Cambridge’s Diversity Poster Boy in Plagiarism Row

The youngest black professor in Cambridge University’s history, Jason Arday, is at the centre of a plagiarism row after academics came forward claiming large parts of his work are copied almost verbatim from others. The Telegraph has the story.

When Jason Arday became a Cambridge professor at the age of 37, he was lionised by the academic world and became a poster boy for the university’s diversity drive.

He had beaten almost impossible odds to get there. Diagnosed with autism, and non-verbal until the age of 11, he had only learnt to read and write at 18 but obtained a degree and a doctorate before forging a career in teaching.

Now, on the eve of the publication of his autobiography, the University of Cambridge’s professor of sociology of education has become the subject of a bitter row over plagiarism that has pitted his peers against each other.

On one side of the argument are professors at other universities who believe Professor Arday’s published works, including his PhD thesis, contain passages that are remarkably similar – and in some cases identical – to other academic papers, without proper attribution.

On the other side of the argument are friends and close colleagues of Professor Arday, the youngest black professor in the university’s history, who believe he is the victim of a racist smear campaign and have tried to make it an issue for the Government.

What started as a row between academics is now lapping at the shore of politics.

Both Cambridge and Liverpool John Moores University – which awarded Prof Arday his PhD – are on his side, insisting that he has done nothing wrong and the allegations are unfounded smears.

Cambridge said he had been the victim of a “vile campaign to undermine his credibility”.

The stakes could hardly be higher, as accusations of plagiarism can be career-ending for academics, and accusations that later prove to be false can be equally damaging to those who make them.

Until now, the row had been happening away from public view – but the publication of a blog this week, which features a side-by-side comparison of Prof Arday’s thesis with that of another student, has brought it out into the open.

An analysis of Prof Arday’s PhD thesis for the Telegraph identified more than 100 passages that are identical or nearly identical to a 2009 PhD thesis by Paula Zwozdiak-Myers, a Brunel University student.

Prof Arday’s 401-page thesis, titled ‘An exploration of peer-monitoring among student teachers’ [sic] to inform reflective practice within the context of action research’, mentions Zwozdiak-Myers 17 times.

The row between his supporters and his critics centres on whether he should have explicitly credited her on every occasion he paraphrased or quoted from her work, which is titled ‘An analysis of the concept of reflective practice and an investigation into the development of student teachers’ reflective practice within the context of action research’.

Three examples of the work are:

Notwithstanding the two universities’ insistence that Prof Arday’s work has been checked and cleared, several respected academics have urged them to look again, arguing that computer programs designed to detect copying might have missed instances in which a few words have been changed or a sentence has been paraphrased.

Prof Arday made international headlines in 2023, when he became the youngest black professor in Cambridge’s history at the age of 37. His rise to the top of his profession was remarkable in the light of his autism, diagnosed as a child, which meant he did not speak his first word until he was 11 and left school with just two GCSEs.

He studied education at undergraduate and postgraduate level, completing his PhD at Liverpool John Moores University, and went on to hold academic posts at the University of Roehampton, Durham University and the University of Glasgow, where he became professor of sociology of education in 2021 before taking up a similar post at Cambridge three years ago.

He has now written a memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things, which is set to be published next month, in which he details his “improbable triumphs and heart-breaking setbacks”, according to publicity material for the book. …

Fellow academics began to raise concerns about the legitimacy of his published work when they carried out due diligence before inviting him to contribute to other academic papers.

Dave Harris, Emeritus Professor at Plymouth Marjon University, alerted Cambridge and Liverpool John Moores Universities to his concerns about plagiarism in 2023.

Worth reading in full.

Stop Press: Both the Mail and the Times have run pieces on this story.

Stop Press 2: You can read Nathan Cofnas’s piece that broke the story here.