Race, Cambridge and the Jason Arday Plagiarism Scandal

Jason Arday’s story is, without a doubt, extremely inspiring.

Born to Ghanian parents, he grew up in public housing in London. Diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, he didn’t speak until he was 11 and was barely able to read or write until he turned 18.

But despite those obstacles, he earned his PhD in 2016 from Liverpool John Moores University at the age of 31. Then, in 2023, at the age of 37, he became the youngest Black professor in the history of Cambridge University.

However, now those achievements are coming under scrutiny, both inside and outside of academia.

But is this an example of a politically motivated attack on a Black academic or are there actual issues that need to be addressed?

To determine the answer, we first need to go back to the beginning when the allegations first surfaced.

The Story So Far

The first public allegations against Arday came last week from philosopher and former Cambridge University professor, Nathan Cofnas.

Cofnas is a staunch critic of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies and butted heads with others at Cambridge over that and related issues. Ultimately, the school severed ties with him, prompting him to a file a lawsuit against the university.

According to his article, Cambridge became aware of the allegations when an anonymous tipster reached out to the administration at the school to notify them. However, at the time, the school declined to investigate the claims, saying that they were before his tenure at the school, even though he was hired based on those credentials.

However, according to a recent article on Retraction Watch, two of his papers were corrected as a result of these allegations.

But things continued to bubble under the surface. In September 2025, journalist Jack Grove was working on an article for the Times Higher Education (THE) about Arday’s work. Grove had been performing an independent analysis of Arday’s dissertation and had found several issues that concerned him.

However, According to Retraction Watch’s article, when the publication reached out to Arday for comment, he responded by recruiting the Carter-Ruck law firm, a prominent UK law firm that specializes in defamation cases, which caused the publication to pull the article.

The story largely sat idle until June 2026, when someone, disappointed with how Cambridge handled the situation, reached out to Cofnas, prompting him to write his article.

Now the story has received significant attention. This includes multiple articles in The Telegraph, The Times and the aforementioned article on Retraction Watch.

However, Arday also has significant support. A letter of solidarity has over 600 signatories, including many of his colleagues at Cambridge.

So who is right? It may be impossible to know for sure.

My Analysis

Note: Prior to writing this, I received an email with multiple documents highlighting similarities between Arday’s work and that of others. These documents are extensive and go beyond what Cofnas has published on his website. I did not get explicit permission to name the source of these documents, but I will say that I trust the source and have verified the information where I can.

Right off the bat, I want to state the obvious. Cofnas is a terrible source for these allegations. His staunch anti-DEI stance as well as his history with Cambridge give him both personal and ideological reasons to attack Arday. According to the Retraction Watch article, this is echoed by Martyn Hammersley, a sociologist at Open University who reviewed some of Arday’s work and has concerns.

There is not much doubt that this is a politically and ideologically motivated attack. It is a grotesque example of the weaponization of plagiarism, in particular against Black and/or DEI-associated academics.

However, just because the source of the allegations is dubious does not mean that the allegations are false. To that end, I did not have the needed time to review the case to my satisfaction to state whether I feel Arday plagiarized or not.

Such an investigation would likely take weeks given the volume of the work. Instead, I sought to answer a different question: Does the evidence presented support performing a more thorough investigation?

To that end, my answer is yes.

The most damning similarities are between those of Arday’s 2015 dissertation and the 2009 dissertation of Paula Zwozdiak-Myers, who was studying at Brunel University. Though Arday’s dissertation routinely cites Zwozdiak-Myers, there is significant text that is used verbatim without quotation marks. Typically, while in-text citations are good for citing information and ideas, quotes or other indicators are used to indicate copied text.

This fits a pattern that I see regularly of someone copying significant text in with the intent to “edit it to make it their own.” That never works. Proper paraphrasing isn’t about editing someone else’s words, it’s about using your words to express the same ideas. This is why I’ve long advocated for the cleanroom writing technique, to prevent this kind of copying.

To be clear, the Zwozdiak-Myers paper was not the only overlap. Similar overlaps were found between Arday’s dissertation and a 2013 paper by April G. Douglass, Dennie L. Smith and Lana J. Smith from Texas A&M University and a 2007 paper by Semiyu Adejare Aderibigbe, Laura Colucci-Gray and Donald Gray from the American University in the Emirates and the University of Aberdeen.

Does that mean he should lose his degree and his position at Cambridge? It is way too early for me to say that. These examples, like many others we’ve seen in these cases, are all over the map when it comes to severity. Some sound major alarm bells, some appear to be minor, if they are issues at all.

These are things that would have to be unwound in a longer investigation. However, it does not appear that such an investigation has been done. If there has, there certainly has been no public disclosure of it.

That is perhaps the biggest issue with this case. Not the alleged plagiarism, but the response to it.

A Different Perspective

There is not much doubt that these public allegations are motivated by political, ideological and/or racial factors. But while that means they should be treated with skepticism, it does not mean that they can be ignored.

Cambridge scored an own goal in this case. They were notified of these allegations in 2023. Around that time, the DEI plagiarism allegations in the United States hadn’t really taken off. That would begin in late 2023 and continue for the next year. 2024 should have been a wake-up call for the school that they needed to get ahead of these issues.

Then the school got a second chance in September 2025. A respected publication Times Higher Education, was raising questions about Arday’s work and, rather than taking the opportunity to respond, Arday chose to reach out to lawyers. They killed that story, but the mantle was just taken up by Cofnas, who claims he wasn’t even aware of the earlier story until he was already working on his own.

Now, it is almost exclusively a story about DEI, race and allegations of bias by Cambridge. While those are important issues, there are other important angles that are being ignored.

One is celebrity. There’s not much doubt that Arday is a major celebrity for Cambridge. We’ve seen schools go to great lengths to protect their famous faculty members. We saw this with Pamela Whitten, Francesca Gino, Étienne Klein and more. Universities are always reluctant to investigate their own, especially when they are celebrities or otherwise lucrative.

The second is Arday’s unusual history. According to him, he did not learn to write until he was 18. This means that he had much less time to learn about the nuances of academic writing and citation. What role, if any, did his background have in this? If academics with far longer histories can pick up similar bad habits, what does that say about him?

We don’t have answers for those questions and the current framing of the situation makes a real discussion about these issues impossible.

And that’s the problem with weaponized allegations of plagiarism. Even if the allegations are valid, they create an environment where they are impossible to discuss and give the needed weight and attention. It becomes an us vs them situation, which leaves no room for nuance.

There’s simply not a clear path forward. What could have and should have been a simple question about academic integrity has become something much bigger and much more complicated. That doesn’t really help anyone, except for those who are trying to use it for their own ends.

Bottom Line

In the end, Cambridge and Liverpool John Moores University really missed an opportunity to get ahead of this. There were so many warnings that went ignored or were outright deflected.

There’s no doubt that these allegations were made because of political and ideological reasons. There’s no coincidence that they initially were made public by a long-time critic of both the school and DEI broadly. There’s also no coincidence that the story has been largely carried by publications that share those ideologies.

But the coverage in Retraction Watch, the increasing number of academics expressing concerns and the evidence itself indicate, to me, that this shouldn’t just be dismissed. It needs a public, transparent investigation.

While I understand Cambridge’s reluctance to investigate a dissertation that was submitted elsewhere, Arday was hired on the basis of those credentials. If they are dubious, the school should want to know. Similarly, Liverpool John Moores University should want to know if their PhD was granted on false pretenses. If they have performed a thorough investigation and it does clear Arday, then releasing details would only help both him and the school.

To be clear, transparency won’t silence the critics. They will always find reasons to be critical. I know this better than almost anyone. However, it will take away the appearance of validity away from the critics to anyone not in that particular echo chamber.

The allegations, even if completely invalid, will never be silenced, but they can be contained. Unfortunately, it may already be too late to do that.