Andrew Hammel at Quillette – “The Jason Arday fiasco is a reminder why academia has developed a reputation for cowardice, careerism, and conformism in recent years”.
Dozens of professors who eagerly pushed Arday up the academic ladder surely put “critical” in the titles of their books and courses, but none thought to critique their own protégé. Arday’s entire academic career floated on a cloud of self-congratulatory groupthink. Sure, there were rumours. But the people who counted remained silent, even as they watched the principles of their profession traduced. Not for nothing has academia developed a reputation for cowardice, careerism, and conformism in recent years.
Arday patrolled the borders of his reputation with every rhetorical weapon at his disposal: he deployed accusations of racism and ableism, he appealed to pity and sentiment, he ginned up outrage. When those didn’t do the trick, he hired Britain’s most bloodthirsty libel law firm and even sicced the police on a journalist for asking inconvenient questions. It’s tempting to pity Arday during his time in the barrel, but his sanctimonious narcissism practically invites schadenfreude. It’s also important to remember that the honours and scholarships and jobs and speaking fees bestowed on him could have gone to academics doing genuinely valuable work in relative obscurity, including many “scholars of colour.”…
Confidence in institutions of higher education has plummeted in the US and UK in part because the public believes that what’s being taught there is simply not worth learning. And part of that impression is fuelled by the complacency and political bias of parts of the professoriate, which cares more about protecting itself than about knowledge production. We see proof of this in the Arday case itself.
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