With 'friends' like this, who needs enemies
How Jolyon Maugham's Good Law Project instrumentalises Jason Arday's plight, thus exposing him to even greater public ire.
Jason Arday’s life is in tatters, now that his professional and personal credibility is toast. Spare a thought for what he is going through. No more pixels and ink need be squandered on all the ways he bears responsibility for his own fall from academic poster boy to moral and intellectual imposter. The story is entertainment now and I’m just morbidly fascinated by the continuing car crash of his spectacular fall, while feeling uncomfortable that there is a presumably misfiring human being at the centre of it. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be Arday now.
He didn’t kill or maim anyone and the only ruined life is his own. This seems worth bearing in mind.
It would be better for Jason Arday were he able to fade out of the story at this point, but zealots are still openly using him for a particular form of praxis which can only encourage the haters.
As of now, Jolyon Maughams Good Law Project continues to elicit public endorsements of the claim that all of the allegations against Arday are “entirely false,” “baseless,” “comprehensively rejected” and the product of a campaign involving racism and an attempt to undermine successful black people. You can see that here https://goodlawproject.org/petition/stand-in-solidarity-with-jason-arday/
Maugham justifies this with the argument that
“The forces arrayed against Black and Brown people in Britain are enormously powerful. Standing together, in public at least, with people who want the same things as you do is a pretty central part of how I think you resist.”
I know where Maugham is coming from but transforming the certainly guilty Arday into a social justice symbol is a grotesque distortion of such a cause. It is not only against the interests of Arday himself but also any accomplished black academic who is now exposed to suspicion that their success is the result of lower, standards being applied in their appointment and the assessment of their merits.
Maugham’s praxis (the practical application of social justice theory) now involves politically instrumentalising a seemingly vulnerable man as a totem.
With friends like these, Arday no longer needs enemies. I read that petition with its insistence that Arday is guilty of nothing but being black - even after Cambridge themselves have effectively disavowed their own star professor - and feel the same weird frustration I do when stumbling across Flat Earthers, 911 truthers and ‘Covid is just a cold’ idiots.
Perhaps, at some point last week, the Good Law Project had a good faith position. When it was still at least theoretically possible that Arday had been subject to special scrutiny for racist reasons. But the facts changed, evidence accumulated, Arday resigned and Cambridge announced their own enquiry.
Back then Maugham was still operating on the basis that Cambridge University had issued an extraordinarily categorical statement saying that allegations of plagiarism had been thoroughly investigated and that Arday had been cleared of wrongdoing.
Given that information, suspicion that Arday was being subjected to a politically motivated attempt to discredit him was not entirely unreasonable.
But then the story evolved rapidly and serious people without any obvious political animus towards Arday concluded that there was at least a prima facie case requiring further investigation. Then Cambridge itself moved and Arday quit amid a welter of evidence that he’s a fabulist.
Let’s give the Good Law Project a maximally charitable reading and acknowledge that it’s always possible that true allegations can be made by people with ugly motives, which would change the moral character of a controversy. At that point you might launch a petition that states:
“We, the undersigned, are appalled by the sustained and malicious attacks on the academic integrity of Professor Jason Arday.
Entirely false allegations of plagiarism were made against Professor Arday and referred to two universities. Investigations have found no evidence whatsoever of wrongdoing. The relevant academic journals also found no basis for the claims.
Yet despite these unequivocal findings, rightwing media have attempted to smear Professor Arday’s reputation and undermine his career. That should concern everyone who believes in academic freedom, fairness and due process.”
But when the very much not right-wing Guardian breaks new information confirming that there is definitely a there there, this is when you withdraw that petition and wait to see the outcome. That’s when you pivot to just supporting Arday through a terrible experience and maybe even argue that plagiarism is common and that you suspect that Arday was singled out for his skin colour. It is possible to advance a good faith argument along these lines. But Jolyon Maugham just doubled down on the original denial and continued to publish misinformation on the Good Law Project website.
This is indecent behaviour in epistemic and moral terms because it is dishonest and exposes Arday to needless fury. To be told that black is white and war is peace can only infuriate anyone and yet that is what Maugham does because his praxis requires it. He effectively says so himself, above, in his Substack post here.
My argument is not that Maugham should have cut loose from Arday, who clearly needs all the help and moral support he can get. All I want from Maugham is an acknowledgement that he got this one wrong. Instead he chooses to make everything worse. Especially for Jason Arday.
“Standing together, in public at least, with people who want the same things as you do is a pretty central part of how I think you resist.”
I can’t stop coming back to that sentence, because it goes to the heart of a problem in politics. Which is that truth matters less than wanting things. It’s a terrible philosophy and we are all aware that political activism is founded on it.
But it’s also a terrible way to treat a friend.
Arday has already suffered one of the most spectacular public professional collapses I’ve ever seen and it continues with stories emerging about his autobiography (due out this week) undergoing heavy last minute editing to remove probable lies about his life. He’s just cancelled his book tour.
Jason Arday appears to have been nothing more than a pawn in a political project by Cambridge. The people who appointed him and those who initially lied to defend him were just using him for their own ends. And now Jolyon Maugham is doing the same.
If we were initially encouraged to feel contempt for Jason Arday, I’ve stepped off that bus. My contempt is now reserved for those who used him in this way and especially those who continue to do so.
Arday is no longer a human being for these people. He is a theory and a totem and it kind of sickens me that he remains - ironically - enslaved by their moral appetites.
By choosing to keep Arday front and centre of his praxis, Maugham keeps the man on the battlefield of the culture war.
Stalin supposedly said “you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs” and this seems to be Maugham’s position too. A genuinely compassionate and supportive activist would shield and protect Arday, not keep his misdemeanours right there in the spotlight.
There is something peculiarly cruel about this. But it’s also unsurprising, given how glassy-eyed utopianists operate when it comes to truth standards.
Jason Arday needs the temperature lowering. He needs good communications advice. If I were him I’d show some humility and if I were advising him personally, I’d go hard on the ‘they used me and I couldn’t resist’ argument. In fact, I’d love to work for Arday at this point, because there are plenty of people who deserve to suffer professional humiliation far more than he does. Arday has always been a victim of do-gooders who have now exposed all black academics to the suspicion that they too benefitted from lower standards. This really sickens me.
Helping a man whose public identity has collapsed does not involve denying that he has badly transgressed.
I wish the story would now move on. My prurient enjoyment of every new and humiliating exposure of his cheating and fabulism comes from the worst part of me and it no longer needs feeding.
There are many more consequential questions to answer in this affair than ‘how on earth did Jason Arday come up with this ridiculous life story and think he could blag his way through an academic career’. We’ve all done stupid things. The real questions are about the institutions involved - and one of those is now the Good Law Project.
Good luck to Jason Arday in rebuilding his life. A pox on those people who used him for their own ends and continue to do so.