors at Harvard. The British politician and activist Simon Woolley called the post “abhorrent racism, masquerading as pseudo-intellect”.
Cofnas, a self-defined “race realist”, was sacked by Cambridge’s Emmanuel College in 2024 and underwent a disciplinary investigation into the blogpost about black academics. The
investigation concluded that Cofnas was not guilty of “discrimination or harassment”, and that his views, “while seen by many as offensive, did not breach the law and did not contravene university regulations designed to uphold free speech”. He now works at Ghent University, in Belgium.
Cofnas claimed he had put Arday’s PhD through plagiarism detection software, which found that “many passages are lifted with minimal editing, sometimes retaining copy-editing mistakes from the original source”.
https://www.theguardian.com/educati...s-surrounding-cambridge-professor-jason-arday
Now, Cofnas was right. We must say that. But there are a large number of white academics who have committed academic misconduct (and other forms of misconduct) that have not received the same focus. Lord knows I have read enough CVs to know exaggeration is endemic.
But my assumption is that a 'race realist' like Cofnas who thinks Black people would not be professors if they were not being favoured over white people was not just looking into one Black professor. I would assume he has been busy investigating all sorts of 'undeserving' senior staff who should not have the jobs they have. And this is an entire
industry, especially where staff are trying to decolonise the curriculum or think about ways of dealing with this structural disadvantage.
An example from another industry:
https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=theguardian.com
An influencer is taking a charity that organises internships for black and minority ethnic people to court because they do not organise schemes for white people.
Sophie Corcoran, a GB News commentator, applied to a programme the 10,000 Interns Foundation was running with the Bar Council. She said she was “shocked to discover that the scheme is restricted to applicants of a particular racial background”.
The Guardian understands the internship charity has received a legal letter outlining Corcoran’s intent to sue, and on Wednesday responded. The suit is claiming that she has faced loss of employment opportunity as she is white, and discrimination under the basis of the Equality Act.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/202...ffering-internships-white-people-legal-action
I also agree that Cambridge should take a huge proportion of blame here. They appointed someone who did not have the CV or funding profile of a professor. He just didn't. Now that in itself is not a dealbreaker - if someone does not have a traditional academic profile they should not be excluded from consideration.
But I am of the view that the university (which had been rightfully criticised for its terrible record at appointing senior non-white staff) saw someone with an almost unbelievable life story, who would be the youngest Black professor, and who they could champion as an example of their equality chops.
For me, it was a university using tokenism to try and ensure it did not have to do the hard work in dealing with structural disadvantage they know exists within their institution.
But there are plenty of deserving academics of colour that could have been appointed. What is the message to them? Sorry, you have plenty of publications, funding, excellent student feedback and successful PhD supervision, but we have a guy that says he raised millions through running marathons and is a cancer survivor so we will go with him. Apparently, you have to be a literal Superman for Cambridge to give you a chair if you are Black. Feck them.
