Benajmin Ryan writes for the Washington Free Beacon about blemishes on an academic star’s record.
The celebrity Cambridge education professor Jason Arday—whose rags-to-riches memoir from Simon & Schuster lands August 11—has repeatedly lied about his charitable fundraising prowess, according to 16 years of records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
The revelation comes as Arday’s scholarly work and inspiring life story are under heavy scrutiny in Britain from journalists and at least one other academic, who have presented evidence of sweeping plagiarism and rampant fabulism by the youngest black professor in Cambridge’s 800-year history. But Cambridge and Simon & Schuster are standing by Arday, with the university declining to investigate the plagiarism accusations. And the publisher, the Free Beacon has found, stealth-edited Arday’s online biography to remove false claims and reel in his embellishments and, most notably, toned down claims about his charitable fundraising in the final edits of his book.
The Free Beacon has also reviewed a key document detailing how a high-powered London law firm enlisted by Arday last year intimidated a small publication out of running an investigation into allegations of Arday’s plagiarism and dishonesty. But that would only hold back the burgeoning scandal for so long. The dam broke two weeks ago when academic Nathan Cofnas published a withering Substack laying out glaring similarities between Arday’s academic work and those of other academics. Major British publications, from the conservative Telegraph to the liberal Guardian, began weighing in with a steady drumbeat of revelations chipping away at Arday’s carefully curated public image and putting Cambridge under mounting pressure.
Dating back at least to his mid-20s, Arday, now 41, has repeatedly claimed to have set—and then shattered—wildly ambitious goals for charitable fundraising, often, in his telling, from receiving sponsorships for charity running events. His total haul reached £5.5 million, or $7.4 million, by his most recent accounts.
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