Commentary
For those who haven’t followed the Jason Arday story, the facts are:
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It’s an awful story that never should have happened.
An objective review of Arday’s autobiographical statements would have revealed that there was something wrong with the account. Signs of mental disturbance were clear. The scholarship, too, apart from the plagiarism, traded in progressivist arguments that were low on evidence and high on moral fervor.
The Cambridge professors and administrators who hired and extolled Arday showed themselves willing to sacrifice academic standards and engage in social engineering.
While all the focus has fallen on Arday and his Cambridge supporters, we must realize that many more people were affected by his remarkable ascent before any of the revelations of misconduct came out—and not happily.
Arday was selected and promoted for one reason: Cambridge University has few black professors.
Other elite schools do, too, with a rate much lower than the percentage of blacks in the general population. The low numbers in distinguished positions have been an embarrassment for liberal academics for a long time. Those of us in academe have watched as departments have tried to devise ways to boost black representation on the faculty, only to fail.
In the humanities for five decades, academics have introduced African American content into the curriculum, concocted theories of black underrepresentation in the professions, added DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) coursework to general education requirements, admitted black students to graduate school with records inferior to those of other applicants, and practiced affirmative action in hiring and promoting professors—and still the disproportions are steep.
At this point, to challenge the favoritism is to violate a stern taboo. The absence of progress only inspires academics to try harder (in different ways, in order to comply with the law). With such a small pool to draw from, colleges and universities have ended up bending ever further in the direction of affirmative action.
This is where the other victims of the Arday Affair come in. For it is the case that whenever a candidate is chosen for a position, an admission, a grant, or a place on a conference roster because of his demographic group identity, not for the quality of his academic work, many others who wanted those affirmations but who didn’t have that identity argument were turned away.
A hiring process was started; advertisements were placed in professional publications; job seekers took notice and submitted files to the hiring committee, and they heard nothing further.
Two months later, they learned that the finalists were all members of “under-represented” or “historically disadvantaged” groups. Later, the person who got the job has his CV posted on the department website; the rejected ones compare it to their own and react with aversion and dismay. They had better records, and it didn’t matter. What can they do? Nothing.
Publishing a superb research article won’t help, not when the job market is tight and competition is stiff. They return to their work as adjunct teachers for low pay, hoping for something better the following year.
Tens of thousands of aspiring academics have undergone the experience. For decades in my field of the humanities, every job posting has drawn dozens of applicants, many of them fully qualified for the position. One got it, 50 didn’t, and in those not-so-few cases where identity factored into the choice, they nodded and sighed, knowing how the system works.
They are bitter and tired. They’ve spent their 20s studying for an advanced degree in the field and their 30s working at marginal posts hoping for the golden dream of a tenure-track offer, and it hasn’t arrived.
Time is passing, money is short. Many of these individuals are smart and conscientious. They would make good colleagues. They believe in themselves, too, and know they deserve a fair chance. But they haven’t gotten one, and they’re not going to.
Keep those individuals in mind when identity politics in higher education is brought to light. They are invisible; nobody thinks much about them, and they aren’t inclined to protest, for that would jeopardize their chances next time (so they believe).
The Jason Arday story shows the extremes to which the identity agenda will go to produce a desired outcome. It is a system that purports to uphold ideals of justice, but it has generated widespread resentment and suspicion—and it should end.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
