Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has accused Cambridge academics of a "shameful piece of racism" in their promotion of Jason Arday, who recently resigned from his professorship at the university.
Johnson argued in a recent commentary that academics at Cambridge, by appointing Arday as a professor in early 2023 based on his identity as the "youngest black professor in the history of the university," prioritized political and racial grounds over academic merit. He suggested that the university's leadership promoted Arday to signal virtue, despite his lack of a substantial body of work and instances of alleged plagiarism and unsubstantiated claims in his background story.
Arday, who resigned from his position at Jesus College, Cambridge, this week, had reportedly pitched a book to publishers containing extraordinary claims about his life, including alleged illnesses, heroic acts, and numerous global accolades for which no evidence could be found. Johnson questioned how Arday's claimed autism, which he said prevented him from learning to read and write until age 18, could be reconciled with his prior achievement of two GCSEs. He also cited Arday's claim of running 30 marathons in 35 days, including overcoming a significant leg injury, as an example of an unsubstantiated feat that should have raised red flags for academics.
"At the heart of this story is a shameful piece of racism – not by the people who tried to expose the fantasies and plagiarism of Mr Arday, but by those who promoted him," Johnson wrote. He asserted that the academics' actions were a fundamental fraud, using and abusing Arday for their own selfish ends.
Johnson criticized the university's potential defense that they were fooled or taken in by Arday's charm, stating it would be a way to avoid accountability. He contended that Arday had produced "absolutely nothing of any notable academic interest or merit whatsoever" to justify such a high academic position.
The former Prime Minister drew parallels to the film "Trading Places," suggesting the dons behaved with "callousness and their cynicism, and their basic selfishness." He warned that by ignoring academic merit and engaging in "transparent racial discrimination," Cambridge was legitimizing divisive discourse in politics.
Johnson called for a full and independent inquiry into the matter and suggested that all individuals involved in Arday's appointment should resign before the outcome is determined. The publisher Simon & Schuster's plans for Arday's memoirs remain unclear amid the controversy.