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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

In Academia also…

Plagiarism is as old as the hills in Western academia. Passing off the work of others as original research and cheating at exams is part and parcel of the curriculum these days. ‘Lie, cheat and steal’ is the bourgeois ethic that underwrites everything in the capitalist world so it shouldn’t surprise us to find it in academia also. When caught out erring scholars can usually expect a moment of shame, a rap on the knuckles, a demotion or a discreet resignation before returning to the ivory towers.

Not so for Jason Arday, the Cambridge professor who was hounded to death by endless racist attacks on his integrity in the mainstream media. They claimed that his academic achievements were faked and that his back-story didn’t add up.

This was all too much for Arday, one of the youngest black professors in Britain. He submitted his resignation. Last week he took his own life.

Jason Arday was subjected to a bourgeois media frenzy usually reserved for mass murderers and serial killers. Some aspects of Arday’s narrative may well have been massaged to advance his career. But other key claims the sociologist made about his academic research and his charity work, which were widely denounced as false, now appear to be true.

It transpires that the witch-hunt was inspired by another Cambridge don, an American racist and Zionist, who had previously been dismissed from Emmanuel College in a row over his views on race and intelligence. Dr Nathan Cofnas has a firm view about black people. He is a proponent of “racial realism” who wrote in February 2024 that without affirmative action, “blacks would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment”.

But this wasn’t just an isolated case of academic bigotry and rivalry. London MP Diane Abbott says the press was out for Jason Arday from day one.

“What you have to remember is that this wasn’t a matter of a few weeks,” the maverick Labour MP told the media. “He was first appointed as a professor in Cambridge three years ago and for those three years he has had a vicious campaign from people who just didn’t believe that a black man should be a Cambridge professor”. And it doesn’t stop there. “Stop and think how many people at other top universities think exactly the same,” she said. “It wasn’t just a campaign against one professor, it was a campaign against all of us.”

Or as Jeremy Corbyn put it: “In the final months of his life, Jason Arday was subject to a relentless onslaught of attacks and abuse. Jason was a human being with friends and family – but he was turned into a pawn for vicious culture wars by a cruel media industry motivated by racism and clicks. The lessons are never learned. When will the British media face accountability for its behaviour?

“Jason was much loved by those around him. May he rest in peace.”