Stephen Pax Leonard
The Jason Arday scandal might seem extraordinary to many. It is less surprising for those of us in academia who have witnessed how structures have been put in place to ensure that DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) poster boys like Arday can flourish.
Women’s and Gender Studies’ lectures comprise often little more than a flagrant attack on conservative values
I have been speaking out about such developments since at least 2017 when I was turned down for an academic post at the University of Durham. A former don at Cambridge and Oxford, I had three monographs and about 17 articles in leading academic journals, and yet the post was given to a girl with just one article publication. After the process concluded, I was told: “You were by far and away the best candidate, but we couldn’t employ you because you are not diverse.” There are, of course, many such stories. This is what universities call ‘social justice’: the bureaucratised pre-occupation of failed academics.
One of the problems is that DEI is integrated structurally into the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) which assesses universities in Britain. And so, there is no incentive to employ a white male academic. He will simply be a blemish in their league table calculations. Britain’s universities are no longer focused on recruiting the best; they have DEI boxes to tick. Unfortunately, as we have seen with George Abaraonye in Oxford and now Jason Arday in Cambridge, things don’t always go to plan when candidates are assessed on the basis of ‘diversity’ alone and not academic excellence. The problem, however, goes well beyond these individual cases – shocking as they are. The rot is, in fact, systemic: non-subjects which now fill Britain’s universities risk alluring fake candidates and producing dubious research because they are not grounded in any intellectual tradition. They are ideological bait for activists who are ill-disposed to tradition and scholarship.
