When I was a teacher, many years ago, the Times Higher Education Supplement was on every staffroom table and was considered the voice of the progressive establishment. Perhaps I should not be surprised to see its modern incarnation, Times Higher Education, receive the sort of treatment that was once reserved for the tabloids when they got too nosey about people in power. Progressivism always has the progressivism of a generation ago among its prime targets. Jack Grove of Times Higher Education writes, “I was reported to police over Arday case. I was just doing my job”:
[…] I decided, on second thoughts, to take the voicemail at my desk, about 10 minutes away in Holborn.
I was shocked to hear it was from the Metropolitan Police, asking me to call them back. Why? Nothing remarkable had happened to me in the previous year. When I rang back the officer explained a complaint had been made against me regarding the University of Cambridge professor Jason Arday, but the matter was now closed.
But it was important, the officer explained, that I didn’t contact him again, because it was affecting his mental health.
However, I hadn’t emailed Arday in four months – my last direct email had been in September, offering formal right of reply to allegations that he had plagiarised his PhD.
That allegation was not made lightly: I had assembled a 63-page report which detailed how he had apparently used, without proper citation, huge chunks from a thesis written in 2009 by another student, Paula Zwozdiak-Myers, now a highly respected education academic at Brunel University of London. Further checks found passages that seemed to be lifted from the work of researchers based in the US, Australia, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere in the UK. In total, I submitted 97 pages of evidence to both Cambridge and Arday’s awarding institution, Liverpool John Moores University, for their investigation.
Serious allegations, certainly. Deeply embarrassing and distressing, definitely. Although Arday was eventually cleared of plagiarism by an LJMU review, a frenzy of coverage led to Cambridge opening an investigation into Arday’s academic record and CV, followed shortly afterwards by Arday announcing his resignation.
But were my inquiries grounds for a criminal complaint? That was hugely troubling to me as a reporter who specialises in examining issues of research integrity and ethics.
Again this is very much an international thing.
For example, police in Edmonton (capital of supposedly conservative Alberta) Canada – have encouraged people to inform on each other.
Inform about what? Murder? Rape? Robbery? – no tell the police if their neighbours, or anyone they know, or a stranger writing something on social media, expresses “hateful” opinions – for example suggests that the mass immigration of Third World populations into Canada has not been a good thing, and that Canada was a better place before this mass immigration was pushed by the government (and it was pushed – it did not happen naturally). If someone says that (either to you – or you overhear it) REPORT it.
You see it “harms the mental health” of people from certain groups (groups the establishment support) to hear or see negative opinions about them.
Not just racial groups – but also women, and homosexuals, and ………
The British police are only following the same totalitarian thought-control fashions that are common in the West now.
Opinions, even if not specifically about you, can “harm” you – for example harm your mental health.
Everyone must be made to understand that there is no such thing as a private conversation – you must watch every word you say, or you will be reported and punished.
Living in fear of the state and its police (and corporate bodies as well) is clearly “good for your mental health”.
You do not want to be a “Climate Denier” or “Covid Idiot” now do you.
. . . . as opposed to calling the police over multiple alleged threats to himself and his family, alleged encounter(s?) with armed assailants, vile racist abuse online, threatening and disturbing items allegedly sent to his home, and much else besides – none of these things were ever brought to the attention of the police in any meaninful way – but a journalist politely asking questions? And not just the police were involved (as I understand it) but a top-flight law firm, retained to send the journalist an ominous warning of what would happen to him if he persisted with his inquiries.
I’m not a smart man ™ but these do not appear to me to be the (re)actions of a truthful and blameless idividual.
llater,
llamas
“... the officer explained a complaint had been made against me ...”
Whatever happened to the old idea that a citizen has a right to confront his accuser? Surely the name & address of the complainant should be public information — or at least given to the accused.
The real issue here is that the university body which gave Arday the gig should surely have done sufficient due diligence to surface some of the problems — like his claims to have worked at other universities which had never heard of him. And if the university failed (it is only Cambridge U, after all), surely the book publisher should have done some checking. The implication is massive incompetence throughout Britain’s upper classes. Arday is presumably just the tip of the iceberg.
I’m going to guess that one of the advantages of bringing a non-crime investigation against someone is that you don’t need to worry about those pesky Rights.
FWIW, I certainly understand the outrage over this sort of shit but I mean what really happened here? A guy made a complaint, the police closed it and then called the guy against whom the complaint had been made and conveyed a desire that he not be contacted again?
I mean I guess the fact it was a policeman who made the call has a sort of sinister underlying threat, but he didn’t say it was a crime for him to contact him again, and frankly I think people have a right to say “stop calling me”. I use the word “right” very loosely here, I don’t necessarily mean a right enforced by the state, just a reasonable expectation, much as it is reasonable not to expect someone to give the finger to a granny trying to cross the street or swear in front of my kids.
Journalists can be pretty intrusive for some people and although I can certainly not stop them publishing true things about me it seems perfectly reasonable to say “stop calling me.” The journalist is then within his rights to say “Mr. Orr declined to comment.”
So as abuse of police goes in Britain, land of the abusive police, this seems a fairly tame. It conveys to me the sense of “as a journalist FINALLY I am in the club of suffering police abuse and standing up for my profession.” I guess if the police abuse you, you’ll know it.
“Affecting his mental health.” Seems like a fancy way of saying “words are violence”, a phrase I seem to have heard before.
Fraser Orr, I think you’re minimizing the effect – the chilling-to-reporting effect and the chilling-to-speech effect – that a call from the police will generally have with such a message.
To me, such a message will always carry at least an implied threat – the power of the state is calling you and telling you to back off, to shut up, to walk away.
This isn’t just “well, maybe leave the poor guy alone before he has a breakdown” from an interested party. This is The State, telling you that it is IMPORTANT that you stop.
If anything, in my mind, this is worse than a direct order backed by law. This is The State, in the person of a copper, working OUTSIDE the law – the whole point of the “non-crime” lie – going outside and beyond the powers legally invested in the coppers. This is tyranny – because the cops are arrogating to themselves more power than the law gives to them.
“Sure, there’s no law against this – but we don’t need no stinking law!”
This tells me that the coppers don’t feel limited by what the law says, and will use their powers against me to enforce their preferences. And that is intolerable.
Correct.
Correct.
The problem is not Arday. If not for him, some other fraudster would have come up later.
The problem is those at Cambridge who enabled Arday.
Just for giggles, I just read on X a few tweets from some woman prof who basically says, we ALL plagiarize like little cheat-bunnies, but it’s only the blacks and asians who get called on it. That ardey should have been left alone even though he really did plagiarize tons.
Don’t think she understood what she was really saying.
@bobby b:
“This tells me that the coppers don’t feel limited by what the law says, and will use their powers against me to enforce their preferences”…..
Who ‘da thunk it?
J.S. Mill rejected the old Whig view (and old Tory view – for it was the view of Dr Johnson and other Tory folk as well as Whigs) of what a human was (a human being – a free will moral agent) – preferring what he called “the light of Hume” in explaining-away the human mind (the “I”) – see James McCosh “An Examination of the Philosophy of Mr John Stuart Mill”, and this does seem to be connected to Mr Mill’s rejection of the old non aggression principle of the Common Law – preferring what he called the “harm” principle (see the book “On Liberty” by Mr Mill).
For example, Mr Mill stated, “parading” disapproval of conduct should not be allowed – he seems to have been referring to the people who turned their backs (and so on) when they encountered himself and Mrs Taylor (the future Mrs Mill).
It is clear that it was very distressing for Mr Mill and Mrs Taylor (the future Mrs Mill) to be treated so rudely – with people “parading” their disapproval of their (alleged) conduct, by not talking to them, turning their backs on them, and-so-on – but it is NOT clear that the “harm principle” should replace the non-aggression principle of the Common Law.
Indeed the “harm principle” is, I believe, too vague to serve as a basis of law – almost any conduct can be argued to “harm” someone (for example denying them a job – and, instead, giving the job to someone who is better qualified or more experienced).
However, I am certain that Mr Mill would REJECT the modern interpretation of the “harm principle” which leads (for example) to the British police acting as they do – in regards to their attacks on Freedom of Speech.
The modern interpretation of Mr Mill’s “harm principle” does seem to owe more to Frankfurt School “Critical Theory” Marxism (with its obsession with “disadvantaged groups” and “exploitation and oppression” by “power structures” and “power relations”) than it does to Mr John Stuart Mill himself.
Poor Cambridge, they finally had a Professor who was more than a match for Oxford’s JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis in the high fantasy and fiction stakes, and then he resigns.
Why he and others think that the Cambridge University didn´t?
The problem here is not really one wild fantasist conning some gullible (and politically and philosophically corrupted) academics at Cambridge – the problem is the police threatening people who were trying to expose the truth.
The “Harm Principle” must be rejected – we must return to the Non Aggression Principle of the Common Law (which comes from natural justice – natural law), if there has been no attack on the person (body) or goods (property) of anyone – it is no business of the police or the criminal law.
It is hard to feel much sympathy for the police in this case, unless the journalist in question was clearly taking things over the line and threatening things against people.
This whole saga stinks: the intellectual laziness of academia that it exposes and a desperate desire to be part of certain narratives. There is the weaponisation of race and a certain play on people’s sympathies rather than a focus on genuine achievement.
I am a manager and I have to make hiring decisions based on what is put in front of me by people talking about their academic achievements. I am probably a bit of an outlier given my fire-eating libertarian views, but even those a lot more “centrist Dad” than me are thinking and saying the same thing.
If a person fabricates academic work to get a PHD, and with all the academic positions – and possibly a paid job leading to tenure – that this brings, there are surely legal and even criminal law consequences. Under the Fraud Act 2006, lying on a job application can legally count as fraud by false representation, as explained here.
There can be cases where if a person lies about a qualification – and has obtained it through chicanery – there are criminal consequences.
Imagine if a person plagiarises to become a doctor in medicine, and his or her career advances, and they end up killing or seriously hurting someone. Ditto in areas such as architecture, to take another example.
Johnathan Pearce – you mean you do not believe the Gentleman run 30 marathons in 30 days, with a fractured leg, raising millions of Pounds for charity?
You RACIST!
But to be serious – the police do not care about “sympathy” – they care about serving the Critical Theory doctrines they are taught in Training College (smashing “whiteness” and so on), the police officers who do not care about that are forced out (if they are allowed to become police officers in the first place).
We do not have locally elected sheriffs in this country – we have a bureaucratic structure dominated by the “educated”.