Jason Arday: When Truth Fails

the rise and fall of Jason Aday. Uh Jason Aday uh who was the youngest uh the youngest black uh to become a professor at Cambridge University uh the youngest black professor in Cambridge University's history uh committed suicide over the weekend uh brought the story even more full force uh to sense of things. So let's let's delve into the Jason Aday uh story and um and and then some of the responses to it. So Justin A again was was hailed as this amazing uh you know amazing um uh young rising star in academia. Um he was uh now again a lot of his uh so he he he you know he he was at Cambridge in the sociology department got a a professorship professorship in the sociology department and was again praised and um on Wednesday last you know last week week before last uh he following two weeks of accusations about plagiarism, but also accusations questioning his academic work, plagiarism in his dissertation, but also uh questions about his whole backstory, his whole biography. Um, he resigned from uh uh Cambridge, resigned from Cambridge, and then, as I said over the weekend, it it appears committed suicide. So, let's uh let's go into some of this biography, right? Supposedly, again, it's hard to tell what's fact and what's fiction when it comes to Jason's biography. Um, he was diagnosed supposedly as autistic as a child. He says he was nonverbal until he was 11 and only learned to read and write at age 18. Now a lot of people have questioned that account. Um uh you know schoolmates of his who were in school with him when he was when he was under 11 and then later on challenged that account. But that is the story that he has been telling for a long time. That's a story that's been embraced. And this is part of the rags to riches. not rags the riches but but a kid who cannot read, cannot write at 18 becomes youngest black professor in Cambridge's history in less than 20 years. So at age 38 u he becomes uh the professor. So let's let's let's uh run down some I don't think this is exhaustive some of the questions that are being asked about him and you know note that uh I'm going to read you from uh some of this. This is from the Guardian uh and the Guardian is like it's like the leftest newspaper in the United Kingdom. So this is the Guardian acknowledging these issues with this guy. Um and and you know so from a leftist newspaper you know assume this is the moderate version right so let's talk about plagiarism this is from the newspaper uh they first faced allegations that he plagiarized parts of his PhD thesis and other academic research last late late last year he has rejected the claims the telegraph reported that analysis has found more than 100 passages in his PhD D was similar to another thesis by Paula Meyers a student at Brunell University of London published six years previously. Now supposedly there have been other investigations into this for example by Liverpool John Mo University which actually gave him his PhD in 2015 and they uh they uh upheld that uh this was all honest and reasonable error but these allegations have all resurfaced and now it looks a lot worse than that and people of course are asking how much of this looking the other way um allowing ing this to go forward had to do with the fact that he was black and the fact that he had this amazing black backstory, not black story backstory to justify it. So, um you know, lots of people have been accused of plagiarism over the last few years. Presidents of universities have resigned over plagiarism accusations. So if there really are signs of plagiarism, it's reasonable for the university to ask questions uh and it's reasonable to expect that that caused his resignation, you know, from Cambridge. Now he also faced claims that some of his more recent published work is flawed from the article the Times published analysis on Wednesday that found some of his research contained quote impossible evidence that was littered with inconsistencies. Two corrections have previously been made to papers he released in 2018 and 2020. again. He's at Cambridge. He's at a prestigious university. How does he get away with this? Why does this all coming out now? Why for years has he gotten away with plagiarism and then, you know, impossible evidence, if you will. Now, he's also claimed a number of prestigious academic positions that have been questioned. Uh again to quote the article, the website for the Jesus College where Aday was a fellow stated that he had been a visiting professor at Ohio State University in the office of diversity and inclusion and at the University of Glasgow in the school of education. Both universities denied this. When he was granted a professorship at Cambridge, did nobody do any due diligence about his academic credentials? His biography also stated that Audi was still a quote unaw. The university told the Daily Mail that he no longer held that role at the institution. Adate has also claimed to have completed a master's in psychonamic practices at Broadbeck University of London and afterwards became a fully qualified counselor which gave him a rich quote a rich understanding of mental mental health is quoting him. However, when the Guardian uh contacted Burbeck, the university said it had not been able to find records of a student named Jason A having studied it. AIS claimed to have published a book called being young black and male challenging the dominant discourse with Pelgrave McMillan. The publisher subsequently confirmed that it took a proposal from a day but the book was never published. So these are pretty boldfaced lies. This is not some this is not trivial stuff. Plagiarism, fake data it sounds like, or possible evidence, however you want to call that, and then just lying on your on your resume. People get fired all the time for this kind of stuff and a lot less. So again, why why was he allowed to stick around? All right. What is going on here? Um, I don't know what semi logistics's issue is, but let me just say if you're going to dominate the chat, I'm going to block you. So, if if you want to stay on the chat, fine. And and post once in a while, fine. But if you're going to, you know, just just constantly post on there, I'm just going to block you because it's uh it's just disruptive and uh nonproductive. So you make the call. He also has these um you know crazy claims that he's made over the years about his uh sports uh uh achievements. So for example, he claims to have run 30 marathons in 35 days to raise money for charity. In 2012, when Aday met the tennis star Andy Murray, he told him he had an epileptic seizure during one of the marathons and fractures his leg. Despite that incident, AD claimed to have run nine more marathons to complete the challenge. 30 marathons in 35 days. That's crazy. He also claimed at public events to have run 600 miles in six days, an achievement that would make him one of the world's most gifted endurance runners. Uh the the you know the men's record is 650 miles in six days. Now, he ultimately said because of cumulative wear and tear of training from his previous running challenges, he had to put rest days in between the running days just to finish the 600 mile challenge, which he actually completed over a 12-day period. But nobody even knows if that's true. He claimed in 2024 to have played for Crystal Palace, the football team, as an under 18. He told Talking Matters podcast he spent a handful of years at the club before going on to a semi-professional football to playing semi-professional football for 12 years. Again, Crystal Palace can't confirm it. They don't have records going back to the 90s and early 2000s, but nobody remembers it. His charitable works as well as his endurance running claims. AD has said he has completed other charitable work over the past two decades. He claimed in media interviews to raise5 million pounds for charities over a 20year period. As his critics online pointed out,5 million pounds raised for charity would be a staggering amount for someone who is not famous. In 2012 said he hoped to raise £250,000 by the time he was 50. When asked if the 5 million pound figure was accurate or they told the Guardian the money had been raised with the help of many fundraising collectives over a two decade period. He also said he is part of a 100 person syndicate. When asked to identify other people who took part in these efforts said he had signed an NDA preventing him from disclosing that information. Convenient. Um, Audi claimed to have visited South America and West Africa to install water po uh points with the charity Water Aid. The charity said, quote, "Out of respect for the people we work with, it never sent its volunteers abroad." Water Aid added that it doesn't encourage or facilitate self-funded visits either. In our day's memoir, he mentions going to Brazil to install a well, but does not mention water rate. So, you know, this guy fabricated his history, fabricated his research, lies constantly and um plagiarized. He he also claimed to be harassed and intimidated. There is some, you know, suggestion that some of it's true. But, you know, for example, uh, you know, he's he's uh he's claimed to be um confronted in the faculty building on two separate occasions by a masked man who threatened to harm him if he did not resign and evade detection both times. Uh, on both occasions are they said the intruder had produced a knife and threatened him with it. But the intruder is not picked up on CCTV on either occasions. No one in the faculty reported seeing anyone suspicious or they did not report either intrusion at the time. Uh he did not inform his colleagues that a masked man with a knife was in the faculty building. So he also lied about these kind of harassments and threats and and the article goes on with other examples uh and so on. Um, so here's a guy who, yeah, lied, cheated his way through life and ultimately when confronted with all that was forced to resign. And you know, uh, I guess ultimately, you know, once he resigned, all this came out. The Guardian published this after he resigned. All this came out once he resigned and you know everybody kind of attacked him and he couldn't handle he couldn't handle all that and he committed suicide over the weekend. Now the response from the left you know is is quite striking. Of course this is what uh Sadi Khan the mayor of London wrote. uh Jason Aday was the victim of penicious public shaming that other people in his position simply wouldn't have faced. Now that's just blatantly untrue. People are constantly caught with plagiarism, constantly, you know, kicked out of academia for having views that are not acceptable. I mean, wo was the whole woke phenomena for years, you know, in in in England in particular, if you challenge the, you know, the the leftist dogma over trans issues, it was it was hard to you couldn't survive. I mean, Kathleen Stark was bullied out of the University of Sussex over her views on gender. Sir Tim Hunt was subject to the most brutal kind of online backlash after making one perhaps off-color joke about women prompting him to resign his position as honorary professor at the University College London. I mean, think about Larry Summers who had to resign from Harvard for making basically a comment about women and and this is not a whole history of plagiarism fake academics. I mean, was it the president of one of the universities had to resign over plagiarism attacks? uh was it the president or the or dean at Stanford who had resigned over fake data in his scientific research? There's a long tradition of this. There's no pernicious public shaming given the extent of his lying, what appears to be the extent of his lying and the extent of of of his fakery. It seems like the public shaming was completely justified. and leftwing manga parliament Zahara Sultana said if Jason Ai was a white middle class academic he would not have been hounded by the British British press in the way he was you know but part of this is the fact that he was hailed as the next coming because he was a black professor I mean if you make race into a big deal then don't be surprised when it comes back to bite you was hailed as the youngest black professor at Cambridge and then hail there's this superstar black academic black always as part of it. So surprise surprise, when he fails, people say, "Wait a minute, you hailed him for all this stuff, they piled on to him." I mean, probably the craziest is uh an article by Ibraham X Kendi. You remember Kendi? Kendi, the anti-racist racist. He said, "The death of Jason Aday hit so close to home that I had no words yesterday, but I woke up with words." To be a prominent anti-racist black scholar is to know you are a target almost totally surrounded by resentments. You know that at any point the attacks can come like a lynch mob. And if you die from all the attacks, the media still cause the attacks on you accusations to wash their hands of the blood. Your lynchers announce your death as if they had no role in your lynching. And the title of his um uh new piece in the emancipator, it's called the media lynched Jason AI. This is what uh John McCor wrote about this. No engagement with the errant lies, the massive plagiarism, the airy public addresses. Henry thinks all that is okay if you're black and have dreadlocks and that are was still a legitimate academic seized upon because of his color. Hendy thinks blackness exempts one from amassing data, drawing connections, and presenting novel insights. You're the real thing in just showing racism exists. Despite that, this is a wrote exercise. We don't have to be actually smart and in fact shouldn't be too western. We are authentic in eternally contesting that take is deep. If you have dreadlocks and change your name to Kendi, note that he seems not to have worked out at the Atlantic and publishes this soapbox performance art somewhere. You're a little surprised the public intellectual of his stature would choose. I wish Audi was still alive. But this take on Audi has lynched his performance art. American academia should hesitate to embrace it. I mean that's John Worther can write. He is a beautiful writer. Um and uh and and yes I mean this is uh from Richard Han which I think is true. A is a symptom and him getting away with his lies as long as he did indicates that Cambridge is in even worse shape than most of us thought. If universities don't want the scrutiny that comes from being high prestige institutions, they can no longer continue with the assumption that the rest of us should be deferring to them on intellectual, moral, or political issues. You're the ones who told us that being quote the youngest black professor in the history of Cambridge was newsworthy. when A was being championed as an inspirational figure being interviewed on major news programs and getting 1.4 million advance on his book according to AD himself for what that's worth. None of the critics of the recent coverage of his fall was saying that society was paying too much attention to what was going on in academia. Now that it has become clear that Cambridge prioritized the ideology of diversity over academic rigor or the concern for truth, the rest of us are supposed to feel guilty for taking what are they roosters within and outside the university said at face value. as his last act are they temporarily made it more difficult to have a real discussion about what has gone wrong in western intellectual life that's is committing suicide but the degree to which Cambridge failed and the vividness of his lies you know uh will hopefully help this story serve a purpose thanks in part to the uselessness of the so-called scholarship he produced in death are they might make a contribution to the advancement human knowledge after all. Uh so I mean this is a a sad story of the consequence of what it's a sad story of the consequence of what we experienced in the late you know uh uh 2000s and and into the uh 2020s and I'm sure still exposed still um experiencing you open. >> This is again from McCord from a different article he wrote uh in at the free press. There's an old joke about white people's reception of black colleagues. After the black professor finishes giving a talk, someone in the audience a asks if he can tap dance, too. Not a very funny joke. Our day's elevation at Cambridge was founded in racism, no less oft. So what we call reverse racism, but it's racism. So racism is racism. We treat people based on their race. For good or for ill, it is evil. It is wrong. And there are horrific consequences, horrific consequences to that. And um it's hard to tell what's true and what's not true about our day's life. Um because, you know, it it could very well be that at some point he stopped knowing what was true and was not true about the stories he was telling everybody about his own life. That often happens with liars. They can't tell the difference anymore. But this is a symptom of well this is not the symptom this is the consequence of the kind of racial ideology that dominated and I think is still dominant in our universities. This is the consequence of kind of DEI on steroids. This is the consequence of paying attention, elevated attention, exaggerated attention to a person's race and giving them credit for for you know the the the color of their skin rather than the quality of their mind and in the university context the quality of their research, the quality of their teaching, the quality of their ideas. And in this sense, I don't know what the university is going to learn from this odd day experience. Again, woke 1.0 seems to have peaked a few years ago, but what what has changed in the underlying ideas? Almost nothing. How are they going to manifest themselves? We will see. We will see. How much of it is it going to be race versus other things? It's hard to tell.