The Letter on Jason Arday From Cambridge Vice Chancellor Is Objectively Funny

I was naive. 

I was hoping to drop the Jason Arday story, but as a former academic myself, I guess I am doomed to follow the story until it dies down. It is too rich a vein of gold to simply ignore. 

I feel like Michael Corleone in the execrable The Godfather, Part III. 

That movie was a crime against humanity, which can equally be said about the career of Jason Arday, the most obvious fabulist in human history. 

Arday's autobiography drops today, completing the humiliation of our entire cultural elite. Cambridge University hired and labeled Arday the best scholar in his discipline in the world, the BBC and other media outlets spent enormous effort promoting him as a wunderkind who made Einstein look like a hack, and now Simon and Schuster, a storied publishing house, is actually releasing Arday's book, despite the fact that his book was so obviously a pack of lies long before it got near publication. 

The police even investigated journalists for questioning Arday's qualifications. Shut up or else!

He couldn't even keep what kind of cancer he claimed to have straight. His book proposal said it was one kind; the text told the story of surviving a different kind of cancer. Hard to miss that something didn't smell right. 

But Arday is black, which makes him a great catch in elite circles, which are so obsessed with pretending that every story of black people succeeding is a miracle. 

Deborah Prentice, the Vice Provost of Cambridge, has finally acknowledged the existence of the turd in her punchbowl, and is now scrambling to extract it and save the punch for future consumption. 

Chances are that her colleagues will eagerly drink what's left, because it has the only alcohol available, and the punch tasted good before anyway. 

Cambridge Has Come A Long Way From Calling Jason Arday Accusations a "Vile Smear Campaign"

Cambridge Vice-Chancellor issues says she shares concerns about Arday, promises partially independent investigation, says Durham and Glasgow Universities are also investigating, calls His… pic.twitter.com/unhlY5ek04

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) August 12, 2026

Cambridge Has Come A Long Way From Calling Jason Arday Accusations a "Vile Smear Campaign"

Cambridge Vice-Chancellor issues says she shares concerns about Arday, promises partially independent investigation, says Durham and Glasgow Universities are also investigating, calls His case an "aberration."

She writes:

Dear colleagues

I fully understand the concerns being raised across the University and well beyond it, regarding Jason Arday’s appointment and I share them. I know there is anger and anxiety around this damaging and difficult case. The highest standards of academic excellence have been a core principle at Cambridge for many centuries, and this is reflected in the outstanding research and teaching we see here every day. We are committed to maintaining those standards.

We will now investigate the circumstances around his appointment by the Faculty of Education back in 2022 and his time here in Cambridge since his appointment nearly four years ago. That investigation, as you say, should be thorough and transparent, and will be carried out independently by senior academics from within and beyond Cambridge. It will take time for this work to be done thoroughly, as you will understand, but the work must begin as soon as possible.

The findings will then inform a review of the process for the appointment of senior academic roles. As you are fully aware, appointments to senior academic roles, as in the case of the Faculty of Education and Jason Arday, are currently led at Department level.

I note that Durham and Glasgow Universities have announced that they are also investigating the circumstances surrounding the appointment of Jason Arday to academic posts there, and that Jesus College has accepted his resignation from his fellowship.

In addition, the University's Research Policy Committee will review the Misconduct in Research policy. As you know, the current approach in UK higher education is for the institution where plagiarism allegedly took place to carry out the investigation itself; we followed that approach in this case. We need to understand if there is more we could do when serious allegations are raised in relation to our own academic standards at Cambridge.

In light of the focus on this troubling case and the widespread commentary around it, I want to be very clear that we do not need the outcomes of an investigation to clearly and loudly affirm that our staff of colour are highly valued, for their scholarship, their achievements, and the contributions they make to the institution and the wider academic community. This particular case is an aberration and should not be used to cast aspersions on their work or the legitimacy of their roles at Cambridge.

The desire for quick answers and rapid responses is understandable, but we need to allow these reviews to complete their work effectively so we can learn from any mistakes and, where needed, improve our processes. Alongside these efforts, we also need to continue supporting one another in our work, and across our collegiate University.

Yours sincerely

Professor Deborah Prentice  

The Vice-Chancellor

IT'S NOT MY FAULT! It's those damn Education Department folks who did it! Not to mention other institutions who should have investigated Arday (they did, and pretended nothing was wrong). Did you know that the Education Department made this decision? They did! Not me!

And don't look askance at other DEI hires. This was an "aberration." There is zero reason to believe that our standards are anything but unbiased. 

Uh, yeah, right. And Anthony Fauci was an honest and perfect scientist and public servant. How dare you insinuate otherwise? Now go get your booster, and don't worry about those changes to your menstrual cycle, risk of myocarditis, and increased risk to your fetus. It's fake. 

Trust us. 

Dumping the responsibility on everybody but the administration is ludicrous. No BBC film crew mobilizes just because some Education professor asks them to. That comes straight from the top. No sane person can look at the full court press from every single cultural and academic elite institution to canonize Jason Arday without concluding that they were desperate beyond measure to emphasize how wonderful black academics are. 

John wrote yesterday about Tyler Austin Harper's disgust with his academic peers and institution for treating him like a mascot. It was an honest and brilliant essay by a black professor at the essential corruption of academia caused by the dedication to DEI. 

Blacks are infantilized by liberals, who think they are incapable of succeeding on their own or being anything but obsessed by their being black. Harper was interested in English literature, but shoehorned into the "black" category of "victim needing a hand up." 

𝗦𝗛𝗘 𝗜𝗦 𝗔𝗕𝗦𝗢𝗟𝗨𝗧𝗘𝗟𝗬 𝗥𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧
⁣⁣⁣
This is one of those moments where someone says the part you’re not supposed to say — and says it anyway.
⁣⁣⁣
𝗡𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗱𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴.
𝗡𝗼 𝗮𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝘁𝗼𝘂𝗿.
Just reality.
⁣⁣⁣
Here’s the truth, exactly as she laid it… pic.twitter.com/OgSiEy0UUj

— M.A. Rothman (@MichaelARothman) February 9, 2026

Harper is a progressive, but obviously he has intellectual integrity. Unlike Cambridge University or any other academic institution outside a few conservative ones. 

Intersectional politics are poison. They destroy everything they touch, and ironically it is the most prestigious institutions where they hold the most sway. 

Yale did a study a while back that showed that liberals talk down to black people as if they were children, while conservatives talk to them exactly as they talk to others, including white people. Liberals assume blacks are too stupid to understand them, which conservatives don't care who they are talking with, and treat them all the same. 

A certain kind of NPR/NYT white liberal performatively wails about black victimhood constantly but reveals her/his deep-seated doubts about the existence of black excellence.

— Inez Stepman ⚪️🔴⚪️ (@InezFeltscher) November 5, 2021

If you can't keep up, that's your problem. Learn English. You can do it. 

No doubt, Cambridge did not care a whit about whether Arday was a fraud or not; the institution didn't even care that students complained that Arday was hurting their academic careers. 

All they cared about was the virtue points. And now they are claiming that the failure is not their fault. 

One last point: this story is not going away, and is unlikely to make Cambridge look anything but worse. The Free Speech Union has some pointed questions they want answered, and are echoing what a lot of others are wondering:

The Free Speech Union is taking an interest in the story of Jason Arday for a number of reasons.

First, we want to know who paid for the threatening letter from the law firm Carter-Ruck — effectively a SLAPP — that was sent to Times Higher Education in an attempt to get… pic.twitter.com/b8ZIRxqp6L

— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) August 12, 2026

First, we want to know who paid for the threatening letter from the law firm Carter-Ruck — effectively a SLAPP — that was sent to Times Higher Education in an attempt to get journalist Jack Grove to stop asking Professor Arday questions about his academic record.

Was it Jason Arday himself? The University of Cambridge? Or the Good Law Project?

Second, we want to know who reported both the academic and former professor David Harris and Times Higher Education journalist Jack Grove to the police, alleging harassment after they began asking Arday questions about his academic and extracurricular record.

In David Harris’s case, the Metropolitan Police referred the complaint to Devon and Cornwall Police, which rightly decided there was nothing to investigate.

But in Jack Grove’s case, he was contacted by the police and informed that he had been the subject of a four-month investigation by the Met. While officers said they would be taking no further action, he was told he should refrain from questioning Jason Arday again because it was also affecting Arday’s mental health.

The police should never be telling journalists whom they can and cannot question — particularly when there are legitimate questions that need answering.

Powerful people should not be able to use the police to silence journalists and academics who are simply asking questions and doing their jobs.

The Free Speech Union has written to Sir Mark Rowley, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to ask what on earth his officers were playing at. He has yet to reply.

If Jason Arday was the person who reported these individuals to the police, that is one thing. But if it was the University of Cambridge, that would be even more serious — and is something FSU General Secretary Lord Young will be raising in Parliament in due course.

Expect a parliamentary discussion about the issue, especially since the police tried to intimidate people into staying quiet. 

What a mess, and it is all their fault. 

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