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> One that many people have spent a lot of time and effort to create.

As it stands in the US at least, it's a corporate marketing term referring to the whitewashing that happened after the 2020 protests to characterize the efforts corporations use to cover their asses from discrimination lawsuits as somehow pro-human. Let's not portray this as some kind of political movement rather than a liability concern.

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Yeah absolutely this. People seem to be unable to recognise that Britain and the USA are radically different places with different histories and approaches to basically everything. The common language creates the impression that they’re basically the same place.

I'm not sure I agree on the Black Brits part, but the general problem is real: too many US copycats, in situations where aping the US does not make a shred of sense.

The slaves in Jamaica had a radically different experience then the slaves of America?

The colour bar. Colored Alien Seaman's Order, Kelso Cochrane, Bristol Bus Boycott

Could go up to Brixton incidents or all the attacks on this professor.

>It is absolutely undeniable that there has been a witch hunt against minorities in positions of power in the last few years. It is unclear to me whether this guy actually did anything wrong.

From where I've been sitting, the minorities have been running slipshod over almost all institutions while anyone else who questions whether they ought to be doing so is labeled a racist.

I don't know in this case, but it does seem like it could be an Icarus flying too close to the sun situation.

You can check with your own eyes that entire paragraphs of his work were copied verbatim:

https://retractionwatch.com/2026/07/27/cambridge-jason-arday...

https://ncofnas.com/p/dei-fraud-and-cover-up-at-cambridge

I followed the story and he absolutely did, in multiple instances.

he claimed to be a non-verbal autistic for much of his childhood, disputed by childhood classmates; he claimed to have run "30 marathons in 35 days" also disputed and unverified

Perhaps we should do annual random audits on 50 or 100 academics to get a baseline against which to measure claims of academic dishonesty. Perhaps there's a correlation between plagiarism and professors who acquire tenure at an unusually young age, for example. Or perhaps older professors gain tenure after a certain number of years 'phoning it in', publishing work that is obviously derivative but reliably inflates citation count at a steady rate. I can't really tell whether any individual academic plagiarist is a true interloper or whether everyone does it a bit get some early stage career momentum with which to attract funding and then perform real research.

Why would you believe the institution that granted the PhD? They’re never going to admit they screwed up in granting the degree, how do you think that would affect their reputation?

You can examine his writing and the writing he stole from, side by side. I would suggest doing that instead of believing an institution who has no choice but to lie if they want students to apply to their grad schools in the future.

Yes, we do.

He was a fabulist who certainly was more scrutinized because of his skin color, but it really shouldn’t be disputed that he plagiarized and lied profusely.

That doesn’t mean remotely he deserved this.

I also have little hope that everyone who contributed to this sordid tale, from Cambridge, police etc. will have to account for their profound failures.

I think a lot things are simultaneously true:

1. He exaggerated/lied about some of his accomplishments and aspects of his life. 2. The accomplishments and aspects of his life he exaggerated/lied about did not seem to be about his academic success. Generic life puffery that, while dishonest, did not make him unqualified for his position. 3. Anti-DEI crusaders decided to make an example of him. 4. Had he not been a person of color, the scrutiny would have had a very different shape.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

> I can't think of a single other instance of academic fraud being pushed to the top of any news site for several days running.

The news cycle about Harvard University president in December 2023 might have been close.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudine_Gay#Plagiarism_invest...

Well, he wasn't just an academic, but also a media icon/minor celebrity (he has/had a memoir coming out). His academic fraud and plagiarism was just one thing - aside from the race angle, his story probably got lots of media attention just because of how comically absurd and obvious his self-mythologizing was.

It's not academic but the closest similar case that's coming to mind off the top of my head was when James Frey (who FWIW is white) got found out for A Million Little Pieces, which definitely was major news.