NO WAY TO COUNTER RACISM: THE aRDAY CAMBRIDGE CASE

The case of Professor Jason Arday, featuring in the media last week, seemed almost surreal.  It appears Cambridge University had driven a cart-and-horses through normative academic standards, probably hoping to counter opprobrium over its lack of diversity in their senior appointments.   As a result it has been dragged into a conflict about race drawing angry attention to continuing racial discrimination in society.   And in consequence there has been a serious knock to Cambridge’s academic status.

As a lapsed academic specializing in African studies, having spent several years in the 1970s university teaching in Nigeria, Malawi and London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, I was accustomed to a range of academic cultures.   In societies with an expectation of enrichment from the pursuit of senior positions in institutions, and kick-backs from different levels of power, the universities did relatively well on retaining standards. 
  
It was the day before examinations at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Northern Nigeria.  There was a knock on the door and a mature Igbo student was standing there presenting me with a six-pack of Nigerian Guinness. He was a school teacher with seven children; two of them could not go to school because of his university costs.  A degree was a good investment for the family though; it would raise his standing and salary for the duration.  I shouldn’t have, but I did, accept the Guinness, not wishing to upset him.  An residue of ethical purity was regained by my pouring my bribe down the toilet; it tasted to me in the heat like brown Windsor soup gone wrong because of added alcohol.  In the North of Nigeria, Igbos and Whites shared a feeling of being the foreigners.  Sure enough my tempter came 2-3 marks below fail. The Examination Board pushed him over to pass with my full support. 

This is by way of noting there can be some modest fluidity in standards without the lecture-hall roof caving in.  But the Arday story is, as they say, something else.   A sense of outrage at the case is not  naïvety  about the way standards can vie unequally with the desire to counter inequalities, or more venal needs.  It comes from Cambridge University’s assumption it could get away with it.

The Cambridge I remember in the early 1960s had a very privileged  ambience and rewarded big ideas when combined by the necessary, demanding standards of scholarship.  You had to illustrate appreciation of the former and some application of the latter to get a place from a Grammar School.  And the University has since retained a certain arrogance associated with its academic excellence. 
How Jason Arday got through the gates of Jesus College in March 2023, as a 37 year-old Professor, is a remarkable feature of the 2020s.  He admits ‘mistakes’ in his doctoral dissertation contained plagiarism.  His own meteoric academic career would make an interesting study itself in his chosen field of study, the sociology of education.

In my experience, UK universities are supportive of those experiencing what today is called neurodiversity, dyslexia for example, and Arday’s condition, a form of autism.  They may even tolerate staff promoting a fantasist autobiography provided it does not impinge on their professional work and the university’s reputation.  They are certainly aware of the need to promote suitable candidates from ethnic minorities.  But there is a difference between making allowances for diversity and undermining a university’s standards and reputation.

The question of suitability should be the paramount consideration in this case.  And it is no easy job sorting out the facts.  This is because the entire story from the beginning has been locked in a Black and White mould : two dystopian clashes, racism versus  was gets called ‘wokeism’.   Or more accurately, ill-judged and inappropriate attempts by an employer at applying legal provisions, aimed at protecting those with disability and ensuring equality in diversity and inclusion.   The Arday saga turned into an inglorious exercise for both sides.  For a start, white working class boys have the greatest claim on institutional support to counter their exclusion, and this appeared irrelevant to the outcry.   Secondly, a White academic with Arday’s alleged prodigious record of plagiarism wouldn’t have survived much longer than he did in such a prominent, prestigious position.  Thirdly something needs to be done to advance promotion of black academics in most of university disciplines, and this isn’t it.  But no less important, this is a story of a man with several disabilities, not all of which could he overcome, becoming his own worst enemy with the help of a University administration.

Plagiarism itself is not that precise a term.  It broadly means taking another writer’s ideas or work and pretending it is your own without giving them credit.  So it can range in gravity from copying whole chunks of texts , word-for-word – seemingly very many examples in Arday’s thesis - to changing a few words in a sentence and, for a variety of reasons, failing to name the source.  As an external examiner of a Ph.D. thesis, you are invited by the graduate’s supervisor, in Arday’s case the John Moore University in Liverpool.   You have three options, pass, fail or rewrite.  You keep a careful eye out for plagiarism.  Or not.
A couple of suspect sentences are not necessarily a deliberate attempt to deceive the examiner.  Sometimes you can forget where an idea has come from.  Or as for Karl Marx in the 1960s, simply take it for granted.  Though, sometimes you can deliberately hide it.  I learned anthropology from a respected Dutch researcher whom I credited with particular brilliance only to discover he was deploying the theories of the father of social anthropology, Evans Pritchard, in discussion with me - without attributing them. 
  
In African universities, plagiarism was often easy to detect by the sudden change in the quality of the written English.  And sometimes you encountered prodigies, with beautiful English, who came out of an impoverished Malawian village but went on to be awarded a doctorate on Heidegger.  There are now  guides available and AI methods making detection easier, certainly enough to make that aspect of the Arday mystery an open-and-shut case.

In short, an argument involving highly-charged self-righteous rhetoric is not the best grounds for understanding what actually happened.  It is no way to tackle racial discrimination in employment and arguably damages the cause.   Moreover, you need something like legal expertise to wade through the different interviews given by those clustered in combat on the moral high-ground, leaving little room for balanced opinion.   Arday resigned on Wednesday.  There are grounds for an independent investigation, as some of the dons are calling for, not a damage control exercise by the University.   And for a touch of schadenfreude as members of the University administration descend from their thrones.