New Albany resident Philip Derrow is a regular Columbus Dispatch contributor.
Humans are storytellers. We create narratives to help us make sense of ourselves and the people and world around us. Sometimes the stories are objectively true; other times, not so much.
And truth is often stranger than fiction.
These notions came to mind as I read about a charismatic UK academic named Jason Arday.
It’s a cautionary tale about the consequences of allowing narratives to outrun the evidence, and about universities forgetting their role as truth-seeking, rather than activist-promoting, enterprises. Those failures can have deadly consequences.
Three years ago, Cambridge University, long one of the world’s great bastions of the Enlightenment, celebrated Arday
as its youngest-ever Black full professor and an “exceptional scholar.”
That was their story, and they stuck with it even after it became clear that his appointment was based on what can most generously be described as a work of historical fiction.
Arday was found dead Aug. 14 in his home. A coroner's inquest has begun into the cause.
His death came just a few weeks after Nathan Cofnas, an American researcher at Ghent University in Belgium, publisheda newsletter entry alleging Arday’s doctoral dissertation was riddled with plagiarism and that his biography included wildly embellished tales of personal struggle and athletic prowess.
Despite requiring changes, the university that awarded Arday’s doctorate cleared him of plagiarism. Other reviewers disagreed. Readers can decide for themselves.
This captivating saga likely would have stayed across the pond but for the fact that Arday’s apparently padded background included a false claim that he had been a visiting professor at Ohio State in its now-shuttered Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
Then, never wanting to miss a news cycle, the Trump State Department announced that it was “…reviewing any relationships we have with Ghent University,” after the university’s rector suspended Cofnas.
Though Cofnas’ Substack made the news, researchers at Times Higher Education were prepared to run the story a year earlier, only to kill it after Arday’s lawyers intervened.
Cofnas is hardly a sympathetic character, arguing that in a “race realism” meritocracy, Black people “would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment.” While I generally reject ad hominem rebuttals, there isn’t enough space to list the brilliant Black thinkers that easily dwarf Cofnas’ small-mindedness.
Cofnas’ boss, Petra De Sutter, needs a lesson in intellectual openness, too. The Ghent University rector suspended Cofnas with a mealy-mouth claim that “[academic] freedom is not unlimited. It … may be restricted in order to protect the rights of others …”
The offended rights aren’t listed.
Before the Enlightenment, universities were cloistered castles that mostly preached religious dogma. They evolved by adopting the secular values of empiricism and rationalism to follow the evidence wherever it leads. Academic freedom means nothing if truth is subjugated to feelings.
De Sutter would also benefit from learning the risks of throwing stones in glass houses after delivering an inaugural address in which three of four quotes were AI hallucinations, then forfeiting an honorary doctorate.
The New England Journal of Medicine, previously one of America’s premier academic publications, published a narrative-washing opinion piece by Dr. Kemi Doll.
She opens by declaring, “They are trying to kill us,” then writes that she doesn’t “care whether or not any of these allegations against Prof. Arday were true. None of them were worth his career. And certainly not his life.”
What a stunning inversion of reality.
Racism is real, but Cambridge was apparently so determined to bolster its diversity bona fides that it utterly failed to conduct even a rudimentary review of Arday’s record.
Arday’s defenders blame a “racist feeding frenzy” rather than the activist culture that replaced the search for truth for which universities exist – or used to exist – in the first place.
That is the real story here. Jason Arday should still be alive with his family, and Nathan Cofnas should still be an unknown race-baiting postdoc. Both would likely be true had Arday been judged by the content of his character rather than the color of his skin.
New Albany resident Philip Derrow is a retired business owner. He was a two-term member of the New Albany-Plain Local Board of Education. He is a regular Columbus Dispatch contributor. Reach him at philderrowdispatch@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Jason Arday's death not result of 'racist feeding frenzy.' Blame activist culture | Opinion
