How to play liberals for suckers
The trick only works if the mark wants to believe. Jason Arday gave liberal institutions exactly the story they wanted.
Jason Arday is almost certainly a fraud. But I hope he is something vastly more interesting.
Until very recently, Arday was one of those people liberal institutions put on a pedestal: Cambridge professor, youngest black professor in the university’s history, working-class, autistic, illiterate until late adolescence, scholar of inequality, champion of diversity, ultramarathon runner. And, by every indication, a man of the left.
It’s a fair bet Arday understood liberal institutions well enough to know that their pants-soiling terror of violating ideological taboos left them ripe for manipulation.
That last part I believe. The rest? Well.
Now there are serious questions about plagiarism, his curriculum vitae, fundraising claims, ultramarathon feats, and some of the more lurid tales he fed the press about racist abuse. Cambridge opened an investigation. Arday promptly resigned.
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