Entry 2453, on 2026-08-19 at 18:25:24 (Rating 4, Politics)
Look, I know I spend a lot of time discussing (and severely criticising) woke culture. I know that some people think this gets kind of tedious, but I like to comment on the big issues in the news, and so often these relate back to wokeism.
In my last post I commented that I would like to discuss the Jason Arday debacle, and since then it has got a lot worse, of course. So forgive me one more time as I launch onto another "rant" because I really think this might be a turning point for the primary source of woke BS: universities.
First, the Arday controversy is primarily a British thing, although I saw a few mentions of it in the New Zealand media and there has been commentary from other countries too, such as the US. But in the places these controversial issues are actually discussed in detail (primarily X) it has been everywhere.
So if you don't use X, and you have not heard anything about this I would not be surprised, and I will give you a very brief and simple summary of what happened...
Jason Arday was a young, black academic at the University of Cambridge, where he was quickly promoted to professor of sociology of education. He was used as an example of how successful black people could be if given a fair chance (the implication was thet they usually aren't). The woke left loved him and he was a "poster child" for diversity.
There was always some suspicion about his abilities however. Students at his lectures complained he would arrive late, leave early, and spend a lot of time saying essentially nothing. His PhD thesis seemed to contain large amounts of plagiarised information. His academic output was low in both quality and amount. When he felt threatened by these facts being made public he would call in lawyers and contact police who harassed the journalists investigating these claims.
He also made a lot of highly dubious claims about events from his past, which all seem likely to be entirely false, ar at least grossly exaggerated. These were bad enough that it is tempting to label them "delusional".
Of course, the subject area "sociology of education" is a major problem in itself. Both sociology and education are massively woke and have essentially no real academic standards. The whole subject area might be thought of as bogus, which undoubtedly allowed Arday's nonsensical contributions to just blend in with the rest.
Recently the questions in the media about Arday, the university, and the DEI policies there became far more intense and he resigned. Shortly after that he was found dead, presumably by suicide, although as far as I know that hasn't been confirmed yet. Note that however bad he might have been, I am genuinely saddened by this, because while these issues need to be discussed, no one should feel so threatened that they take their own life as a result.
Note here, that the "media attacks" were not just from right-wing publications, controversial web sites, or blogs, because many came from quite left-oriented sources like the Guardian. I think there was no doubt the criticisms were genuine and not a "racist witch hunt" as some have suggested.
So there is every indication that this is a classic example of DEI gone wrong. Explainer: DEI stands for "diversity, equity, inclusion" and purportedly encourages a wider range of views by allowing greater participation of groups less likely to be included in a particular institution.
DEI often uses mechanisms like "affirmative action" where "disadvantaged" groups are given extra help through processes like jobs being only available to certain types of person, or some types of person being allowed entry into courses with lower grades, or simple and arbitrary rules which ensure some sort of proportionality.
This means that a member of these "disadvantaged groups" will very likely be less competent than others. The most common grouping is around race, although it also exists for gender, sexual preference, and other factors: the more trendy and woke, the better!
So there are a few problems here: first, the person who gains an advantage through DEI will probably not be up to the standard of a person who might have been selected through merit; second, a person who would be a better fit, based on merit, misses out; and third, this process encourages people to be suspicious of the skills of people in "minority groups" because they are likely to have achieved what they did through DEI, not skill.
In defence of DEI, there is this: more diversity is seen as a good thing, and the merit-based selection criteria might not be fair. Unfortunately the diversity is based on very superficial factors. People with exactly the same nonsensical ideologies are usually selected, so there might be diversity of skin colour, but not of philosophy. And the criteria traditionally used are quite well established. A doctor should be trained based on skill and knowledge, not their ethnicity, gender, or religion.
Finally, the process almost always only works in one direction. For example, there are plenty of programs designed to encourage women to join male dominated professions, but not a lot to encourage men to join female dominated fields, such as medicine, law, and education (fields where true diversity might be useful, I would have thought).
So, in summary, it is sad that Arday has felt the need to end his own life, but whose fault is it? He was hopelessly incompetent in the role he had, and both he, his students, his colleagues, and his managers must have known this. The media (including left-oriented sources) were investigating a matter of genuine public interest: corruption or incompetence in a major university (and I think this is an issue with all universities to varying extents). Other people (most of them white males) have been subject to similar scrutiny (except in most of those cases it wasn't warranted) so it wasn't racism. Arday was delusional to the extent that he might have had genuine psychological issues.
He was failed primarily by the woke university administration. The best we can expect at this stage is that they have second thoughts and abandon the corrupt practices they use to enhance their woke ideology. As I have said in the past: DEI must die!
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