Cambridge: Forget That Investigation Into Hiring Arday…

As a former academic, the Jason Arday scandal was, to use a phrase liberals seem to love, very “triggering” for me. 

Everything about it screamed, “THIS IS ACADEMIA TO A ‘T.'” The self-deceptions, the virtue signaling, the racism against white people, the sham “research,” the indifference to truth, the ideological bulls**t, the Narrative™ building. 

That it happened at Cambridge, the pinnacle of academia, and was about Arday, whom Cambridge claimed was the “Best in the world” at what he did, was in its own way perfect for showing how far a once-great pillar of Western civilization has rotted from within. 

Even Cambridge, for just a moment, pretended that it understood that perhaps Arday’s hiring and promotion as a world-historical figure showed something had gone awry. It had taken enough flak, and announcing an investigation into Arday’s hiring seemed a good way to divert attention away from it. 

It’s all too predictable. pic.twitter.com/WUqpf54AAY

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) September 25, 2026

It worked. The Arday controversy died down.

Now that it has, Cambridge has breathed a sigh of relief and implicitly admitted that they like things just the way they are, and will double down on indifference to the truth and focus on promoting good feelings. Rather than ask “How in HELL did we hire this fabulist?” Cambridge will instead investigate, “Why didn’t we defend Jason Arday well enough and be ever kinder to him?” 

The University of Cambridge has abandoned plans to fully investigate its hiring of Jason Arday, the professor who became a lightning rod in the debate over diversity-and-inclusion efforts in higher education, following his abrupt death last month.

Instead, the university said, the inquiry will examine whether the school offered him sufficient support amid accusations that he plagiarized portions of his doctoral thesis and embellished his personal narrative. Dr. Arday may come up as part of a broader look at university hiring practices, but he will not be a focus.

That marks an abrupt shift from the plan announced this summer, when the school’s vice chancellor, Deborah Prentice, promised a “thorough and transparent” investigation into Dr. Arday’s appointment.

You can’t make this up. It is the perfect example of why academic institutions need to be rebooted, and, for that matter, why liberals need a time-out while they regain their sanity. 

Is it sad that Jason Arday killed himself? Obviously. Was it Cambridge’s fault? No, except insofar as it put an obviously mentally unwell man into a position where he would be exposed as a fabulist after they promoted him as something else. 

No doubt, some of you will get on your high horse and say, “Well, yes, Cambridge still should investigate the hiring, but shouldn’t it also look into whether it could have averted this personal tragedy too?” Perhaps, although you probably don’t know that Cambridge has plenty of experience with suicides of people under pressure, and you’ve probably never even heard of those cases. In 2022, six different students committed suicide in the span of just a few months, yet that didn’t make worldwide news. 

Arday, the fabulist whom they hired to fool the world to promote their DEI agenda, matters. Those guys? Not so much. 

The change in investigative focus means that Cambridge may never publicly address questions about how it vetted Dr. Arday for a senior teaching job and why it repeatedly downplayed concerns about his work and biography.

That has upset some professors, who are circulating a letter demanding full institutional accountability and an examination of how the university promoted Dr. Arday’s personal story, according to a draft seen by The New York Times.

Cambridge touted Dr. Arday as its youngest Black professor ever after he was hired at age 37 in 2022. He had claimed he could not speak until age 11 or read until age 18, a trajectory with no precedent in clinical literature.

The shift in the investigation’s focus reflects the institution’s ideological rot. They have dropped any concern for truth, excellence, merit, and research importance and gone straight to what really matters to this lot: having the right feelz. 

“Were we KIND enough?” 

Ironically, Cambridge rose to the heights of reputation at a time when one of the great British qualities we all admire was the ability to cut deeply and cruelly as quickly as possible. I wouldn’t say that is exactly WHY Cambridge became great, but the correlation is not incidental. British society, at its height, did not focus on generating the right feelings. 

Winston Churchill was a Sandhurst guy and didn’t go to Cambridge, but he embodied the spirit of the age when Cambridge and British education were at their height. Acerbic wit and a willingness to cut to the quick in the service of truth. 

U.S. President Harry S. Truman once defended Churchill’s replacement, Clement Attlee, by saying “He seems a modest sort of fellow.“

To which, Churchill replied “He’s got a lot to be modest about.“

Of Prime Minister MacDonald, Churchill once said he was a “sheep in sheep’s clothing.” In his famous exchange with Bessie Braddock, who chastised him for being drunk, he replied, “My dear, you are ugly, but tomorrow I shall be sober, and you will still be ugly.“

If Churchill were alive today, he would be hounded out of public life for not being nice enough. But of course, we didn’t need Churchill to be nice; we needed clear-eyed focus on reality and a willingness to do hard but necessary things. 

The question of whether Cambridge could have softened the blow on Arday is not of zero importance; the institution could certainly have afforded some effort to make his exit softer. It just isn’t the most important question by a long shot when it comes to Cambridge’s role as a key pillar of our social order. It’s an HR issue, not an “Are we destroying the search for truth?” issue. 

Cambridge is inverting the significance of the two issues. On a human level, Arday’s death is a tragedy; on a civilizational level, Cambridge’s indifference to truth, excellence, and merit is an existential threat. We rely on our truth-discovering institutions to be focused on…discovering the truth. 

They no longer care. They care about feelz. That’s how we get crises such as the rape gangs, the massive welfare fraud, censorship, “trust the Science™,” and the corruption of our scientific and medical institutions. 

“Don’t be mean” is a fine ethical standard for individuals; it is not the foundational principle for building a strong society that does great things and endures. We don’t look back into history to find the kindest generals; we look for Pattons. 

Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.

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