When Jason Arday became the youngest black professor in Cambridge’s history in 2023, he was “lionised by the academic world” and became a “poster boy for the university’s diversity drive”, said Gordon Rayner in The Daily Telegraph.Then only 37, he had defied “almost impossible odds” to get there. Raised on a council estate in south London, he was diagnosed with autism at the age of three. He couldn’t speak until he was 11, and did not read or write until 18. Yet he’d managed to obtain a bachelor’s degree, followed by a PhD, and had gone on to forge a remarkable career in academia. Now, though, the sociology professor – who has tendered since his resignation as a fellow at Jesus College – is “the subject of a bitter row over plagiarism that has pitted his peers against each other”.
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