Why Has the Jason Arday Plagiarism Row Become a Global Story?

It's the story that everyone seems to be talking about.Professor Jason Arday was a rising star, a black academic with an extraordinary backstory who beat the odds to become one of the youngest professors in the history of Cambridge University.

I was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder when I was three and I guess it's been well kind of publicised now but I didn't learn to speak until I was 11 and I didn't learn to read and write until I was 18.

The media loved him.

Jason Arday is remarkable for all sorts of reasons.He has achieved extraordinary amounts of things, written books, and excelled in academia.Jason, thank you very much for joining us.

Hello, welcome to Best of Today.I'm Nick Robinson, and at this time of year, the programme is always edited by a guest.We hand control to someone we think would bring a different perspective.Our guest editor this morning, Professor Jason Arday, who's in the studio with me.Morning, Jason.Oh, good morning.

But over the course of a fortnight, that glittering career has unravelled, after claims that he plagiarised his PhD dissertation led to greater scrutiny of all his work and his extraordinary CV.

It's suggested that he's basically made up his whole life story.I mean, there's no easy way of saying it.

And I also think that young people make mistakes, and who here has not embellished a CV?The problem is, and Giles Corrin said this, everybody fibs, but at some point you've got to stop.

So who is Jason Arday?What are the allegations against him?And why has hea row about academia made international headlines?The story today, the Jason Arday saga, explained.

I got a call from an editor who had seen some stuff floating around and said, could you help find out if this is true, these allegations of plagiarism?

Emma Yeomans is a news reporter at the Times, and she's been looking into Jason Arday.The guy there against is a bit of a star.

Big backstory.Can we see if these actually stack up or if there's nothing in it?

So you start to look into it and we'll talk about some of your reporting in a moment because it is an extraordinary tale.But for people who haven't heard much about him, just tell us who is this star?Who is this academic?

Yeah, Jason Arday was, at the time of his appointment in 2023, the youngest black professor in Cambridge's history.He was appointed to the Faculty of Education as a Professor of Sociology of Education.And he was described at the time by the head of the faculty as leading the world in research into his specialist area, which is race and education, looking at the experiences, mental health, career progression,black and minority ethnic people in academia and how we can make this a better place.

He is under 40 and he's a professor at Cambridge University, which makes him extraordinary as a young black man for a start.

He'd become a star because he was so young.I mean, just tell us a bit about that.

He was very young for a full professorship, and more remarkably, he got his PhD a little later than some.And one of the reasons his appointment at Cambridge made him such a star is because his backstory is absolutely extraordinary.It's a proper rags -to -riches tale, and I think people found it incredibly inspiring.So he's the son of Ghanaian -born parents raised in South London.And as a young child, he's diagnosed with autism, complex learning difficulties.and he is non -verbal.

He speaks mostly through sign language until the age of 11 when after a lot of speech therapy he finally begins communicating through speech.

I always felt it was a privilege to have a period of 11 years where maybe I couldn't speak and I couldn't converse in a way that everyone else could because it allowed me to see things in a different way.

He leaves school with two GCSEs in PE and Textiles and at this point he still can't really read or write.He needs the help of a scribe in his exams and he is enrolled then on a BTEC course in sports at a local college.And through that, with the support of his tutor, he does eventually learn to read and write.And he is determined to make something of himself, to go into academia.So he does an undergraduate degree in PE and teaching, and then a master's degree and eventually a PhD from Liverpool John Moores University.From there, he starts as a lecturer in sport and education, but his real passion is for sociology and education.

And he kind of moves towards that.rises up relatively rapidly through academic positions before getting this extraordinary job at Cambridge.

And it is extraordinary.I mean, that's quite the leap from what you've described.This is a man who left school with two GCSEs.He does go on to study later, but it's all, as you say, quite delayed.To go from there to being one of the youngest professors in the history of Cambridge, does feel like quite a leap.

There's even a point in some of his tellings of the story he describes as the most ridiculous story ever told, because it's amazing.

Because I just thought how ridiculous would it be that, you know, someone like myself could end up in a place like that.In terms of how I got there, I mean, look, part of it is that, yes, I've worked extremely hard.I'm academically, in that sense, capable.But to be honest with you, sometimes you just get lucky.Sometimes you're in the right place at the right time.That arc of destiny can be marked by luck.

It's a story of overcoming enormous hardship, the challenges of fitting in in academia with learning difficulties, his determination to read and write.It's an amazing story.

The board of electors on your interview day were absolutely unanimous.We are so lucky to have you.You are the best in the world in terms of the research that you do.

And he's fated for years And then scandal breaks out.Just where does this begin, this story?

It begins with the PhD at Liverpool John Moores University.Several years ago, journalists at the Times Higher Education magazine got wind of the fact that here there may be questions aboutacademic research and that parts of his PhD may have been plagiarized and they look into this and they find evidence that His PhD may be plagiarised from another academic working in a similar area called Paula Zwozdiak -Meyers.Arday cites her a lot in his PhD, but there are also very big chunks of text which are effectively lifted from her PhD with no attribution.So they continue investigating, they look at some of his academic papers as well, and they start asking questions.And Arday doesn't answer the questions.

Instead, he shuts them down.calls in a law firm to basically tell the THE to stop investigating, don't publish.It would tie them up in lawsuits that they can't afford if they move forward with this story.Things go back and forward a bit as well around this time with the journalist who is desperately trying to get information, and at one point makes the fairly unprecedented step for a journalist of actually making a complaint himself of plagiarism against Arday.And at that point, Arday goes one step further and reports him to the police for harassment.And then it kind of goes quiet for a while.

And then about a month ago, we think, separately through a colleague at Cambridge, we believe, another man gets hold of these allegations.And this is a man called Nathan Kofnas.Nathan previously worked at Cambridge, left Cambridge, highly, highly discredited.He would describe himself as a race realist, but most people reading his works would describe him as racist.He has made some really unpleasant claims, such as that in a true meritocracy, there would be almost no black professors at top universities.So he's got an axe to grind.

He puts these allegations of plagiarism onto his blog, and it blows up.

Tell me about that.Because at first, it seemed like it wasacademics who again might have an axe to grind, it becomes sort of the only thing people are talking about on social media for a few days and then it really hits the press.You did a lot of digging into this when you were looking into it.What did you find?

So my first thought when I was asked to look at this is based on the source this is going to be pretty confected.There has been a history of plagiarism allegations being kind of weaponized against academics of color, being held to a much higher standard, small transgressions getting really blown out of proportion.And I kind of thought, from this source, I think it's going to be that.But we were pretty shocked by the level of plagiarism we found of the thesis and how easy it was to find.And shortly after we started looking at it, the much more reputable Retraction Watch, which is a website that tracks academic misconduct, retractions, corrections in academic papers, and basically just calls for integrity in academic research, published a lot more, including some more concerning findings, which prompted us to look even further.They included a finding that he may have passed off another researcher's participant quotes, you know, the real quotes given to researchers by people taking part in research, as coming from his own participants in a completely different context.

So this is looking quite serious.

Just talk us through what you found.Talk us through the analysis.

This was not just us.This was us as journalists with the help of academics who had concerns.A lot of what we found makes it appear that some of his participants may not have existed the way he claims they did, or possibly at all.I'll give you some examples.He relies quite heavily in his citationon a previous academic called Anjan Memon.

Anjan Memon is an epidemiologist at the University of Sussex who has published a paper a few years ago, about 2016, actually 10 years ago, in the British Medical Journal about the barriers to accessing mental health services for black and minority ethnic people based on focus groups and very rigorous analysis of what's said to determine what the biggest hurdles to getting care and what the problems when they do try and access care might be.And we started finding that quotes in that from samples in the southeast of England are appearing in his paper as if they are staff and students at universities.And after a lot of analysis, we started to find that a really substantial proportion of supposedly his participants actually seem to be quotes he's taken from other places.So with that, it started to look like some of these participants might not have existed.And further evidence of that is that the samples he gives and the explanations of who he's interviewed, quite simply, they're impossible.An example, in one paper, he says he interviews a sample of 17 people, but then he gives a breakdown of their races, genders, and job titles, and that breakdown adds up to 18 people.

He quotes four distinct academics who've spoken to him for his research, but he claims he only interviewed three.He then quotes participant number 21 in a study where he says he interviewed 17 people.These discrepancies keep coming up.So either this is incredibly sloppy, or he is taking bits of samples from other places and passing them off as his own, or it's fabricated.So this draws a lot of attention to his research, but the significance of this is for academics, the strength of your academic output, your publications,your journal articles, they're what gets you hired, right?

If he has ascended through various universities, you know, starting at Leeds Beckett, then Roehampton, then possibly Warwick, then Durham, then Glasgow, and then Cambridge, that ascent is based on the strength of his research output.And if that research output hasn't been done the way he said it's been done, possibly not at all, then it raises very serious questions about the job he's in.

It certainly does.Going back to the original complaint though, and these are his more recent works, the original complaint was about his PhD.That has been analysed by the university that awarded it.I mean, what have they said?

It has been.Liverpool John Moores did an investigation which concluded this year, so about 10 years after the PhD was completed.In the investigation, he doesn't dispute the specific allegations of plagiarism, but he says they're mitigating circumstances.And under their guidance, it's possible for him to be cleared if the plagiarism arose in the circumstances of honest and reasonable error.There was no intent to deceive.And that's what they conclude.

And that's been the basis of keeping his PhD.He's effectively been cleared on that.But this hasn't amounted to investigations into his later journal articles.And that's something that there's been a lot of questions over who should investigate.And it's been very, very complicated to figure out, to be quite frank.Liverpool John Moores have responsibility for the PhD, but who had oversight of this research?

When you move jobs that much, it's actually very hard to tell.Cambridge basically say, not us, whoever was in charge of the research, and we're still not sure who that is.

So actually, the story of his movement up the ranks might be part of how there's been so little scrutiny on his work.What does Cambridge University say about this?

They initially said that the allegations against Jason were a verycampaign with unpleasant motives, which is not an unreasonable thing to say given the origins, but it didn't engage with the substance of the complaints that were being put to them.And they also said he'd been cleared repeatedly, which is true.Liverpool John Moores cleared him.We're aware that one journal investigated a limited aspect of these allegations, specifically the fact he didn't have ethical approval for studies on involving human participants, and cleared him on the grounds that that specific journal didn't require ethical approval at that point in time.And those were kind of used as a basis by Cambridge to say, he's been investigated, he's been cleared.

But it left a lot of questions.They have now moved on that position.On Wednesday night, Cambridge University, as an institution, announced an investigation and also said they'd passed on complaints and there were multiple procedures underway relating to academic misconduct.Their investigation separately was into whether he had potentially misrepresented his qualifications and his other jobs.You know, he's not actually a visiting professor at Glasgow, as he claimed to be, for example.He's not a visiting professor at Ohio State, as he claimed to be.

They've removed from his biography a master's degree he claimed to have held, which the only reason we can see that they might have removed that is he does not, in fact, hold the master's degree.So their position at Cambridge has changed a lot in two weeks as more and more findings against him have emerged.

When all of these allegations come to light, you know, you're running an analysis of some of his works, there is a bit of a counter campaign to sort of rally around and support him.Tell us a bit about that.

There is.Very early on, the Good Law Project, a charitable enterprise run by the lawyer Jolyon Maugham, launches a petition in his favour and it'sby very high profile people, the heads of three Cambridge colleges for example, Simon Baron -Cohen, head of a major autism research centre.That quickly looks like a regrettable move because it says he's not committed any plagiarism when in fact the Liverpool John Moores investigation he doesn't actually dispute the plagiarism.And we started to get hints that The allegations against him were getting traction among serious and reputable academics when one of those heads of colleges quietly removed her name from the petition.About this time, there's a lot of other claims being unearthed that he's made throughout his life that are simply untrue.

So Emma, recently these allegations have also moved into part of his personal life.Tell us about that.

He's previously said that the police investigated a pig's head being sent to his parents.A really, really frightening example of racism.The Met has no record of this.He alleges that a masked knifeman came after him inside Cambridge, but he never reported this to Cambridge authorities and no knife man ever appeared on CCTV.In an old interview to Bath, he's reported to have said he played professional football in snooker.This is later wrote back to he considered going professional in snooker and occasionally played some limited semi -professional games.

He claims to have installed water points with the charity WaterAid in South America and West Africa.WaterAid say we don't send volunteers abroad.He claimed to have been on the program Seven Up, this program following children as they grow up through the years.That aired before he was born.And he later had to explain that he wasn't in Seven Up, the TV program.He was in a local community campaign for raising children and supporting parents, which happened to have the same name.

All of these things start adding up in a way that starts to draw more scrutiny, not just on his academic career, but everything he has said about himself as well.And that seems to be the point where some people who've previously been his supporters go a little quiet and start reconsidering things.

As these accusations start coming out in the midst of this media storm, Arday speaks.He does the only interview he's done so far with The Times.Tell us what he said.He defended himself.

He clarified some of the more extraordinary claims he'd made.For example, he'd said that he had run 600 miles in six days.He explained it was 12, that 100 miles a day was too much, so they revised it down to 50, but he really had done it.So he starts to clarify, but he's very determined that he has not extensively lied.and that he has not fabricated his academic research.And he also described the impact that this level of scrutiny has had on him.

He said, it's soul -destroying, because I've done everything I can to try and do the best I can.I'm not saying I'm perfect, and I've never tried to present this fairy tale narrative that I am.I don't think people realise that there's a human being at the end of this.And he says he's accountable for the mistakes he's made.But he also says, this is academia.It's not as if he's murdered anyone.

He does also talk about a dark arts campaign.Do we know what he meant by that?

I think it's safe to say that the combination of his profile and who he is will always mean he has attracted unpleasant, prejudiced, racist comments and the question this comment from him that he's been subjected to a bit of a dark arts campaign and he also says he's been a lightning rod for criticism of diversity, the question is howthat had tipped into really sinister campaigns against him, unfair complaints, for example.Has he been subject to more scrutiny than other academics would be?And it's a question that, researching the story, I've asked myself as well.I mean, we only know about this because of Nathan Kofnas, which is very unfortunate because that's an awful source for a story and not one I would ever really want to be.comfortable with.

Some of that's because his actions to get the Times Higher Education investigation quashed meant that a very balanced and reputable outlet did not have an opportunity to do this fairly.I think that's important to note.But it has made me think, are there more academics who we should be investigating?And I think it does raise some questions for us about who we hold to account here and how we make sure going forward we're holding all sectors of academia equally to account.I'm really keen to do that actually.So I think that's probably what he was getting at by this implication that there's a dark arts campaign.

Unfortunately, in this case, a lot of the allegations have a very strong founding.

Some people will say, you know, academics, if you have a row in the world of academics, it tends to be messier and more vicious than any other form of politics.I think the famous quote is because the stakes are so low.But there's sort of slightly more to this.It has sort of fuelled part of the culture war in a way.And that's partly because, as you said earlier, of moments like our day effectively reporting a journalist to the police.Tell us about the response.

You know, that only came to light this week, although it happened much earlier.Tell us a bit about the sort of response there's been to that.

That really inflamed things.And it's a very unpleasant experience for a journalist.I think that would be very, very frightening.So Jack Grove was investigated for around four months by the Metropolitan Police, who eventually concluded they werecase.They did warn him that his work was affecting our day's mental health and that he should stop.

And this caused a lot of uproar because journalists should have the right to ask questions.And it has reignited claims of two -tier policing.And it also raises questions over the freedom of the press.And the freedom of the press being inextricably tied to academic freedom, right?The freedom to investigate and ask questions.The same right to research applies to freedom of the press as well.

So it did cause a huge amount of disquiet over this case.

And while that was being debated all over social media, often by other academics, Cambridge University that had, up until now, really rallied around and supported Arday, launched its own investigation.As a result, on Wednesday night, Arday resigned.Tell us a bit about that.What did he say in his resignation?

He said that he no longer wished to live under a constant spotlight and was resigning for his own well -being.He seems to want to continue in academia.He said, this is not the end of my work.It is simply the end of this chapter.And he asked his supporters to give him the space to begin again.and he didn't respond in it to any of the allegations of plagiarism, misconduct or fabrication or lying, any of the claims against him really, but he did say it was not an acceptance of the narrative surrounding him.

His resignation came about 24 hours after we gave him a 24 -hour deadline to respond to very, very detailed allegations of academic misconduct and fabrication of his research, which went beyond what had been published so far.He also resigned very shortly after Cambridge's investigation into him.So shortly, in fact, that I think it took certainly the communications at Cambridge a little bit by surprise.

Emma, we don't often peer into academic rows, we don't look at a piece of research produced by academics and work out how valid they are.Why do you think this story became so big?I mean, it's being reported not only by all the press here, it's being reported in America, it's really caught on.

It's a bit of a perfect storm.Very high profile appointment who Cambridge put forward for a lot of public work, a lot of media engagement around his appointment, you know, interviews left, right and centre, guest editing the Today programme, appearing on Sunday Politics with Laura Koonsberg.So he was a high profile celebrity academic with an extraordinary backstory, a bit of a really beautiful and fairytale backstory and an irresistible backstory for a lot of people.The allegations are serious.They're accompanied by frankly bizarre and easily disprovable lies.And then the final part on the academic side is that this is research, this is work that we can check.

If he had been an astrophysicist, you couldn't have had a journalist going through his data and finding the flaws because we're not equipped to do that.So it was research that could actually be evaluated by a much wider group of people.You know, obviously, we got a lot of academics to check our findings, but they were findings that couldn't have been made in every discipline.And I think that adds to it as well.

A number of people have taken this as, you know, part of a campaign almost against DEI, you know, sort of diversity policies.People have sort of taken it as part of a culture war.Do you think this will change scrutiny on academic institutions like Cambridge.

I hope it prompts some consideration of Cambridge of how they investigate, particularly when the person under investigation is a star.I hope it does.I think there's pressure internally in Cambridge.One academic there speaking on condition of anonymity told me that it was doing enormous damage to confidence in Cambridge, making the point that the credibility of an organisation like Cambridge rests on doing rigorous, rigorous research, and this will do damage to that reputation.There was also a really lovely comment that I think gets to the heart of the diversity stuff here, which is that actually the group most veiled by this are other academics of colour, as well as Adé himself, who has been promoted in ways that and praised for things that probably should have required scrutiny all along.This was Jason Okundayi in The Guardian, and I just want to read this because I think it's so salient.

He says that Arday was treated not as a scholar but as a mascot, an expedient one for an institution that has been regularly embarrassed by its historic record on race.To flu black students, allegations of institutional racism, independent of the merits or pitfalls of his own scholarship, what success looked like for Arday and his role was limited.I .e.he was just being treated as a mascot, as a symbol.And actually, there are so many brilliant academics of all races out there who could have had that that appointment, in a world where there are very limited academic jobs at the moment, a huge cuts to academic jobs, there are a lot of very deserving black scholars who that could have gone to.

That was Emma Yeomans, a news reporter for The Times.If you'd like more on the Jason Arday story, we'll put some links to Emma's reporting in the notes for this episode.We know the story has caused a lot ofcontroversy and sparked a wider discussion about academic standards and vetting.So if you have any questions or comments about it do get in touch.Our email is the story at The Times dot com.

The producer and sound designer today was Sophie McNulty.The executive producer was Taryn Siegel and theme composition was by Marla Seto.Thanks for listening.We'll be back tomorrow.