Tim Dieppe says that the Jason Arday scandal shows Cambridge University needs to return to the Christian foundations which made it great in the first place
I have been somewhat enthralled by the Jason Arday scandal at Cambridge University as it has played out over the last few weeks. The story stretches credulity to its limits. How on earth did so many academics fall for this man? It really beggars belief. The damage done to Cambridge University’s reputation is inestimable.
Yet, this is not the only evidence of corruption at Cambridge. The loss of a whistleblower tribunal is also a very serious matter. Then there’s the appointment of an associate research professor who thinks Western education is a ‘threat’ to Muslims.
Cambridge University loses whistleblowing tribunal
News broke this week that Cambridge University lost an important whistleblowing tribunal. The Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University, Professor Deborah Prentice was among the respondents found to have retaliated against a whistleblower in the Institute of Astronomy. The case is about bullying of female staff by Professor Richard McMahon, then the Institute’s director. Professor Wyn Evans, a professor of astrophysics, made protected disclosures about this bullying and was retaliated against by several other professors. 21Group which supported the case, has called on Deborah Prentice to announce an investigation into the workings of the University’s Human Resources and Legal divisions. Wyn Evans described the Vice Chancellor’s position as “untenable.”
This case by itself is enough to show that there are serious problems at Cambridge University.
Islamist Assistant Research Professor
Andrew Gilligan, writing for The Spectator, broke the news on Tuesday that Farah Ahmed has been appointed Assistant Research Professor in the Faculty of Education – the same faculty as Mr Arday. The faculty has now taken down the web pages about its people, but the page about Ahmed is archived here.
Farah Ahmed is a former supporter of the now banned Islamist terrorist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Ahmed has explicitly described ‘western education’ as a ‘threat’ to Muslims. How does such a person get anywhere close to teaching at a Western university?
She has condemned democracy and integration and even criticised British schools for teaching that child marriage is wrong! As if that was not bad enough, she has written that the Islamic concept of education is sharply opposed to “gaining literacy and numeracy and other disciplinary skills demonstrated through qualifications.” She also wrote that: “western education is a threat to [Muslim] beliefs and values.” Again, how is she teaching in a Western education institution?
Ahmed opposed religious tolerance in education, writing that “religious tolerance is primarily pushed in religious education”, so that “Islam is taught as a religion like any other, putting its value on the same level as Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism and the like.” At least we know she is intolerant!
Moreover, she has said that English “is one of the most damaging subjects” a school can teach, arguing that fairy tales and Shakespeare plays “reflect secular views and immoral beliefs which contradict the viewpoint of Islam.”
Could Cambridge University have appointed anyone less suited to teach in its education department?
Jason Arday – the unqualified professor
Well, it turns out they did appoint someone to an even more senior position who was even less qualified. Jason Arday was appointed professor of sociology of education at Cambridge University in 2023, aged just 37, making him the youngest Black person ever to be appointed to a professorship at Cambridge. The head of the Education Faculty, Professor Hilary Cremin was filmed by the BBC welcoming Arday to his new job. She looked him in the eye and fawningly told him that the board of electors was “absolutely unanimous” about his appointment and added: “You are the best in the world, in terms of the research that you do.”
But this praise on camera has come back to haunt her.
Plagiarism concerns raised
It was in 2023 that Dr David Harris from Plymouth Marjon University first alerted Cambridge University to concerns about plagiarism in Arday’s PhD thesis. Cambridge then insisted that only Liverpool John Moores University could check it. Both universities insisted he had done nothing wrong. Arday told Harris not to contact him again, saying “Anything further from you will be considered bullying and harassment.” Arday also contacted the police to complain about harassment from Harris. The police declined to pursue a case.
Meanwhile, Arday became something of a media star. Multiple articles were written about him. He was a recurring panellist on BBC Question Time, he guest-edited the BBC Radio 4 Today programme and he was frequently interviewed as an expert in his field.
Lawyers and police protect him
Then in 2025, Jack Grove from the Times Higher Education assembled evidence of plagiarism. His research was never published due to legal threats. Grove was actually reported to the police for his emails to Arday. A police officer called Grove to explain that a complaint had been made, but the matter was now closed. However, Grove was told not to contact Arday again as it was affecting his mental health. At this point, Grove had not emailed Arday for four months. There is no way the police should have investigated Grove at all, let alone called him, let alone warned him not to contact Arday.
Not just plagiarism
In July 2026, Dr Nathan Cofnas published evidence of plagiarism in Arday’s PhD thesis on his Substack. Cofnas is a self-declared ‘race realist’ which is a highly controversial perspective which most people would regard as racist. This led to him being fired from the university in 2024. Cofnas ran the thesis through a plagiarism detection program which showed that he had copied multiple passages from another dissertation published in 2009. Mainstream newspapers soon picked up on this – publishing stories about plagiarism and other problems with Arday’s thesis. The Times found false funding declarations, participant quotes which appear to have been taken from another researcher, and “impossible” samples such as a breakdown of genders adding up to 110%. The Times quotes Professors saying that his research shows signs of fabrication – which is far worse than plagiarism.
Cambridge University stood by Arday for some weeks, claiming that he was a victim of “a vile campaign to undermine his credibility.” An open letter in support of Arday gathered thousands of signatures, including from other academics at Cambridge University, as well as Zack Polanski leader of the Green Party.
Arday’s catalogue of lies
Along the way, it emerged that Arday had made multiple remarkable claims about his life experiences, many of which have now been proven false.
Arday claims to have been so autistic that he could not speak until he was 11 years old and could not read or write till he was 18. Yet, in his memoir he claims to remember what people said when he was around seven. Some people who say they were at school with him have now told the media that he had no problems talking at school.
He claimed to have raised £5m for charities by running 30 marathons in 35 days. In fact, he raised £5m as part of a syndicate of around 100 people. His Just Giving page shows he raised £6,285 for allegedly running 30 marathons in 35 days.
He claimed to have been confronted at his faculty building by a masked man threatening him on two occasions, the second time with a knife. CCTV does not support his account, and no one else reported anything suspicious. Arday did not inform colleagues about these alleged encounters.
Arday claimed a severed pig’s head was sent to his family home and reported to the police who investigated with the local butcher. The police categorically denied this.
Arday claimed to have authored a book titled Being Young, Black and Male, published by Palgrave Macmillan. The publisher never released this book. He claimed to have a master’s in psychodynamic practice from Birkbeck University. Birkbeck has no record of this.
Arday claimed to have volunteered with the charity Water Aid to install water plants in South America and West Africa. Water Aid has said it never sends volunteers abroad.
Arday claimed to have been part of the famous Seven Up TV series which followed people through their lives. The only problem is that the series started 21 years before he was born, making his claim impossible.
Arday claimed to have had a brain tumour removed just one month before his PhD viva – where PhD candidates have to defend their research in an oral examination. Ten days later he had a ‘mini stroke’ and was rushed back to hospital, resulting in him not being able to access his short-term memory. Instead of asking for the viva to be postponed on medical grounds, he went ahead and passed.
Arday resigns
As evidence mounted, and details of his back-story also turned out to be false, the university was finally pushed into announcing an investigation. A few hours later, Arday resigned. His resignation letter, which was assessed by AI detection tools to be 100% AI-generated, contained no apology or admission of guilt. He blamed an “unrelenting level of public scrutiny and personal attack” and said that his resignation should not “be mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives which have surrounded me.”
Arday’s memoir continues to be published
Simon and Schuster has just published Arday’s memoir in the US titled Great and Unfortunate Things, with a UK release date of 27 August. Arday claims to have been paid an advance of ‘1.4 million’ for this memoir. The title copies the title of episode 7 series one of the TV show Spartacus. Furthermore, the book recounts a claim of a prophecy given to Arday that he would do great things, but also sad and difficult things. A similar prophecy is given to Spartacus in that very episode. No credit is given in the book for copying the title or this aspect of the story.
There are many more claims that are either unsubstantiated or proven false, and I expect more will continue to come out in the coming weeks. The litany of lies already exposed goes to show that Arday is either a compulsive liar or an ardent fantasist. It seems that Cambridge academics, and many others in the media and elsewhere, were only too keen to believe these falsehoods, all of which made Arday out to be even more heroic than he already was for being appointed professor at Cambridge University at such a young age. Truth and honesty matter though. The lies couldn’t last forever.
The biased panel which appointed Arday
The Telegraph reported that someone “with first hand knowledge of the interview process that Mr Arday passed through” believes the university “only went through the motions” with the other candidates, because he was their preferred choice. The university had set diversity targets to increase the representation of people from ethnic minorities and those with disabilities.
Six of the nine members of the interview panel had expressed support for DEI initiatives. One had expressed support for Black Lives Matter and for decolonising the curriculum. Another had said that students should learn to “disrupt, refuse, and displace the liberal democratic principles” and create a “new moral order” that challenges Western democracy. How are these people teaching our brightest students at one of our best universities? They are openly saying they are opposed to the values which created the institution they make their living from.
Prof Cremin was not on the panel but was involved in the appointment process. She has said that the British education system should drop its “obsession with grades” as they exacerbate inequality. She said: “We all know this, but education exacerbates inequality – it doesn’t reduce it.” Reminder – Prof Cremin is Head of the Faculty of Education at Cambridge University. Yet she openly says that education exacerbates inequality? Again, why is she there? What is she doing?
Students failed
Some students have now gone to the media to complain about the absolute state of Arday’s teaching. One former MA student told The Telegraph: “Apart from one meeting throughout my whole course, he made a number of excuses not to meet with me or provide any substantive feedback on my work. As a supervisor, he was terrible. Any feedback that he did give was that my work was outstanding and that I didn’t need [supervision].” That student got a lower grade than expected and appealed the university on grounds of poor supervision. The appeal was rejected.
Another student supervised by Arday requested a change of supervisor. For doing so this student was accused of racism. They persevered and got a new supervisor.
Another student complained that scheduled hour-long sessions only lasted 20 minutes. This student was given an alternative supervisor.
Yet another student was told by Arday that they did not need supervision and subsequently got a lower grade than expected.
Some of these students are now considering legal action to force the university to review their grades again. Others are calling for refunds of tuition fees of students taught by Mr Arday.
Another student, who was taught by Arday when he was at Roehampton University, says: “I can honestly describe Arday’s teaching as terrible.” She says students started to realise they were learning nothing of substance when he “failed to turn up for yet another class.” She got a lower mark in his module than she was getting in other modules, yet Arday had provided no feedback. So, she requested a meeting with him. In the meeting she asked for feedback on why her mark was lower than she was getting elsewhere. Arday then implied that she was racist for not being happy with her mark, claiming this was due to her “white privilege.”
The Corruption of Academia
I wrote nine years ago about how deliberately hoax academic papers which spout utter nonsense have been published in peer-reviewed journals. It seemed that you merely had to make the language fancy and obscure enough with plenty of references and academic peer reviewers would love it.
Arday’s language in his thesis is certainly obscure enough as Richard Dawkins delighted to point out. Dawkins even found 332 instances of incorrectly placed apostrophes – including one in the actual title of the thesis! Did anyone actually pay attention to it? Is this what passes for the highest level of research – the “best in the world”?
The academics employed by Cambridge University are meant to be very clever people. Some of the cleverest in the land. How are they not clever enough to spot such shoddy work?
The answer, it appears, is their obsession with woke ideology as evidenced by the quotes from members of the panel above. They care more about fulfilling diversity quotas and appointing someone with similar woke views than they do about academic standards. They harbour anti-education and anti-establishment views. They are captured by this ideology to the extent that it blinds them to the truth staring them in the face.
Clearly the Faculty of Education is most to blame for all this. The fact that the head of department thinks education is bad for society is absolutely crazy. That others would openly talk of opposing Western democracy is alarming. But it was the university itself that at first stood by Arday when anyone could see that was not credible. The Faculty of Education is not the only bad apple here.
Repercussions
Many Cambridge Academics are understandably angry and upset at how their university has been brought into disrepute. The Vice Chancellor finally responded to this on Wednesday with an announcement that the appointment of Arday will be fully and openly investigated by “senior academics from within and beyond Cambridge.” This will “inform a review of the process for appointment of senior academic roles.” Durham University and Glasgow University are also both investigating the circumstances around their appointments of Arday to academic posts.
The Vice Chancellor describes Arday’s case as “an aberration.” This is an attempt to dismiss the significance of this case, and to pre-judge the results of a review. The evidence is that this is no mere aberration. Arday is the tip of the iceberg. The rot is very deep. The appointment of an Islamist Assistant Research Professor also needs to be reviewed. The Vice Chancellor herself has been found in court to have dismissed the claims of a whistleblower. The only solution is wholesale culture change which requires heads to roll at the highest levels and a recovery of academic excellence as the priority rather than DEI or other woke ideologies.
The Capture of Cambridge
Historian of Soviet communism Giles Udy agrees that heads must roll. However, he believes that this will not happen. In a post on X he wrote:
“The British education system has been infiltrated for over 15 years by (and is now lost to) critical theory – aka ‘woke’.
“Under this doctrine the purpose of all education is to examine the chosen subject, work out how it falls short of the utopian/social justice/Marxist ideal, and then train those being ‘educated’ into activism to bring about that ideal.
“Captured institutions employ activist teachers who train activist students who in turn perpetuate the cycle.
“We are now in at least the fourth or fifth generation of that cycle.
“The long march through the institutions is almost complete.”
All the signs are that Cambridge University has been very largely captured by woke ideology, and that this capture has been taking place slowly, but surely, over several years. The same is true of most of our universities. The appointment of Jason Arday has exposed this. Cambridge University will react and make some improvements to the appointment system, but the underlying ideologies of these academics will not change. Most likely, heads will not roll. The capture is virtually complete and is entrenched.
Arday was a fellow of Jesus College. The name itself shows the desire of the founders to honour Jesus! The University itself was founded by Christians and was a very explicitly Christian institution. Several other college names betray their Christian foundations: Christ’s College, Corpus Christi College, Emmanuel College, Trinity College, and other colleges which are named after saints.
It was Christianity that encouraged academic study and the pursuit of excellence. It was Christianity that laid the foundations for the study of science and for the industrial revolution. Christianity values truth, honesty, hard work, creativity, and the search for understanding.
We need Christian universities again
The capture of Cambridge is a direct result of the abandonment of Christianity at Cambridge and across our culture. Christian values cannot be expected to last in a non-Christian culture. We are witnessing the decline and fall of a once great institution, which is paralleled by the cultural collapse we see all around us across the nation.
The only real and lasting solution will be for Cambridge University to be recaptured for Christ. This is a multi-year, perhaps even a multi-generational project. In the meantime, we can expect more corruption to continue and to be exposed over time. Christian Concern is trying to envision young people to recapture our culture for Christ through the Wilberforce Collective. We need Christians in academia, just as we do in every other area of culture. It was bold and unashamed Christians who founded great institutions like Cambridge University. It will take similarly bold and courageous Christians to recapture such institutions.
An alternative remedy is to set up new Christian universities from scratch. Selden College is doing just that – setting up a new explicitly Christian higher education institution over in Oxford. We need more of this, and Christians need to support such initiatives.
People will vote with their feet, and with their money. Students do not want to be taught nonsense by people opposed to Christian values in education. I hope Cambridge recovers its Christian foundations. If not, it is set for steady but sure decline as students and academics decide to go elsewhere. And Cambridge is not the only university heading down this path of destruction. Reputations are built over many years but can be lost in an instant. The Arday debacle looks like one of those instants.