Coleman Hughes: Why the Left Needed to Believe in Jason Arday

The Jason Arday scandal has left the academic world reeling. Found dead in his family’s apartment last Friday, Arday has been the subject of intense scrutiny over the past month. Appointed in 2023 as Cambridge University’s youngest-ever black professor, he faced extensive and credible allegations of plagiarism that exploded into public view last month. Those allegations led to public interest in the (literally) incredible details of his life. Arday claimed to have run 600 miles in six days—which would make him one of the best ultra-marathon runners on Earth. He claimed that he couldn’t speak until the age of 11 and couldn’t read until 18, but somehow managed to complete a PhD around 30. And he claimed to have raised the equivalent of several million U.S. dollars for charity.

Jason Arday was either the most interesting man in the world, or he was a liar. It turned out to be the latter.

All this has revealed many unflattering things about academia: DEI invites fraud by lowering standards, the bigotry of low expectations is alive and well, and a disturbing number of “experts”—not just Arday but all the Cambridge professors and BBC journalists who co-signed him—are compromised by ideology, cowardice, or both.