Jason Arday FRSA
Arday in 2020[1]
Born	Jason Atta Kwei Arday (1985-05-09) 9 May 1985 (age 41)
Spouse	Debbie McKenzie
Academic background
Education	St Mary's University, Twickenham (BA, MA) Liverpool John Moores University (PhD)
Thesis	An Exploration of Peer-Mentoring among Student Teachers' to Inform Reflective Practice within the Context of Action Research (2015)
Academic work
Discipline	Education
Sub-discipline	Sociology of education sociology of race and ethnic relations social stratification social mobility
Institutions	University of Roehampton Leeds Beckett University Durham University University of Glasgow University of Cambridge

Jason Atta Kwei Arday (born 9 May 1985) is a British former academic and author. He was a professor at the University of Cambridge between 2023 and 2026, and resigned following allegations of plagiarism and misrepresentation.

After receiving a PhD from Liverpool John Moores University in 2015, Arday held posts at the University of Roehampton, Leeds Beckett University, Durham University and the University of Glasgow. He produced various publications, focusing on issues of race and racism in the British education sector. In 2023 he was appointed professor in the sociology of education at Cambridge, attracting media attention as the youngest black professor in the university's history. Over the following years he made television appearances, was given several honorary doctorates, and appointed to various trustee or advisory roles in civil society organisations.

In 2026, media sources made allegations of plagiarism in Arday's writings and false claims in his academic history and biography. He resigned from his posts at Cambridge and the university announced an investigation into his appointment. The affair attracted widespread media attention, with various commentators and academics stating that it damaged the public reputation of critical race theory, made life more difficult for black scholars, and emboldened criticisms of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Jason Atta Kwei Arday^[2] was born on 9 May 1985^[3] to Ghanaian parents, the third of four brothers, and grew up in Clapham, South London.^[4] His mother was a mental health nurse and his father, a chef.^[4] As a child, Arday claims he was diagnosed with autism, global developmental delay and dyslexia, that he was non-verbal until the age of 11, and that he could not read or write until he was 18.^[5][6][7][8]

At secondary school, Arday earned GCSEs in physical education and textiles before studying for a BTEC course in sport and development at Merton College in Morden, south London.^[9][10] According to his memoir, Arday spent many afternoons missing secondary school and playing snooker, becoming so good that he regularly won money playing in tournaments all over London. As a student, he has written, he made money by entering pro-am nine-ball pool tournaments and frequently reaching the latter stages, winning prize money.^[3]

Arday also claimed that he was attacked aged 18 and developed epilepsy as a result.^[3] Arday claimed that in 2006, aged 21, he went to Brazil on a relief mission with an organisation and installed water pumps for poor communities in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.^[3] In 2010, the Richmond and Twickenham Times reported that Arday ran 30 marathons in 35 days to raise money for Shelter and the Shooting Star Children's Hospices.^[11] In 2012, Arday was a bearer of the Olympic Torch.^[12][13] That year he also met the tennis player Andy Murray on the television show Surprise, Surprise.^[10]

Arday undertook his undergraduate degree in education studies with physical education at St Mary's University, Twickenham, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree validated by the University of Surrey in 2008. He remained to complete a Master of Arts (MA) degree in education and pedagogy, and then undertook a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) at the Institute of Education.^[14]

He completed his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in education at Liverpool John Moores University. He claimed he had to relearn the content of his dissertation weeks before defending it following the removal of a benign brain tumour that caused memory loss.^[15] Arday's doctoral thesis, An Exploration of Peer-Mentoring among Student Teachers' [sic] to Inform Reflective Practice within the Context of Action Research, was completed in 2015 under the supervision of Phil Vickerman.^[16] The biologist Richard Dawkins criticised the thesis in 2026 as being written in an obscurantist, "gobbledygook" style. Dawkins highlighted "332 instances where a plural noun's terminal 's' is incorrectly followed by an apostrophe", including in the title itself, and questioned whether Arday's supervisor and examiners had actually read the thesis.^[17]

Arday held academic posts at the University of Roehampton, Leeds Beckett University (where he was a senior lecturer in Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy) and Durham University.^[18][19] From January 2022 to March 2023, he was Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Glasgow.^[20][21]

Arday has claimed to have conducted research into black and ethnic minority experiences across universities based on interviews with students and staff.^[22][23] Arday argued for greater recognition of black British history in the school curriculum,^[24][25] writing a report for The Black Curriculum in 2020 which stated that the current curriculum "systematically omits the contribution of black British history in favour of a dominant white, Eurocentric curriculum".^[26][27] In 2022, he wrote a report on race equality at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine which found that ethnic minority staff were discriminated against, there were few ethnic minority leaders and that their research had a "dominant Eurocentric approach".^[28] He served as a trustee for the Runnymede Trust, a race equality campaign group based in London, from 2013 to 2024.^[29][30]

In March 2023, the University of Cambridge announced Arday's appointment as Professor of Sociology of Education in the Faculty of Education.^[31][32] This made him the sixth black professor at Cambridge at the time,^[10] and the youngest black professor ever appointed at the university.^[31][32] Sally Morgan, Baroness Morgan of Huyton, chaired the appointment board for the professorship.^[33] Hilary Cremin, head of the Faculty of Education, described Arday as "the best in the world in terms of the research that you do."^[34][35] Arday became a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.^[36]

Arday's appointment received wide publicity because of his reported life story;^[19] Roger Mosey, the former master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, noted that Arday's claims to have autism and to have been unable to read until he was 18 "made him a compelling candidate".^[37] BBC News' education editor Branwen Jeffreys observed that the appointment was "hailed at the time as a progressive moment".^[37] The Times of India later noted that Arday "was presented as an inspiring figure and a symbol of progress in an institution that has faced criticism over the historical underrepresentation of Black academics".^[38] The Guardian later said Arday had been a "superstar academic", while The Daily Telegraph labeled him Cambridge's "diversity poster boy".^[10] Arday stated his desire to make higher education more accessible and democratic, and hoped that his appointment would "provide me with the leverage to lead that agenda nationally and globally."^[31]

The Guardian subsequently noted that such a senior appointment was unusual for someone aged 37, particularly given Arday's "slim track record of research and publications compared with those appointed to similar chairs at Cambridge."^[39] The journalist Jason Okundaye later commented that Cambridge treated Arday "not as a scholar but as a mascot, one who was particularly expedient for an institution that had been regularly embarrassed" by its low numbers of black students and staff. In Okundaye's view, Arday was used as "a vehicle for Cambridge to signal its institutional progress."^[40] The BBC reported that, as of 2025, 75 of Cambridge's 6,180 academics were black, and that the university had "spent the last decade working to redress the perception that the institution is a bastion of affluent white privilege."^[37] Paul Sagar, a political scientist at King's College London, later noted that "We all know damn well (even if only some of us will admit it in public) that politics and PR were crucial in [Arday's] appointment" at Cambridge.^[41]

In the two years after receiving his Cambridge position, Arday was awarded honorary doctorates from Anglia Ruskin University,^[42] Southampton Solent University,^[43] the University of Westminster,^[44] South Bank Colleges,^[45] and St Mary's University, Twickenham.^[14] In 2023, he received the "Most Inspirational Person of the Year Award" at the MBCC (Multicultural Business and Community Champion) Awards,^[46] placed fourth in the Shaw Trust's list of the 100 most influential disabled people in the UK,^[47] and was awarded an honorary fellowship by the British Science Association.^[48] Having become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, he served on the society's Diversity and Inclusion Committee between 2023 and 2026 and as a member of its Rosalind Franklin Award committee in 2024 to 2025.^[49] By 2026, he was also listed as a trustee of the Adult Literacy Trust,^[50] Autism Action,^[51] and the British Sociological Association.^[52]

As a Cambridge professor, Arday appeared three times (May 2023, December 2024 and March 2025) as a panellist on BBC show Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.^[53] In February 2024 he was a guest on the BBC TV current affairs panel programme, Question Time,^[54][55] and in December was guest editor of an edition of the BBC Radio 4 news and current affairs programme Today.^[56][57] In January 2024, he was appointed member of ITV's cultural advisory council.^[58] In 2025, he became patron of Get Further, a UK charity promoting English and mathematics education.^[59] Arday also signed up to speakers' bureaus and addressed conventions of a range of associations. In 2024 he gave the keynote speech at the US National Association of Funeral Directors' international convention in New Orleans and in 2025 spoke to the annual convention of the Association of British Insurers.^[19]

In May 2023, David Harris, an emeritus professor at Plymouth Marjon University, emailed Arday to enquire about "puzzling similarities" between sentences in Arday's 2018 Social Sciences article and an earlier BMJ Open article by Anjum Memon. Arday responded: "Instead of spending your time trying to dismantle racism and ableism, you have spent what I assume is hours combing through my work looking for mistakes[...] Anything further from you will be considered bullying and harassment."^[60] Arday contacted police to report Harris for harassment, but Devon and Cornwall Police, in whose jurisdiction Harris lived, decided there was no case to pursue.^[10] Arday then revised his Social Sciences article, with the new version published online in December.^[60]

Times Higher Education reporter Jack Grove then investigated Arday's alleged plagiarism, assembling a 63-page report and in September 2025 contacting Arday for the latter's response. Arday responded with a legal letter from the firm Carter-Ruck, at which the Times Higher Education chose not to publish the story so as to avoid expensive litigation.^[61][60] Arday also made a complaint about Grove to the Metropolitan Police, who contacted the reporter requesting that he not contact Arday again.^[61] Mark Rowley, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, later acknowledged that the police had "dropped the ball" on this issue, and that the complaint about Grove should have been "screened out earlier on as not requiring investigation".^[62]

In April 2026, Arday delivered a keynote speech at the 75th anniversary conference of the British Sociological Association. His talk, titled "Wanted Dead or Alive: The Playbook", argued that white conservative and right-wing activists used a distinctive "playbook" to discredit black academics, such as Claudine Gay, by accusing them of plagiarism, citation errors, and inconsistencies. He called this a "cancer" that his listeners should "eradicate from academia".^[10] Given that such a topic was unusual for a keynote speech at an academic conference, some attendees suggested that he was making these statements for a reason.^[10]

Allegations of Arday's plagiarism were first made public in July 2026, on a Substack post by Nathan Cofnas, a Cambridge alumnus, philosopher at the University of Ghent, and self-described "race realist".^[10][5] Cofnas stated that he had run Arday's PhD thesis through plagiarism detection software and discovered that "many passages are lifted with minimal editing, sometimes retaining copy-editing mistakes from the original source".^[10] Cofnas's blog post was followed by a Daily Telegraph report alleging that Arday's published works, including his 2015 PhD thesis, contained similar or identical passages to other academic works.^[63] On 1 August, The Guardian published its own investigation by Lanre Bakare, highlighting wider discrepancies in claims Arday had made about his life.^[10] Five days later The Times (London) released an article revealing more concerns.^[22]

During his research, Bakare met with Arday several times, noting that the latter appeared "very affected by what's gone on, under a lot of pressure". The reporter initially attributed this to the strain of public criticism, but subsequently concluded "maybe it was because he knew all sorts was going to come out."^[64] When Bakare challenged Arday on a lack of evidence for some of his claims, Arday said: "To be honest with you, I thought you'd just believe me. Why would I lie?"^[10] In an interview with The Times, Arday admitted that he had made errors in his dissertation and early academic work, but attributed them to lacking supervision and support for his autism and "complex learning disabilities".^[5] He added: "I hold myself accountable and other people should hold me accountable. We're talking about academia here. I didn't murder somebody. I think the cruelty that I've experienced, and the positioning of me as this kind of liar and fantasist, is totally unacceptable.^[10]

Media reported that various passages in Arday's PhD thesis replicated text from a 2009 dissertation by Paula Zwozdiak-Myers, a reader at Brunel University.^[60] Retraction Watch also suggested that corrections made in 2023 to a previously published paper by Arday point to further plagiarism.^[60] The Times reported further allegations of misconduct over five years of Arday's work, including false funding applications, a failure to apply for ethical approval for his work, and fabricating research.^[22] It was further reported that Arday had for several years claimed to have authored a book titled Being Young, Black and Male: Challenging the Dominant Discourse, which had supposedly been published by Palgrave Macmillan. It had in fact been abandoned by the publisher years prior and never released.^[65]

Concerns were also raised regarding various claimed professional links. Arday claimed to have completed a master's in psychodynamic practice at Birkbeck, University of London and become a fully qualified counsellor. Birkbeck said it had no record of his studying there.^[66] Both the University of Glasgow and Ohio State University refuted Arday's claims that he had held visiting professorship roles with them, while Nelson Mandela University stated that he had only ever been a temporary adjunct professor prior to November 2025, and not a visiting professor as claimed.^[67][68][65]

Media scrutiny also examined Arday's claim to have run 600 miles (970 km) in six days (a near world record), to have personally raised "£5.5m for over 80 charities", and to have run 30 marathons in 35 days, the last 9 marathons with a hairline fracture of the fibula.^[10][66] Grove noted that there was "almost no evidence[...] that [Arday] had completed any of these runs, [...] despite lesser runs gaining acres of publicity in local and national news."^[61] When these claims were challenged publicly in news media, Arday stated that the 600 miles had been completed over a period of twelve days, including rest days, and that the fundraising was done as "part of a syndicate of about 100 people".^[5] After The Guardian asked him to identify some of these individuals, he responded that he had signed non-disclosure agreements preventing him from doing so.^[10] Scrutiny was also given to his claim to have appeared on the documentary series Seven Up! as a seven-year-old, which was ascertained as being impossible given when the series was made.^[69] Responding to this, Arday stated that he had been referring to a community initiative and not the television series, but gave no evidence that such a community initiative ever existed.^[70] Arday had also made claims of working on projects abroad for the charity WaterAid, with the charity replying to enquiries that it did not send volunteers abroad.^[71]

Arday claimed that, after he was appointed at Cambridge, he received so much online abuse that his emails had to be screened before he read them and that twice a masked man had come to his work and threatened him, on one occasion with a knife. Investigation by The Guardian found that there was no evidence of this masked intruder on CCTV, that no other staff had reported seeing the figure, and that Arday, despite claiming that he hit a panic button, had not reported either incident to the university authorities at the time.^[10] Also scrutinised was Arday's claim that a pig's head had been sent to his parents' South London home; he claimed that the Metropolitan Police had identified the butchers' shop from which the pig had been purchased. The Guardian found no supporting evidence of these claims, with the Metropolitan Police denying that an investigation had taken place and the butchers' shop in question relating that no police officers had ever visited.^[10]

When The Daily Telegraph publicised the initial allegations in July, they prompted varied responses. The Daily Telegraph quoted Harris as saying that Arday's works "seem to display indications of serious plagiarism".^[55] David Sanders, a biochemist at Purdue University who writes for Times Higher Education about scientific misconduct, stated "There is no question that there is extensive plagiarism".^[60] Robert Dingwall, an emeritus professor of social sciences at two universities in Nottingham, recommended an impartial investigation, stating: "In the current climate, it is difficult to comment on allegations of plagiarism against a prominent minority scholar without seeming to take sides on EDI."^[63]

The University of Cambridge initially defended Arday, stating that he was "the victim of a vile campaign to undermine his credibility".^[63] The Guardian suggested that Cambridge made this statement because Harris and Cofnas, Arday's earliest critics, both "harboured controversial views on race".^[10] Liverpool John Moores University also denied that Arday's PhD thesis, for which they awarded him his PhD, contained evidence of plagiarism.^[10] Routledge confirmed in late July that they still intended to publish Arday's work, Considering Racialised Contexts in Education, in 2030.^[72]

Okundaye noted that, for many progressives, their "instinct" was to defend Arday from criticism, especially because of Cofnas' role in promoting the allegations.^[40] Suggesting that Arday had made mistakes but was not guilty of plagiarism, the Black studies scholar Kehinde Andrews described the criticisms as being part of "a dedicated, coordinated smear campaign from the right, based on the premise that Black people should not be at Cambridge".^[73] Campaigning organisation the Good Law Project published an open letter stating that the allegations of plagiarism were "entirely false" and that "right-wing media have attempted to smear Professor Arday's reputation and undermine his career." It was signed by over 10,000 people, including Andrews, politicians Zack Polanski, John McDonnell, and Clive Lewis, activist Simon Woolley, trade union leader Daniel Kebede, actor Colin Salmon, photographer Misan Harriman, businesswoman Sonita Alleyne, lawyer Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, and research pharmacist Ijeoma Uchegbu.^[63][74] Uchegbu subsequently removed her name from the letter by 3 August.^[75]

In August, following publication of The Guardian investigation which highlighted additional discrepancies in Arday's claims, the University of Cambridge announced it had "begun an investigation following new information about Prof Arday's academic qualifications and honorary appointments".^[19] Jesus College revealed that it would launch its own parallel "process".^[19] Following these announcements, Arday resigned from his professorship and his fellowship on 5 August 2026. He said that this should not be "mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives that have surrounded me".^[76] Detection software used by The Times suggested that Arday's resignation letter had been written using artificial intelligence.^[77]

After Arday's resignation it was reported that a joint letter, led by a group of senior academics including Priyamvada Gopal, had begun circulating Cambridge University demanding an independent investigation into how Arday had been appointed to such a senior position, suggesting that he had been employed by management seeking a "quick fix" to their perceived diversity issues.^[32] The letter expressed concern that the incident would discourage black academics from taking future jobs at Cambridge and would "set back the modest progress Cambridge has made in addressing historical underrepresentation".^[78] Among the almost 100 signatories were the physicist Suchitra Sebastian, sociologist Mónica Figueroa, literature scholar Clair Wills, logician Anuj Dawar, and historian Nicholas Guyatt.^[78] Gopal told The Guardian that Cambridge University bears some responsibility for the "grotesque racism which this whole business has unleashed" and for the "harm done" to Arday himself, to black academics more widely, and to the field of critical race theory.^[32]

Arday's former employer, Glasgow University, also announced that it would review its 2022 decision to hire Arday.^[21] Queens University Belfast then stated that it was investigating a 2021 article that Arday had co-written with several of their employees.^[79]

The Guardian reported interviewing academics who believed that "the fallout from the row could send shockwaves through academia and set the study of race in Britain back 20 years."^[10] Concerned that the incident would "obscure the vicious, irrational cuts to humanities that are wrecking UK universities", Paul Gilroy, a sociologist at University College London, stated that "The unthinking culture warriors who have supported [Arday] unconditionally share responsibility with his racist critics for making life harder for Black academics and dragging UK higher education deeper into the mire."^[73]

Describing the wider impact of the incident, the New Statesman commented that "Arday quickly became a scapegoat for what some see as a general decline in academic standards" and that the scandal gave ammunition to those who regard the sociology of education and related fields as "low-value pseudo-science".^[80] In The Guardian, Okundaye commented that the incident was "perfectly calibrated for some of the most combustible charges of Britain's culture wars: namely, that academic standards have been surrendered to a woke orthodoxy, and that minorities are unfairly advanced in the name of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives."^[40]

Alan Lester, professor of historical geography at the University of Sussex, added that "this case now provides the far-right racists who condemn any equalities and diversity initiatives with a weapon that they will wield egregiously".^[81]

Similarly, Paul Sagar, a political theorist at King's College London, noted that the "populist Right" would use the incident to further their criticism of the humanities and social sciences. Sagar described Arday as "a fraudster[,...] plagiarist, and [...] a serial fantasist" with an "obviously paper-thin" research record, and criticised both Arday and Cambridge University for being prepared to "shamelessly play the race card when anybody tries to question the very obvious holes in his story."^[41]

Arday's memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things, is scheduled to be released in the US on 11 August and in the UK on 27 August 2026. Prior to his resignation, Arday's publishers Simon & Schuster confirmed that the allegations had not affected their plans to launch the book.^[72] Arday claimed to have been paid "1.4 million" (in either US dollars or UK pounds) for the book.^[82] It is co-written with Eve Claxton.^[82]

The Atlantic reported that Arday's memoir significantly differed from earlier public accounts of his life, and from details given in his proposal for the book. The book proposal included a car accident in Arday's teens, when he subsequently spent several months in a coma, was on life support and had locked-in syndrome, and a bout of testicular cancer.^[83] A review in The Times described it as "mawkish, self-aggrandising and hard to believe."^[84]

Arday is married to Debbie McKenzie, who has been his partner since at least 2012.^[85][86] They have two children.^[87]

• Arday, Jason; Mirza, Heidi Safia (2018). Dismantling race in higher education: racism, whiteness and decolonising the academy. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-319-60260-8.
• Arday, Jason (13 October 2018). "Understanding Mental Health: What Are the Issues for Black and Ethnic Minority Students at University?". Social Sciences. 7 (10): 196. doi:10.3390/socsci7100196. ISSN 2076-0760. correction^[88]
• Arday, Jason (2020). Cool Britannia and multi-ethnic Britain: uncorking the champagne supernova. Abingdon, Oxon New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-21740-9.
• Arday, Jason (2022). "No one can see me cry: understanding mental health issues for Black and minority ethnic staff in higher education". Higher Education. 83 (1): 79–102. doi:10.1007/s10734-020-00636-w. ISSN 0018-1560. Retrieved 6 August 2026.
• Arday, Jason; Zoe Belluigi, Dina; Thomas, Dave (23 February 2021). "Attempting to break the chain: reimaging inclusive pedagogy and decolonising the curriculum within the academy". Educational Philosophy and Theory. 53 (3): 298–313. doi:10.1080/00131857.2020.1773257. ISSN 0013-1857. Retrieved 6 August 2026. correction^[89]
• Arday, Jason (19 May 2022). "'More to prove and more to lose': race, racism and precarious employment in higher education". British Journal of Sociology of Education. 43 (4): 513–533. doi:10.1080/01425692.2022.2074375. ISSN 0142-5692. Retrieved 6 August 2026.
• Lewis, C. J.; Arday, J. (2025) We See Things They'll Never See: Love, Hope and Neurodiversity Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-26271-0. ^[90][91]
• Belluigi, Dina Zoe; Arday, Jason; O’Keeffe, Joanne (23 February 2025). "The routes to intellectual authority in a prior colonial empire: continued racialised, geopolitical inequalities in the academic staff composition and employment conditions of UK universities". Race Ethnicity and Education. 28 (2): 303–329. doi:10.1080/13613324.2024.2398491. ISSN 1361-3324. Retrieved 6 August 2026.

• Jason Arday at IMDb