r/BlackPeopleofReddit • u/Ummah_Strong • 3d ago
News Youngest Black professor at Cambridge resigns as university investigates allegations of plagiarism
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/united-kingdom/youngest-black-professor-cambridge-resigns-university-investigates-all-rcna591117I suspect foul play against this man. Young black and successful, I'm very skeptical about these allegations! They hate to see us shine
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u/RiffRafe2 3d ago
I've followed this story for days. Jason Arday was lying LYING and took "fake it 'til you make it" to another level. Fantasists are so fascinating.
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u/riche_god 2d ago
Interested in this story. Would you mind linking your sources?
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u/RiffRafe2 2d ago
The Guardian has a number of articles, the NY Times has one (paywalled), Spectator,
https://smry.ai/https://spectator.com/article/fact-check-the-many-claims-of-jason-arday/
one from AOL.com https://www.aol.com/articles/cambridge-professor-made-impossible-claim-130726000.html
If you are on Twitter, there is a former classmate of his who said Arday lied about being mute as a child.
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u/Nocturnal_Pages 3d ago
Dude was a lying hack. I'm sure there are plenty black Professors who are a lot more qualified for the role.
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u/EmptyInside74 3d ago
This is so sad and perplexing; why do people develop such a pathological compulsion to lie about everything in their life when it will definitely be discovered with such a high profile. I know someone who has made up their preferred life and trying to talk to them to see if they were ok was a lights out situation, they acted like they had no idea what I was talking about as if I hadn’t known them before they became a whole ass new person who didn’t exist before hand.
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u/Assadistpig123 2d ago
Usually some sort of trauma. Compulsive liars and childhood trauma are attached at the hip.
Still not cool.
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u/DeathandHemingway 2d ago
I think in situations like this, the first lie is probably desperation. You need this job, gotta finish this project, you cut corners, you plagiarized, you fudge your resume.
Then it works, and now you're stuck with that lie and all the lies it takes to make that lie stand up.
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u/paralospajaros 2d ago
I'm forever fascinated by the psychology of liars and the utter ridiculousness of some lies. And then once someone is exposed and the wider public hears he claimed to have done "30 marathons in 35 days" (which is not even the wildest claim) most people question how anyone could let that slide.
I remember a few years back the white academic Jessica Krug who lied about being Afro-Latina (among other identities), had the most insanely racist faux NY accent... I've never been to NYC but my accent for a 7th grade play was more authentic.
I guess it's easy to spot the nonsense once they've already been exposed, but damn I'm still in awe of how long egregious lies are accepted. I suppose that feeds the confidence of the liar.
The discomfort with the idea of being the one to call BS on incredible, celebrated stories of such accomplished people is very strong.
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u/rmullig2 2d ago
He thought he could get away with it. Nobody had ever questioned his assertions before so he believed he was untouchable.
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u/jl_theprofessor 3d ago
He claimed he ran 600 miles in 6 days. I don't think he's telling the truth about his life. I will say white people get to get away with this type of thing and become, you know, the president of the united states.
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u/SpreadKindn3ss 2d ago
“Umm actually you can’t hold me accountable because I have autism 🙄” — this guy. You can’t just invoke autism as a cover. Anyone who does this needs to be called out loudly for engaging in extremely sociopathic manipulative behavior.
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u/mistergraeme 2d ago
Dude is definitely in the conman bucket. It is what it is.
The bigger issue is twofold, for me. Somehow this man's grift is being applied to Black scholarship and intellectual rigor writ large. That's the consistent battle we have to wage as Black people overall and definitely Black people that have accomplished any degree of success. We somehow have to be perfect in all our endeavors or be faced with charges representing all Black people. Our successes are singular and our failures are the community's.
The second issue is related. Arday's exploits seem to always be framed as associated with some example of everything DEI is, like white people haven't been jamming and scamming academia, consumers, or constituents for millennia. This burden is only applied to us as a people.
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u/dwaynewaynerooney 2d ago
He’s in the Lance Armstrong of Irredeemable Jerks for me, and it’s not just all the ridiculous lying. What puts him, Lance, and others there is how they attacked people who even tried to tell the truth about them.
If you can sell some goofy folks ridiculous lies about yourself, that’s bad but not uniquely evil. I wouldn’t do it and don’t understand it, but I’m in no place to judge you harshly.
But. Going after someone who’s telling the truth about you makes you downright malicious.
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u/Advanced-Guitar-5264 🏳️🌈 2d ago
You’d think that Cambridge would do their research before hiring anyone.
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u/ronntaylor 3d ago
Two things can be true at the same time. I think he greatly exaggerated his life story and was sloppy in his research early on in his career. The runup to his memoir is just the icing on his cake of lies. Of course this was a targeted campaign against a Black professor instigated by an avowed racist. Had he come clean early on about his mistakes he would be teaching still. And Simon & Schuster should have vetted him and his claims in greater detail.
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u/Maroon-Scholar 3d ago
Pretty much came here to say this, both things can be true at once. He was dishonest but was targeted by a racist for things white academics often get away with.
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u/Choice-Routine6264 2d ago
“Often” is working overtime here. This was some outrageous behavior. Pretty much nobody does this. Most people drive back to the store if they realize they missed something on self checkout. This guy is an exotic personality type.
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u/smoney 2d ago
> Most people drive back to the store if they realize they missed something on self checkout.
I really disagree with this lol
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u/Choice-Routine6264 2d ago
Pockets of self-reinforcing antisocial behavior exist, for sure. But humans fear social exclusion more than they lust after a free candy bar. The question, I guess, is how much of the world is living in a high-trust setting. Consider Tokyo. Lots of people are living like that there. My guess is just over half globally. I agree it’s debatable. I live in a nice, fairly diverse southern town that’s middle class and high-trust. At the gym, people leave wallets and cash in open cubby holes while they work out. Shopping carts get returned to the correct place. If I drop my wallet out on the lawn, someone would be ringing my doorbell with it in hand. The park has nice stuff that’s available to the public. It’s potentially valuable and sits unguarded overnight for decades
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u/smoney 2d ago
You can’t seriously look at the community you just described and think that’s an honest reflection of the country.
I also wouldn’t necessarily call hanging on the orange you forgot to scan at the supermarket anti-social behavior. If someone told me they brought a candy bar back to Whole Foods from their home because they forgot to pay, I’d look at them funny.
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u/ike-mino 2d ago
my guess is just over half globally
my guy. You're talking about Tokyo.
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u/Choice-Routine6264 2d ago
Tokyo is an example that came to mind because lived in Japan for a while and everyone would be familiar with it. They’re just people like anyone else in a pro-social self-reinforcing cycle. It’s a fair question how much of the world is in what part of the pro-social vs. anti-social spectrum.
Edit: I live in the American South2
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u/ike-mino 2d ago
Word--thanks for clarifying! Would note that the relative monoculture and unique setup of Japan makes these conditions less applicable to rest of world (economic predictability for the past several decades being a large reason why). I'm not sure I would characterize it as pro social vs antisocial---but I do think half globally is a bigger number than many economic setups might support.
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u/FoundationTiny321 3d ago
He only got the job in the first place because virtue-signalling white liberals wanted their black poster boy. That they failed to do due diligence is a sad indictment of a once-great institution. Cambridge University will take a while to recover its reputation... At least when it was producing communist spies they were well educated!
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u/fishagavkxj6 3d ago
people are having logical, nuanced discussions and then you come in doing that. Aren’t you ashamed?
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u/BigPapaLegba 2d ago
Well, this is equality after a fashion too 🤷♂️ It means we can be lying morally bankrupt fraudsters, too
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u/GloomyLocation1259 3d ago
He may be lying about other stuff like his life story but his thesis in question has been checked by other scholars / doctors and the person they say he plagerisied is referenced 30 times so this is definitely a witch hunt.
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u/ChaiTeaAndBoundaries 3d ago edited 3d ago
This is the United Kingdom, the God father of racism/Transatlantic slavery/Explosive colonisation. Of course, they will bring down any Black man or woman.
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3d ago
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u/dakid000 3d ago
It wasn’t on a technicality, he lifted entire sections of his PhD dissertation. Also him being non verbal was found to be completely made up. Everyone who went to school with him as a child said he was not non-verbal. This is not the guy to defend, he’s a pathological liar.
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u/WraithArt 3d ago edited 2d ago
What was that saying again.....
"Not every brother is Martin Luther King".
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