Cambridge Has Questions to Answer After Dismissing Arday Claims as “Vile Campaign”

Cambridge University has questions to answer after dismissing claims about Professor Jason Arday’s apparent plagiarism and fabulist CV as a “vile campaign” now that the diversity poster boy academic has resigned. The Telegraph has more.

When the Telegraph first broke the news of a plagiarism row surrounding Prof Jason Arday, the University of Cambridge’s diversity poster boy, in July, the university’s response was as dismissive as it was vehement.

Questions about Prof Arday’s credentials, the university said, amounted to a “vile campaign to undermine his credibility”.

Almost two weeks later, following an ever-expanding list of questions about his work and his life story, Cambridge finally bowed to the inevitable and announced it would, after all, launch an investigation into his bona fides.

Around two hours later, Prof Arday announced he would be resigning from the university, as well as his fellowship of Jesus College, with immediate effect.

There was no admission of guilt, no apology for his falsehoods, just an attack on the “relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary” he had been subjected to, which had taken a “profound toll” on him.

He would, he said, be returning, as “there is still so much work to do”, though in exactly what capacity, and where, is unclear.

Prof Arday’s Cambridge career is over, but there remain profound questions for those who appointed him without basic checks on his CV, those who ignored warnings about his work for three years, and those who defended him in the face of overwhelming evidence of plagiarism and fabulism.

Cambridge had been warned by fellow academics that there was something suspicious about Prof Arday’s PhD thesis (awarded by Liverpool John Moores University in 2015) from the moment he was appointed as the university’s youngest black professor at the age of 37 in 2023.

Then last month a former Cambridge don published on his blog a side-by-side comparison of Prof Arday’s CV with that of another student published six years earlier. The Telegraph carried out its own analysis, which found well over a hundred passages that were identical or a close match, and broke the story of the plagiarism row that was secretly raging inside Cambridge.

Academics from other universities called for an independent investigation into Prof Arday’s work. Cambridge stonewalled, insisting that only Liverpool John Moores University could do that, as it had awarded his PhD. Questions about other work Prof Arday had published since then were ignored.

Three principals of Cambridge colleges signed a petition organised by the Left-wing Good Law Project decrying The Telegraph’s reporting as part of a racist, Right-wing smear campaign (one of their names was later quietly removed as the evidence mounted).

Then the Telegraph revealed that Prof Arday had claimed to have raised £5.5 million for more than 70 charities, largely through feats of ultra-distance running that would have put him among the world’s elite. He said he had run 30 marathons in 35 days, nine of them with a broken leg; had run 300 miles in three days, and 600 miles in six days.

Damian Hall, one of Britain’s foremost ultra-distance runners, expressed surprise, telling this newspaper he had never heard of Prof Arday, and “it seems odd that there appears to be no evidence” of the 300-mile and 600-mile runs. Arday later claimed the 600-mile run was accomplished in 12 days, not six, and admitted that he had not personally raised £5.5 million, but had been part of a syndicate whose members he could not name for confidentiality reasons.

By last week, Cambridge was facing a staff revolt. As the Telegraph reported, a Grace – Cambridge’s term for a resolution to be put to its ruling council – was circulating among academics calling for its rules to be revised in the light of the Arday affair. Still, the university did nothing.

Some of Prof Arday’s claims were simply bizarre. This newspaper revealed that he had claimed to have featured on the TV programme Seven Up, despite being 20 years too young. He explained this away by saying he was referring to a community project and had never meant anyone to think he meant the celebrated TV series of that name.

He also claimed to have been confronted in his faculty office by a masked knifeman, but the intruder was not captured on CCTV and Prof Arday did not bother telling his colleagues there was an armed man on the loose. A claim that police had investigated a pig’s head being left outside his family home was shot down as categorically untrue by the force.

Prof Arday also claimed to have carried out charity work for WaterAid, installing clean water facilities in South America and Africa. When The Telegraph checked this with WaterAid, the charity was adamant that it never sent volunteers abroad.

Worse revelations were to come. The Telegraph disclosed that a Times Higher Education journalist who put questions to Prof Arday and Cambridge last year was investigated by police for harassment and told by the police to stop contacting Prof Arday for the sake of his mental health.

Three universities, in Ohio, Glasgow and South Africa, denied Prof Arday’s claims to be one of their visiting professors.

Then on Wednesday the Telegraph revealed that Prof Arday had falsely claimed to have published a book.

Worth reading in full.

Stop Press: A new Times analysis has found Arday’s academic research littered with inconsistencies, false funding claims and reused quotes.