A brewing academic scandal in the UK provides yet another example of how the drive to impose Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion into every corner of life rests on a foundation of lies.
No, in this case I am not referring to the obviously false claims that our society is so systemically racist that it is nearly impossible for non-heterosexual white males to succeed without being given a boost—the truth is that about the only group in the Western World that is not being given preferential treatment is heterosexual white men—but rather the necessity that people accept and promote lies about the many unqualified people who wind up in prestigious positions despite their manifest inability to fulfill the duties of those roles.
It’s not that minorities of any kind are by virtue of their being minorities unable to do the jobs; some can, some can’t. It’s that the reason they get elevated has little correlation to their qualifications or lack thereof. And when that is how choices are made, a large number of people will wind up being disasters waiting to happen.
The only way to avoid discussing this obvious fact is to lie—to pretend that unqualified people deserve to be where they are.
We see this all the time, especially in academia, where DEI is absolutely foundational to the modern university’s ideology. Government, too, has more than its share of DEI hires. In any major institution, you will see plenty of examples.
In a scandal that is getting more attention across the pond than here, the youngest black man to ever get a full professorship at Cambridge, or in this case Oxbridge, which is the shorthand for Oxford and Cambridge, which are often lumped together due to their shared prestige, sure looks to be the beneficiary of people swallowing (or pretending to) a pack of lies.
The Jason Arday story would make a wonderful drama. From learning to read at the age of 18 to a Cambridge professorship at 37. Combined with amazing athletic feats. And then the story starts to unravel…
The plagiarism allegations are serious. But as a runner, the part that… https://t.co/3cTu7y2gtS
— Professor Alice Sullivan (@ProfAliceS) July 24, 2026
The Jason Arday story would make a wonderful drama. From learning to read at the age of 18 to a Cambridge professorship at 37. Combined with amazing athletic feats. And then the story starts to unravel…
The plagiarism allegations are serious. But as a runner, the part that blows my mind is that Arday claimed to have run 600 miles in 6 days. If true, that would make him an international elite athlete.
Yet UK athletics website Power of Ten doesn’t register any times at all for Arday, not even a parkrun.
Cambridge could argue that it doesn’t matter if one of their academics has a rich fantasy life. And that would be fair as long as he was appointed on his merits and not for his inspirational/implausible life story.
Could it be that academics are some of the most gullible people alive?
https://telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/24/cambridges-diversity-poster-boy-in-plagiarism-row/
The story of Jason Arday is hard to get to the bottom of, because so few of his “achievements” can be verified by any source other than Jason Arday, who is happy to tell you how extraordinary he is.
But working backward—looking at that story and comparing it to an even barely plausible reality—it’s clear that he is a fabulist, and that everybody around him is eager to affirm his lies because they help them justify DEI policies that are on their face unjustifiable.
Jason Arday – Cambridge’s youngest black professor – was wildly over-promoted and over-praised given the low quality of his work. Now he’s been accused of plagiarism. Who can honestly be surprised?, asks Joanna Williams https://t.co/YdQhEX8vVJ
— spiked (@spikedonline) July 27, 2026
Arday has a storybook life, in the sense that it is clearly a made-up story. Nonverbal until 11, illiterate until 18, he completed his PhD before 30 and became a full professor at Cambridge after an already meteoric career at 37.
But the 41-year-old’s CV boasts far more achievements and personal milestones: a torchbearer for the 2012 London Olympics, he has also claimed to have raised over £5.5million for more than 70 charities – a huge amount for someone who is not a household name.
He has also led a homeless drive across London, setting up soup kitchens and mobile washing facilities for rough sleepers. All very impressive, especially for someone who, as a ‘non-verbal’ child, was written off by experts.
But the accomplishments don’t stop with philanthropy. In 2010 he said he ran 30 marathons in 35 days and 300 miles in three days, a feat of considerable endeavour, let alone stamina, which he explained thus: ‘If you have the will, it will always supersede skill.’
Next month there will doubtless be more extravagant compliments when his autobiography, Great And Unfortunate Things is published by Simon & Schuster.
‘That oft-used word ‘inspirational’ feels wholly inadequate to describe his incredible story of grit and resilience,’ gushed the aforementioned Bookseller, of the upcoming memoir.
Meanwhile Professor Arday’s UK editor Kris Doyle drooled: ‘During the editorial process, I laughed and cried many times at this extraordinary book.
‘I can promise you’ve never read a story like this… Jason’s a humble man, but he’s got a generous heart and he’s a tireless advocate for harnessing everyone’s unique potential.
‘This book is going to start some much-needed conversations and resonate with a lot of people.’
He accomplished all this without sleep because he was too busy saving the world and doing groundbreaking research.
Uh huh.
Skepticism about Arday’s life story is not new; it has just been ignored by the people who matter. Academics have been pointing out that Arday’s work is rife with plagiarism, reminding us of Claudine Gay, another DEI hire, and no sane person believes he ran 30 marathons in 35 days. That would put him in the company of the world’s elite athletes, and not a single one of these marathons has any record of him even running.
Three hundred miles in three days? Uh, yeah. Right.
Still, as the controversy has grown in anticipation of his “I laughed, I cried” book that is sure to be a bestseller because it strokes the erogenous zones of the DEI-obsessed, his colleagues are accusing everybody with any doubt that this story can be true of, you guessed it, racism. Throw in prejudice against “neurodivergent” people, and you get enough intersectional victim points to provide armor against people pointing to reality.
Trotting through Arday’s CV, he details how the sociologist, whose parents are from Ghana, ‘rocketed up the academic ladder as a scholar of racism, education and inequality’.
He adds admiringly: ‘In three years he went from senior lecturer at Roehampton (2018) to associate professor at Durham (2019) to professor at Glasgow (2021).
Ivy League universities (plural) tried to recruit him but he had his heart set on Oxford or Cambridge. He is one of the youngest people of any race to ever hold a chair professorship at Oxbridge.’
(Indeed, in that gushing Bookseller profile, it relates how Arday once wrote a set of personal goals on a bedroom wall at his parents’ Clapham home. One of them read: ‘One day I will work at Oxford or Cambridge.’)
Quoting Arday himself, Cofnas writes: ‘Wouldn’t it be the most ridiculous story ever told, if the boy who couldn’t read and write at 18 gets a PhD before he’s 30?’
To which Cofnas adds this crucial rider: ‘But how much of ‘the most ridiculous story ever told’ is true?’
One aspect that irks the Chicago-born Cofnas is that Arday left school with two GCSEs, in physical education and textiles. Despite being vocational subjects, he points out, these qualifications ‘require literacy ‘.
The story simply doesn’t add up, and there’s little to no actual documentation to back it up.
Arday himself has said, ‘Wouldn’t it be the most ridiculous story ever told, if the boy who couldn’t read and write at 18 gets a PhD before he’s 30?’
The answer, of course, is “yes.” Yet all these people, from most of his fellow professors to the publisher of his book, insist you believe it. And if you don’t, you are a racist.
How much is true and how much false? I don’t know. And Arday isn’t going to tell us the real truth, which is already getting revised. And if Arday is simply a con man, the lesson isn’t to disbelieve incredible stories without proof; we should already know that.
It’s that we can’t trust the DEI-obsessed who desperately want them to be true.
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