Paul Sutton
Anti-woke and anti-left liberal poet, both satirical and lyrical.
I write this in a state of profound shock.
It’s alleged that a Professor of Bullshitology, at the University of Cambridge, has been producing bullshit. The once illustrious other place is in meltdown:
This sorry tale has been much discussed. But few dared say that Arday’s chair was in a bogus subject, which has no business being taught at Cambridge. Face facts: it would degrade the University of Central Bedfordshire.
It’s beyond obvious that this scandal couldn’t have happened in Cambridge’s mathematics or physics departments. Nor, to be fair, in those of history, philosophy or (touch wood) English.
With a DPhil in Physical Chemistry from Oxford, I’ll risk angering many people by arrogantly and bluntly stating that ‘social sciences’ lack intellectual credibility and aren’t sciences. The fact they claim to be says a lot.
I couldn’t have plagiarised my DPhil thesis, in a rigorous physical science. I did the experiments and wrote them up, modelled the results and tried to explain them. My supervisor read through my draft and had anyway overseen my work, for three years. Then there’s the gruelling two or three hour viva, which you can't cheat in.
In any case, who’d want to fool the process? The achievement would be negated and the sordid feeling would be lifelong.
But in the social 'sciences', does this rigour apply? Quite likely not, if the subject is largely a fraud. So they’re inherently open to these scandals, which are probably the norm, though hidden away. Progressive ideology and groupthink are the drivers, not intellectual exactness, curiosity and joy.
Saying the ‘right thing’ is what matters. Look at the fate of Nathan Cofnas at Cambridge, hounded out for using empirical data on intelligence and race. By a delicious irony, it was Cofnas who flagged the undeniable textual overlaps, in Arday’s PhD thesis.
Sociology is at the bottom of the social ‘science’ pile – propped up by the ‘sociology of education’. These subjects exist to indoctrinate gullible students with left-liberal dogma, and enrich ‘academics’. Their foundations are flimsier than phrenology, astrology – or Islamic peace studies.
Arday’s specialism was ‘research’ into teaching methods and supposed academic progress that justifies – i.e., glorifies – DEI. The PhD thesis he allegedly copied from is itself gibberish, verbosity posing as profundity whilst stating the bleeding obvious. During my PGCE, I read much similar garbage, angered by the absurd claim that it was respectable academic work.
Such is the reality of ‘educational studies’ at our universities. A gigantic pile of rubbish. Those involved keep churning it out and getting well paid: Arday was on over £100,000 a year.
So one could – separately – argue that his position is more justifiable than the cant of those who employed him. After all, they wanted to be fooled. And he played their game. His employers were needy, for his ethnicity and ‘neurodiversity’. He expertly used this desperation.
Just pity the poor students, who reportedly complained about his teaching and were met with accusations of racism. Good preparation for life though: who isn’t accused of it, if they dare speak truth to power?
There’s something supernaturally terrifying about ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’, in how its doublespeak ideology has hounded me (and many less fortunate) down the years. Its persecutors are relentless and seemingly indestructible. They’re bindweed in British society, entangling then choking many lives and our institutions – not just uselessly but destructively.
Ask Cambridge!
Oh what a falling off was there: Newton; Byron; Coleridge; Wordsworth; Darwin; Dirac; Rutherford; Russell; Wittgenstein… Jason Arday.
Who’s next for a Cantab Professorship in DEI Dogma: Gary Lineker or David Lammy?
By a curious coincidence, Arday’s college is twinned with mine at Oxford.
I composed a poetic novoir (‘sensitivity warning’, if you read it) – The Drenching Arms - about a character hunted down by DEI, undergoing forced re-education into its banal and reductive absurdities, eventually at his old Oxford college (Jesus).
Well, I then discovered that the most propagandist teacher I worked with, at my Bicester state school - the ‘facilitator’ of the transgender indoctrination I fought against – is the DEI Officer, at Jesus College!
His write-up in the Jesus College record is beyond satire or parody. It’s an eerie feeling, discovering he’s arrived at the college, reifying my fictional nightmares. It’s awful to see the once great establishment I was fortunate to attend falling for this. I doubt any true academics left there believe in the ideology, but cowardice, fear – and self-interest – will stop them speaking out.
In truth, the college was always a fair and unprejudiced educational beacon; I’d wager the percentage of state-educated students (I was one) was higher when I matriculated in 1982 than now. Ditto for those from poorer backgrounds. It always had a proud record in being non-exclusive, as have many Oxford colleges.
But DEI is in fact the progressives’ pernicious language and ideology of privilege, division and exclusion, existing for their self-promotion and advancement. It imposes its dogmas every bit as rigidly and haughtily as the 19th-century requirements for proficiency in Latin and belief in the established church for entry to Oxford back then.
Interestingly, this ex-colleague was a religious studies teacher. It goes without saying that DEI has become England’s state religion, ruthlessly enforced and tolerating no dissent, all the while claiming to promote fairness and equality. Unlike Christianity, it accepts no human failings and brooks no discussion. Above all, it has no concept of pity and believes in crushing individuals, in cruel public demonstrations of its worthiness and might.
Needless to say, I’d no idea this bloke had moved into my alma mater. It’s not as if there’s any shortage of universities, colleges or public sector offices, employing such people in destructive non-jobs. Hell, there are 34 or more other Oxford colleges doing so. Every pot-hole council, LEA, health trust et al has one of these ideologues, attacking freedom of speech and thought.
Yet he ends up at my old college. It must mean something…
This article was originally published by Against Monolithic ‘Diversity’ and republished by the Free Speech Backlash.
