Last week I discussed the exposé of academic superstar Jason Arday as a fantasist, a serial plagiarist, a persecutor of those who investigated his work, a defrauder of students, and someone utterly unqualified to hold a professorship at Cambridge. Following this, you’d expect a lot of embarrassment and head-rolling at the institutions which enabled his meteoric rise, at media outlets like the BBC which glorified him, and with the people who were infatuated with him.
But barely any of that happened. Instead, all the critics of Arday and his enablers were met with a single charge: Racism! There was no acknowledgement that there was any possibility of any genuine reason to be opposed to Arday’s status. It was “obviously” all about evil racists, and nobody else needed to take any responsibility.
It was all rather familiar.