Professor Jason Arday has resigned from his tenured position at Cambridge University. The University of Glasgow, where Arday taught before going to Cambridge, is also looking into his career there.
In July, The Telegraph reported that more than 100 sentences in Arday’s research matched prior academics’ writing verbatim or nearly verbatim. In addition, several universities that Arday included on his CV denied ever employing him. Several details from Arday’s upcoming memoir are also allegedly false or exaggerated.
Some of the other outlandish claims that Arday has made include that:
-He was hit by a car as a teenager and nearly died, but miraculously revived.
-He was paid “1.4 million” for his memoir (He didn’t say what type of currency.)
-He was sent bananas, bullets, poison, and a pig’s head after becoming a tenured professor
–A masked man threatened him twice if he didn’t resign after becoming tenured
-He was harassed by a journalist from the Times Higher Education. In fact, the journalist had only contacted him about the alleged plagiarism.
-He raised £5m to £5.5m for charities by running 30 marathons in 35 days.
-He ran 600 miles in six days. (The men’s world record is 650 miles.)
-He told tennis player Andy Murray that he has epilepsy, ran 30 marathons in 35 days, and kept running despite having a seizure plus a hairline fracture in his leg.
Arday admitted to making “mistakes” in his academic writing, but says that his autism, his lack of adequate academic supervision early in his career, and a campaign of racism against him have contributed to this scandal.
Arday’s case is especially complex because it came about in great part due to racist attacks against Black academics. One of the first people to accuse Arday of plagiarism was Nathan Cofnas, a racist academic who was fired from Cambridge for saying that if the world were a true meritocracy, black people would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment.” However, several other prominent academics do support the accusations of plagiarism against Arday.
This is not the only recent scandal involving Black academics. Just a few weeks ago, Tufts professor Kerri K. Greenidge was accused of plagiarism, inaccurate research, and falsified details for her book on the Grimkes, a historical family of abolitionists. In addition to inaccurate citations, factual errors, and flimsy evidence, her book allegedly exaggerates or fabricates several claims. She wrote that the Grimke sisters rescued thousands of people from a burning building, when in fact no one was in the building.
Any non-celebrity scandals you’re into lately, ONTD?
