All the newspapers seized upon the recent revelation of plagiarism committed by Jason Arday, a sociology professor at Cambridge University. As we saw with Étienne Klein, plagiarism has become commonplace, so common that the former president of the CNRS, Antoine Petit, declared a few years ago that it was not outright cheating ^[1] . In September 2025, the online publication Times Higher Education investigated this case of fraud and was preparing to publish an article when it received threats from Arday via a law firm: it abandoned the publication. It wasn't until July 2026 that the website Retraction Watch published a detailed investigation ^[2] , revealing exchanges with the scientists who had discovered the plagiarism, Arday's denials, and the accompanying threats.

The plagiarism in question is proven: analysis of Arday's publications and his doctoral thesis, defended before his recruitment at Cambridge, clearly demonstrates this. There is verbatim copying, some purely stylistic changes, and the clumsy reuse of data from an article published by another researcher: one doesn't need to be a sociologist to detect the fraud, one simply needs to know how to read. The University of Cambridge initially vigorously defended this lecturer, whom it had recruited with great fanfare in 2023, then declared that, since his thesis had been defended before his recruitment, it had no need to investigate; this is utterly absurd, as Yves Gingras quickly pointed out in the comments following the Retraction Watch investigation , since his thesis inevitably contributed to his recruitment, even if it may not have been essential. The statement by Hilary Cremin, head of the Department of Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge, is absolutely appalling ^[3] : it inadvertently reveals that she has clearly not read the thesis or the articles signed by Arday… A monument of ignorance and incompetence!

Very soon after Retraction Watch 's revelations , newspapers and magazines in the mainstream press seized upon the case, which thus became public, and a petition was launched to support Arday (this is the first time I've seen petitioners support a proven fraudster)... and the University of Cambridge, followed by Jesus College , to which Arday belongs, was finally forced to announce that it would launch an investigation. Despite his denials and threats, Arday felt cornered and resigned from his professorship: he certainly gave himself the impression of leaving of his own volition in order to avoid the humiliation of being dismissed.

So who is Jason Arday? He claims to be “non-verbal” autistic, to have learned to read and write at 18, to have run 30 marathons in 35 days, and to have been a professional footballer. We can already see the character's capacity for fabrication… What was he teaching at Cambridge? In his recent research, he was conducting a study on the difficulties faced by students from ethnic minorities in order to better understand the mental health problems they encountered; he was therefore involved in these grievance studies ^[4] —that have replaced classical disciplines in the new world of academic wokism. It is a research topic like any other, but still more serious than that of this researcher from Nantes who "investigates sexual racism in gay contexts, initially from [his] experience and now from other fields (online interracial amateur pornography) ^[5] "

So why all the fuss over a simple plagiarism case that led to the resignation of a rather self-absorbed sociology professor? Oh, right, I forgot! Jason Arday is Black! What does it matter? you might ask. It shouldn't matter at all; skin color neither encourages nor protects against fraud. But here's the thing: what first came to light in the press was that he was the youngest Black professor ever recruited at Cambridge… and that the university didn't want to lose this star who effortlessly aligned it with the "good guys," even going so far as to present him as a " star sociology professor ." A petition was launched because the British academics who detected and denounced the plagiarism were quickly suspected of racism. The country where scientific fraud is most pervasive is China, in its most sophisticated form of fabricating results. Would those who have demonstrated this be accused of “anti-Arab” racism? On the other hand, simply saying that Jason Arday is a plagiarist and Black is enough to get you immediately labeled a racist and prosecuted… The journalist who investigated last year for Times Higher Education , Jack Grove, even received a visit from the British police after a complaint from Arday – who seems to have grasped the system perfectly. I have listed among the most reprehensible plagiarists ^[6] a chief rabbi, a Jesuit priest, and a successful evangelical pastor, and I am adamant: neither religion nor ethnicity plays a role in the temptation to cheat… Just an outsized ego!

One question remains: Was Jason Arday recruited based on the color of his skin and not on his merits? Would such a question be inappropriate? One academic commented on the Retraction Watch investigation ^[7] , stating that his work and publications are in no way remarkable, that he writes terribly, and that he would rank him in the bottom quartile of his undergraduate students… How could he possibly train his students to think and write? he wondered. Kathleen Stock, who taught philosophy at the University of Sussex for twenty years, confirmed in a brilliant interview the inanity of his academic work, built on complaints and recriminations, in contradiction with his public pronouncements paved with good intentions and idle declarations of love and peace . She also provides us with an excellent definition of what a university should and should not be; I quote her with pleasure: "At the university, our role is not to promote social justice or to repair injustices; we want to attract a relatively small part of the population, resourceful and promising people, to train their minds rigorously, so that they emerge with a more structured way of thinking and, perhaps, after having made a real contribution to knowledge."

The Arday affair refers, of course, to that former president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay, whose mediocrity and plagiarism were only noticed when her inability to condemn anti-Semitism became apparent ^[8] … When the University of Cambridge recruited Jason Arday, it did not advertise, as the University of Ottawa did ^[9] , that “this offer [was] open to qualified Black people from Africa or the African diaspora”, but perhaps it had an ulterior motive?