Arday’s Embarrassing Exit From the University Vindicates His Hypothesis!

I know, I know, you already know the story, but what is delicious about it is the layers that make up the story. I think the only way to see them complete is to make this into a sort of cumulative poem in the manner of The House That Jack Built. By the way, I start this piece jovially enough, but, as you’ll see, I become grim and serious by the end. Here is the poem. Enjoy it.

This is the University that Jason built.

• A black man became a professor at Cambridge.
• A black man who was diagnosed with autism when he was three became a professor at Cambridge.
• A black man who was diagnosed with autism when he was three and couldn’t speak till he was 11 became a professor at Cambridge.
• A black man who was diagnosed with autism when he was three and couldn’t speak till he was 11 and couldn’t read and write until he was 18 became a professor at Cambridge.
• A black man who was diagnosed with autism when he was three and couldn’t speak till he was 11 and couldn’t read and write until he was 18 and plagiarised not only his doctoral dissertation but also some of his academic articles became a professor at Cambridge.

You get the point. So I rush ahead to the complete version.

• A black man who
• was diagnosed with autism when he was three, and
• couldn’t speak till he was 11, and
• couldn’t read and write until he was 18, and
• plagiarised not only his doctoral dissertation but also some of his academic articles, and
• works on race and higher education, intersectionality and education, mental health and education, neurodiversity and cultural studies, and
• ran 600 miles in six days, and
• ran 30 marathons in 35 days, and
• raised £5 million for charity, and
• while doing this suffered a hairline fracture so bad his leg swelled to twice its normal size, and
• received racist emails, was threatened with a knife and spat on, received rape and murder threats, and received a severed pig’s head in a cardboard box at his parent’s home
• (though it has to be said that even the Guardian newspaper was a bit doubtful about all these tall tales), and
• found it necessary to employ the lawyers at Carter-Ruck to cover his tracks even though he said he was “accountable for the mistake he’s made”, and
• was supported by the Good Law Project, Jo Maugham, Zack Polanski, Paul Boateng and several black College Heads, plus many others, who signed a letter (falsely) saying that he was “falsely” accused of plagiarism, and
• became a professor at Cambridge
• and, er,
• then resigned.

The story generates in me a mixed response. On my Disraelian side I see it as Toby Young saw it, as a bit of Ali G knockabout. Here is a new Tom Ripley or Felix Krull. On my Gladstonian side, however, I see it as David McGrogan saw it, as a sign of times about the decline of the university.

The university is in general decline, no doubt, for a cacophony of reasons, all of which, sadly, have historic origins that are at least half a century old. The major problems are pressure-to-publish and projects and politicisation. Pressure-to-publish is cancerously growing a rubbish help of bad literature, in entire fields that are rubbish, and many fields that are dubious. No one reads; everyone writes. Projects is the way the subjects academics study are favoured by the rich central state and drags academics into grift. Politicisation is the intrusion into the university of political aims: e.g. representation, diversity, renewing dying towns, ‘sustainability’ and so on. All of them are the consequence of state involvement and state funding, and hence entail much administration and the introduction of state and administrative criteria of judgement. Worse, this has affected more than half of academics, some of whom ardently believe the administrative rubbish, but more of whom cravenly and compliantly genuflect before it. Even worse, it has affected daft-as-brushes young people who realise that they, too, can grift and get on by imitating their teachers.

Arday’s subject was one of the worst.

I heard even Michael Gove say that some sociology is good. Not true. I’ll write about sociology later. It is all politicised rubbish and always has been, ever since Comte. Sociology is the ultimate academic-political megalomania. Ask yourself why Weber had psychological problems. (The best sociologists, like Gellner and Shils and, yes, the elder Young were really highly-educated individualistic generalists capable of writing for a general public in an intelligent manner: and who wrote in a mixed medium historical-philosophical-practical, but not specifically academic, manner. In the 19th century they would have been Macaulays or Morleys or Leckys or Froudes.)

And, yes, sociology of education is a lower breed within the breed. And the sociology of education where it concerns grievances is the lowest of the low. So Arday made himself a home in the lowest of low academic slums. The emperor not only had no clothes, but lived in a hovel; and yet everyone acclaimed him, and put him in a palace.

Contemplate this specific case, that of Arday. First, he studied bad social science of the worrying-about-contemporary-problems sort. Second, and fascinatingly, it was for him highly personal. It was astoundingly circular. A black man in higher education wrote about blacks in higher education. In fact, the black man in higher education mostly wrote about himself, a black man in higher education. The problem with this is obvious, even if the ironies are wonderful. If a black Professor says, “The system is institutionally racist,” then, since he is at the apex of the system, he might as well say, “I am a standing refutation of my argument which is, consequently, worthless.”

Consider the following masterpiece:

Jason Arday, ‘Dismantling power and privilege through reflexivity: negotiating normative Whiteness, the Eurocentric curriculum and racial micro-aggressions within the Academy,’ Whiteness and Education 3 (2018), pp. 141-161.

Here is my immediate response.

“Dismantling power”? Not academic. How would you feel if I wrote an article about ‘Establishing power and privilege’?

“Normative whiteness”? Unacceptable. Imagine if I wrote an article about “Normative blackness”.

“Racial micro-aggressions”? Hang on. Are you saying you are studying a big phenomenon or a small one? Ah, yes, of course. Both. It is everywhere (“normative”) and has to be “negotiated” at all times, but is manifest as a sort of invisible hypothesised effect experienced at the level of quarks (“micro-aggressions”).

It is tired, empty stuff. Everyone is racist. The system is racist. I am not racist. Race relates to everything else. Everything is relevant. Exploitation. Exclusion. ‘We have a responsibility to dismantle inequity.’ To which I say: 1) No we don’t. 2) To dismantle anything is not academic.

But never mind all that.

Here is the point.

The point is about how twisted this all is.

The ultimate irony is that what has happened in the last week or so is a vindication of Arday. His hypothesis was that black people have difficulties in “negotiating normative whiteness”. This hypothesis thrust him to the top of the normatively white educational establishment (Cambridge University). How odd. But then he was thrown out by the normatively white educational establishment. So now he has been vindicated by events.

Yes indeed, for a moment it seemed that Arday was successful and so his hypothesis was wrong. But now he has been unsuccessful – and so his hypothesis is right. He is vindicated!

(I expect Harvard to hire him soon. If not Harvard, then New School or somewhere. At worst, London Metropolitan.)

In other words, if Arday had been honest he could never have vindicated his own hypothesis. He would have been an academic failure.

So my finding is that Arday needed to engage in fraud in order to vindicate his own hypothesis. It was a systemic requirement.

The circularity of all this should require us to question the entire cultural settlement of the early 21st century.

James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.