podcast friday
Sep. 4th, 2026 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabby There's a lot of good podcasts this week as usual, but one that I found particularly interesting was It Could Happen Here's "The Hunt For Jason Arday." This is Robert reading a report from Stephanie Lamy with her permission, which you can read here.
Until Arday's death by suicide/media pile-on, I had never heard of this guy, He was the youngest Black professor ever hired at Cambridge, and the target of a media witch hunt about "academic integrity" led by eugenicists, most notably Nathan Cofnas. His death follows the pattern of other Black academics being accused of plagiarism for political reasons, and Lamy does a great job breaking down the political forces behind what really ought to have been a nothingburger of a story outside of academic circles.
One thing that has occurred to me over and over with this story is the extent to which educators at both the K-12 level and in post-secondary are encouraged to plagiarize and assist our students with their plagiarism. Otherwise, we and they risk getting left behind, and we wouldn't want that. I haven't seen it brought up in the discussion but it really strikes me how the only difference between what Arday is accused of and what we are being told is going to transform our jobs whether we like it or not is the scale of the alleged plagiarism/fabrication (much less than we are ordered to do), the money of the players involved (even a Cambridge scholar earns less than the lowliest tech CEO), and the colour of his skin (much darker than most of us).
Until Arday's death by suicide/media pile-on, I had never heard of this guy, He was the youngest Black professor ever hired at Cambridge, and the target of a media witch hunt about "academic integrity" led by eugenicists, most notably Nathan Cofnas. His death follows the pattern of other Black academics being accused of plagiarism for political reasons, and Lamy does a great job breaking down the political forces behind what really ought to have been a nothingburger of a story outside of academic circles.
One thing that has occurred to me over and over with this story is the extent to which educators at both the K-12 level and in post-secondary are encouraged to plagiarize and assist our students with their plagiarism. Otherwise, we and they risk getting left behind, and we wouldn't want that. I haven't seen it brought up in the discussion but it really strikes me how the only difference between what Arday is accused of and what we are being told is going to transform our jobs whether we like it or not is the scale of the alleged plagiarism/fabrication (much less than we are ordered to do), the money of the players involved (even a Cambridge scholar earns less than the lowliest tech CEO), and the colour of his skin (much darker than most of us).
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Date: 2026-09-04 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2026-09-05 10:57 am (UTC)Is this reality now? FFS.
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Date: 2026-09-05 11:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-09-05 12:27 pm (UTC)I think.