On the untouchable Aaron Cofnes, Jason Arday and plagiarism

From yesterday

Jason Arrday, Edward Dutton, narcissism and Hope Not Hate

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Aug 20

As a kind of antidote to the terrible things happening in the world I have been paying some attention to the story of Jason Arday, the serial liar and plagiariser (among other things) who was advanced to Professor at the elite Cambridge University and who committed suicide a few days with left-wing media saying he was “hounded to death” by nasty, far-Ri…

I do not see myself in any way as part of the “Left” or “Right”.

I am simply after the truth.

If however, such an artificial construct was ever applied and I was only one or the other I could be construed as being on the (far-)Right.

When I made an internet inquiry (on Brave) asking for a link to Aaron Cofnes’s July 21 Substack exposing Jason Arday’s plagiarism was given links to EVERYTHING BUT

I could not find the link.

When I put the same question to Leo AI it, (coincidentally, of course!) went into a tailspin and never gave an answer.

I ended up asking ChatGPT and it somewhat reluctantly gave me the link.

So, in the interests of openness and fairness, here it is:

Central to Cofnes’ claims is that if admissions followed exam results (as it was in my day) then black representation would fall away and Asian representation would increase while white European representation would stay the same:

If Harvard admitted students based on their academic qualifications alone, the resulting student body would have been approximately 43% Asian, 38.4% white, 0.7% Black and 2.4% Hispanic.

Chat GPT admitted:

There is, however, a quite uncomfortable empirical fact underlying the whole argument: at highly selective universities, Black representation is considerably higher than one would predict from conventional academic credentials alone, because admissions have historically taken other factors into account — including race, before the 2023 Supreme Court decision. The Supreme Court’s Harvard decision itself examined precisely this issue.

and referred to this article:

https://newcriterion.com/article/harvard-admits-its-preferences/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

One can say, as Chat GPT does, that the lower representation of blacks in universities does not relate to anything innate but to social conditions.

This comes back to the old nature vs nurture debate of my youth.

The main difference is that the nurture side of the argument has become official while the nature side of the argument has become a heresy and racism.

In the past, my partner Pam would have been excluded from university based on her class background but in our day she was given equality of opportunity and was given a chance to prove herself.

Today, because she is white, she is part of “white privilege”

So, what was reasonable a few years ago has now become a heresy.

I would ask some questions such as Is it true that Asians are better at maths than white Europeans? or, Are Jamaicans better athletes than Whites?

If we extend the argument for positive discrimination would it not, therefore, be fair for me to ask that selection criteria in sport, say, in long jump, be changed to “level the playing field” to give me a chance of competing equally with my Jamaican friend?

It comes down to an argument about equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome.

I believe in the former, but reject the second outright.

My evidence (and I have, to be sure, not been in the university system for 50 years) is in practise.

Academic excellence in the humanities, at least, has declined precipitously in the almost 50 years since when I was a student.

People have become dumbed down across the board - by design.

But we live in a world where one is forbidden to say certain things even when they are rational and demonstrably true.

In this world one is not allowed to be neutral and objective.

In this world I would have to be seen as a far-right, racist, homophobic bigot (with all the other slurs that can be dredged up.

But I expect I would carry a lot of fair-minded people with me.

I won’t deny that watching Cambridge University’s management scramble to contain the fallout from their disastrous recruitment of the dodgy academic Jason Arday has been sweetly satisfying. These are, in some instances, the very same people who sprang into action against me back in 2020, casting me out of the institution to which I’d been associated for 56 years.

Their decision to offer Mr Arday a Chair Professorship - the most coveted position in academia - on the basis of his plagiarised and completely meritless work has struck a hugely damaging blow to the practices of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in higher education. They will regroup of course, and do everything they can to prevent further probes into a system by which white and Asian students and academics are discriminated against in the name of racial representation, but for now let us enjoy the spectacle of their humiliation.

There are, of course, grimmer aspects to this story. Far from being the kind of doe-eyed, dreadlocked black Bambi he presented himself as, Mr Arday employed some of the most aggressive lawyers in the country to go after people who were looking into his academic record. One journalist for the Times Higher Education supplement was investigated by the Metropolitan Police over his reporting. A student who requested they no longer be supervised by Mr Arday was accused of racism. Just as we’ve seen how DEI in the police force results in a young man like Henry Nowak dying in handcuffs while his killer stands over him chatting amiably to officers; we see how DEI in education can ruin the careers of honest, decent people, while charlatans reap undeserved accolades.

My guest this week is one such victim of DEI in education. Nathan Cofnas is an academic, a philosopher of biology, who penned an article back in 2024 in which he argued that academic elites were being dishonest about average differences in intelligence between different racial groups. This resulted in a year-and-a-half long investigation by the university that saw him effectively quarantined until his contract of employment ran out. Now working at another university, it was Cofnas who exposed Jason Arday’s rampant plagiarism, after being alerted to it by whistleblowers at Cambridge. If it hadn’t been for Cofnas’s intellectual bravery, and the open marketplace of ideas that we now have on X, the chances of this scandal ever emerging are close to non-existent.