Jason Arday, I miss you already. The resignation of the Cambridge professor, sporting Adonis, charity-fundraising extraordinaire and credibly accused fantasist has brought to a close the most delicious silly-season story for some time.
Cambridge traded academic rigour for phoney virtue. It chose political expediency over the pursuit of truth
On Wednesday night, Arday announced he was stepping down from his positions at the University of Cambridge and Jesus College, after a trickle of plagiarism allegations, as well as questions over his extracurricular achievements and his wild claims of violent intimidation, became a flood.
That’s not how he put it, mind. ‘For my own wellbeing, for my family, and for those who have stood by me throughout this difficult period, I have concluded that the only way to bring this chapter to an end is to step away’, says Arday, in a self-pitying statement published by the Good Law Project.
He is at pains to say this isn’t an admission of guilt. Ho no. ‘This decision should not be interpreted as a loss of faith in scholarship or in the values that first brought me to Cambridge’, Arday adds. ‘Nor should it be mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives that have surrounded me.’
