Racialized DEI Hiring Is Bad for Everyone

Jason Arday was found dead on Friday. After large parts of the black Cambridge academic’s work and life story were revealed to be fraudulent, the 41-year-old chair of sociology of education resigned in early August and, many suspect, took his own life.

Western liberals have rushed to blame those who criticized Arday, accusing them of “racist” attacks that led him to commit suicide. But while Arday’s death is undoubtedly a tragedy, it does not illustrate the dangers of anti-black racism. Instead, it demonstrates the destructive nature of so-called “antiracist” DEI policies to everyone involved. Those who pushed Arday forward because of his race and not his merit and those who for years turned a blind eye to his dishonesty bear far more blame than any supposedly “racist” critics.

Jason Arday was the hero of a fairy tale irresistible to western liberals. The son of immigrants from Ghana to the U.K., he told people his childhood was spent in special education schools for physical and intellectual disabilities. He also said that he didn’t learn to speak until age 11 and to read until 18. Dyslexic and deaf in one ear, he said he developed epilepsy as a teen from enduring beatings by neighborhood kids.

Yet, as they say, Arday persisted. He earned an undergraduate degree and then a doctorate. At 37, he was named as Cambridge University’s youngest-ever black holder of an established chair. Unlike in the American system, where everyone who teaches university classes gets called “professor,” in Britain this honor is reserved for those at the top. To be “Professor Arday” was to have “made it.”

This rags (and disabilities) to academic riches story might have seemed remarkable as is, but it somehow was better than that in his own telling. Arday claimed to have appeared on Seven Up, a famous British television show. A runner, he claimed to have completed 30 marathons in 35 days—for charity, of course. He claimed to have written his doctoral dissertation while on the ride to and from Liverpool John Moores University, where he was completing his doctorate and teaching, since all his other time was taken up working shifts at a grocery store and then as a cleaner to make ends meet for his family.

This triumph of the human spirit was, as noted, an irresistible story for liberals. Especially since it was being told by a handsome and charismatic black man. A real-life Forrest Gump in dreadlocks! If one didn’t have on the goggles of DEI, however, the evidence that this was all a fiction was overwhelming.

His life story was, to put it bluntly, largely a lie.

The New York Times account in the wake of Arday’s death muttered the ceremonial incantations about how nasty conservatives had “seized” on Arday’s story “as evidence of diversity-and-inclusion efforts run amok” and “that Cambridge had been so eager to diversify that administrators let their judgment be clouded.” Usage of “seized” always indicates that the publication can’t really argue against a claim’s truth. Indeed, to their credit, the Times offers proof that it is true.

While there had been criticism of Arday from the beginning, it was doggedly fought off both by Cambridge and Arday himself. Concerning the former, we read, “A review of internal Cambridge documents and interviews with former colleagues and associates shows that, in addition to passing over more experienced candidates for the job, administrators gushed publicly about Dr. Arday’s scholarship and privately disregarded complaints about his work.” The Times says those administrators “declined to investigate plagiarism concerns and accused his critics of a ‘vile campaign’ to discredit him.”

Arday went much further. When another scholar criticized his work, Arday made a racism complaint to the critic’s university. When a journalist from Times Higher Education contacted Arday about plagiarism accusations last year, the esteemed professor sicced a high-profile law firm on the publication and reported the journalist to the police. The article never appeared.

This response to critics shouldn’t have surprised anyone. As John McWhorter observed, Arday’s work was very similar to the American race-baiting activist Ibram Kendi. Arday’s doctoral dissertation was a catalogue of how racism affects every aspect of black British scholars’ lives. Its theme, McWhorter says, is that “racism’s ubiquity and power is obvious, and anyone who questions this has an ulterior motive….” In other words, to criticize or even question black people is itself racist.

The problem for Arday is that many people no longer care whether you call them racist since the term, as they use it, is simply a rhetorical cudgel used to shut down critics. While Liverpool John Moores University ran an internal investigation into Arday’s work in 2025 that claimed to clear him, others kept going.

In July, philosopher Nathan Cofnas published his examination of Arday’s dissertation and publications on his Substack. Cofnas ran them through “the plagiarism-detection program Copyleaks.” In the dissertation, Cofnas found 36 passages in which Arday basically cut and pasted, usually (but not always) with some minor changes of a few words, chunks from a 2009 dissertation by another scholar. Some of the articles were not plagiarized, but, as Cofnas noted, neither was there much of substance in them. From there on, it was downhill for Arday.

As academics and journalists found their courage, it was discovered that, as with the supposed scholarship, almost all of those glowing elements of Arday’s life story were provably false or had strong evidence against them.

When Cambridge started investigating Arday, he resigned on August 5. It was a little bit too on the nose that the London Times analyzed his resignation and discovered that it was “either entirely or almost entirely AI-generated.”

A statement from Arday’s family after his death claimed, “The campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason, who was a gentle man and who always wanted to see the best in everyone.” So, too, London Mayor Sadiq Khan called Arday “the victim of a pernicious public shaming that other people in his position simply wouldn’t have faced.” The implication here is that Arday was a victim.

They have a point. Arday was a victim – but not of racists trying to clip the wings of a successful black man. He was a victim of his own fraudulent behavior and of those who promoted him because he was black despite the glaring warnings of his fraudulence.

The contemporary liberal penchant for “antiracism” is just another form of racism. It demotes some for being from an “oppressor” class, despite their accomplishments. It promotes others for being in an “oppressed” class, despite their lack of them. It is destructive to the institutions and to the individuals discriminated against.

As Jason Arday’s sad tale demonstrates, DEI is just as destructive to those who are supposedly the beneficiaries. “Progressives” set up Arday for failure. If they wish to blame someone other than Arday for his tragic ending, they should blame themselves.