There is a man lying dead in England this morning, and most of us assume he took his own life. He was famous, forty-one years of age, and very clever. How and why did this appalling waste of a human being happen?
Jason Arday was black, with long dreadlocks and a strong, intelligent face. He was a Professor of Sociology in Cambridge, the first black man and probably the youngest to be appointed a Professor there. That was two years ago. Then accusations of plagiarism in his thesis began to surface, and some of the claims he made about being non-verbal until eleven and incapable of writing until he was eighteen began to surface. His claims to have run marathons, raised large sums of money for charities, were questioned. Yesterday the pressure on him proved too much and today he is dead.
While all sorts of questions swirled around his qualification to hold the post he did, and whether it had been done without falsehoods – all these drove him over the edge.
Were the claims true? I don’t know. And, what’s more, I don’t care. What no one asked, amid all the missiles fired at him, was whether he was any good at his job? Did he motivate students? Did he help them develop?
You may disagree, and say that you need certain qualifications for such a post. I disagree, and in my corner is a great thinker on education and sociology, Ivan Illich. He believed that we make a grave mistake by assuming accreditation means effectiveness. In other words, Arday could have had all the qualifications in the world and been useless at his job. Yet no one in the debate raised the core question: was he an effective, was he a good Professor of Sociology.
That’s not to say there wasn’t a strand of racism in the hounding of Arday. But the core of the matter – his effectiveness or ineffectiveness as a Professor in Cambridge has been raised by no one.
Credentials, from the 11+ to a PhD, tell us only one thing: that the person is good at passing exams and writing theses. They tell us nothing of their worth in the job for which they are paid.
Donald Trump
Such a sad story. He obviously felt great shame and embarrassment at being caught out in his lies. If only he had realised today’s story is tomorrow’s chip paper. He would have been a shoe in for I’m A Celebrity. Sounds like another George Santos although I don’t think he broke any laws?