What the Arday case signifies

The New Neo Posted on by

By now you probably know that Cambridge professor Jason Arday has quit his position without acknowledging guilt. The final straw was apparently that he had claimed to have written a book that doesn’t exist. He blames his decision to resign on harassment by the people who uncovered his lies:

While criticism is an inevitable part of academic life, what I have experienced has gone far beyond scholarly disagreement. The relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary have taken a profound toll on me and on those I love.

I have tried to continue because I believe deeply in the values of higher education, in rigorous scholarship, and in the transformative power of universities. I have tried because of my students, my colleagues and the countless people who have written to tell me that my journey gave them hope.

But there comes a point when the personal cost becomes too great. …

For my own wellbeing, for my family, and for those who have stood by me throughout this difficult period, I have concluded that the only way to bring this chapter to an end is to step away. …

This decision should not be interpreted as a loss of faith in scholarship or in the values that first brought me to Cambridge. Nor should it be mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives that have surrounded me. It is simply the decision of someone who has reached the limits of what any person should reasonably be expected to endure.

It’s really an extraordinary letter, under the circumstances – the circumstances being that Arday was caught in an enormous number of lies, and with having issued other statements about his history that were so suspicious as to probably be lies. And yet he claims both integrity and victimhood, even as he leaves the fray.

The fact that AI tools indicate his resignation letter may have been written or assisted by AI – see this – isn’t of all that much importance to me compared to the rest of his story. Those tolls aren’t always correct, for one thing. If they are correct in this case, it would be one of the least of his deceptions. At any rate, I am assuming the sentiments in the letter are his, no matter how it was written. And as such, it is very typical of the sort of thing we see these days when people are caught in wrongdoing – a doubling-down on their innocence, and a blaming of those who have uncovered what they did.

I say “people” because this phenomenon is hardly limited to one race or another. It seems common everywhere, and it doesn’t matter how much evidence implicates them. With Arday, the evidence finally reached critical mass so that even the leftist Guardian piled on. It has become too embarrassing to continue to defend him.

But, as this article indicates, it is especially embarrassing and actually destructive to the black community in Britain, especially those in academia. The piece is written by one such person, who says:

But the existence of bad-faith agitators can’t excuse us from confronting the rot: the patronising assumption is that standards and truth are optional when evaluating a black professional. This is a slap in the face to the 160 or so black professors in Britain today who earned their chairs through gruelling intellectual labour, original research and the unglamorous grind of academia.

It’s also an insult to the civil-rights titans who forged the path before us. Pioneers like Doreen Lawrence, whose unyielding pursuit of justice transformed British policing; Dr Harold Moody, who founded the League of Coloured Peoples in 1931; Sir Geoff Palmer, Scotland’s first black professor; and visionary educator Dame Jocelyn Barrow. These giants didn’t demand to be recognised based on sentiment. They forced a hostile establishment to respect them because their work was bulletproof.

The ultimate casualty of the Arday scandal isn’t one man’s career, nor the bruised egos of those who rushed to his defence. The tragic reality is that Jason Arday has potentially done far more damage to black Britons than any racist agitator ever could. External critics and bad-faith actors can only ever attack from the outside – their prejudices are expected, discounted and easily identified. But Arday’s unchallenged rise, if the allegations turn out to be true, has handed our harshest detractors the ultimate weapon. It provides a silver bullet to anyone looking to roll back equality legislation or widening-participation schemes, or to question every rightful appointment and call professionals like me ‘diversity hires’. No external opponent could ever inflict as much damage as this “>case potentially has.

But it doesn’t only give “the ultimate weapon” to bigots. It can certainly make even non-bigots doubt the credentials of minorities in academia. This problem was identified quite a while ago in the US by two brilliant black people who had a remarkable lack of advantages in their early lives: Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas. Sowell is older, and grew up in a time when there was nothing remotely like DEI to help him along, and his intellectual achievements are so profound that I don’t think they’ve ever been doubted. But black academics today all run the risk of having their accomplishments doubted, because of the Ardays of the world as well as minority professors who seem mediocre rather than duplicitous. And this is true even though there are plenty of non-minority professors who are also mediocre (I’ve had my share).

I went to school a long long time ago, and it was before there was any favor shown to black teachers or professors. Nevertheless, I was taught by a number of black teachers both in high school and college, and it just so happens that they all were highly superior teachers, definitely among the best teachers I ever had. Perhaps that is a reflection of the fact that, back then, the standards for black teachers were higher than for white teachers. That was a discriminatory situation, but it certainly made for some extremely excellent and memorable black teachers (here’s a previous post I wrote about one of them, a junior high school English teacher who was one of my main inspirations for writing).

That state of affairs was discriminatory and wrong. But the supposed corrective – favoring certain minorities – was wrong, too. I submit that there are plenty of very qualified black teachers who would be hired if the standards were merely the same – I knew some of them and know some of them now. Probably, however, some or even many would tend to be – like Sowell and Thomas – more conservative than leftist. And there we have another group which has been discriminated against in the teaching field in recent years: the right.

Arday wasn’t just a DEI hire. He was a DEI hire with a story that was preposterous on its face. And yet the desire to hire him – and broadcast his wonderful story not just of race but of overcoming profound autism – was apparently too great to resist and too good to fact-check. One of his claims is that he didn’t speak until he was eleven or read and write till eighteen, and yet he became a brilliant professor. Just now I did an experiment; I asked Google “is there a documented case of someone autistic who didn’t speak until the age of eleven but later spoke well and fluently?” The answer from Google AI was this:

Yes, Jason Arday, a professor of sociology of education at the University of Cambridge, was diagnosed with autism and global developmental delay as a toddler and did not speak until age eleven. He later acquired fluent speech, learned to read and write at eighteen, and went on to earn a PhD.

But the only authority who has said this about Arday was Arday himself; I have been unable to find a single independent confirmation of it, either from a doctor or a relative of his. There are tons of articles referring to his diagnosis and story of language acquisition, but it appears that the only source is Arday. And although it’s not unusual for children with autism to gain speech much later than average, I can find no other case of a non-verbal autistic child beginning to speak as late as eleven; it tends more often to be some time between four and eight.

To have challenged Arday would not only have raised cries of “racism,” but cries of discrimination against the autistic as well. Some people may have originally kept silent out of fears of accusations of racism being leveled against them, but my guess is that a larger number simply wanted to believe in his fabulous story.

[NOTE: Here’s a summary of some of Arday’s apparent fabrications.]

And the Democratic nominee for senator from Michigan is …

The New Neo Posted on by

… projected to be Abdul El-Sayed, although the results are very close. This is in line with what’s happening in many other races, and I think it reflects the fact that, at present, polls indicate that one-third of Democrats identify as Democratic Socialists.

Of course, El-Sayed has been eager to deny he’s a socialist or a DSA member; he knows it might scare people off in the general. But funny thing, he’s endorsed by AOC and Bernie Sanders. From the linked interview:

… “[W]hy don’t you consider yourself a member of the democratic socialist movement? Given your proximity in your relationship to all of these officials [AOC and Sanders].”

“Because I’m simply not a socialist,” El-Sayed said. “I believe in science. For me, you got to bring results. I’ve studied a lot of the solutions that I fight for, things like Medicare for All, things like rethinking the way that our financial system implies that corporate CEOs are more interested in a quarterly bottom line than they are in the long-term sustainability of their business.”

Oh, I get it – he’s not a socialist because he’s not a socialist. And because he’s a scientist.

And then there’s this:

Psaki pressed him again and noted that socialists would say that they believe in science as well, saying, “If you’re the nominee, Mike Rogers and the Republicans are going to try to label you as a democratic socialist. You’re going to say you’re not. But I’m saying, help us understand what’s the difference between your version of capitalism and their version of democratic socialism.”

El-Sayed then criticized Rogers, the presumptive Republican nominee for the Michigan Senate race.

“We’re so concerned about what they’re going to say about us that we forget that we also have mouths and can talk about that,” El-Sayed said. “Let’s talk about Mike Rogers. Mike Rogers is the worst kind of corporatist.”

The worst kind of corporatist.

More about El-Sayed and the DSA:

El-Sayed has attended Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) events over the years.

Between 2017 and 2020, El-Sayed attended and spoke at six events held by the DSA, including a 2019 fundraiser which he headlined. El-Sayed has distanced himself from the DSA in interviews and has previously outright rejected being labeled as a “socialist.”

“I’m not technically or practically DSA,” El-Sayed told The Wall Street Journal earlier this month. In an interview with CNN, he similarly stated that “I am not somebody who is a socialist. I believe in capitalism, I just believe that capitalism has to be regulated.”

Let’s just call him a leftist who is favored by Democratic Socialists and very close to them.

Back to that poll on Democrats who support DSA. Some of their apparent characteristics:

According to CNN’s poll, Democratic-aligned Americans who identify as democratic socialists:

Tend to be younger (59% are younger than 45, compared to 46% of non-democratic socialists aligned with the Democratic Party) and are more likely to be White (57% to 49%)

Are less likely to have a college degree (66% to 54%) and more likely to earn less than $100,000 a year (76% to 65%)

Are more likely to say they are extremely motivated to vote this year (66% of those who are registered voters say so, compared to 57% for non-democratic socialists), though both groups overwhelmingly support Democratic congressional candidates (99% of democratic socialists and 94% of non-democratic socialists).

It’s not the least bit surprising that they’re young and that they’re white. What does surprise me is that they are less likely to have college degrees. It’s also not at all surprising that they are highly motivated to vote, which I believe is key in leading to these far-leftist primary victories.

Many Democrats are alarmed at this development. I wonder whether they’re alarmed because they find the viewpoints of the Mamdanis and the El-Sayeds of this world alarming, or whether their alarm is just that they think such candidates will end up losing to Republicans in elections in any city, district, or state that isn’t already deep blue. I think it’s the latter, especially based on that last quoted paragraph, which indicates that both the DSA supporters and non-supporters will almost certainly be voting for whatever candidate has a “D” after his or her name, radical or not.

I’ve read that some Republicans are crossing over to vote in the primaries for the most radical Democrats in the race, thinking that person will be easier to beat in the general. That seems especially dangerous to me for obvious reasons: don’t think you are able to predict that these candidates will be losers. Their supporters are exceptionally motivated to vote. Don’t discount the possibility of fraud, either, especially in the large blue cities.

Jason Arday, Cambridge professor: too good to fact-check

The New Neo Posted on by

Jason Arday’s story was always unbelievable. But if you want to believe, you better not look too deeply into it, because you might be sorely disappointed.

Arday became the youngest black professor at Cambridge. But he seems to not only have been guilty of plagiarism but also of a series of lies that sound preposterous:

We have a fantasist in an environment where, for political and social status reasons, everyone takes his claims at face value, or pretends that they do because to express doubt would be to invite unwanted attention. In such fertile ground the fantasist’s claims (which he continues to deny fabricating) inevitably become increasingly outlandish – epic marathon runs, prophetic blessings, an appearance in a television programme that began 20 years before he was born – because he is increasingly secure that they will never be questioned. This is what inevitably occurs when a fantasist encounters people who want, for whatever reason, to believe his fantasies. …

Such scandals can often be mistaken optimistically for an end to the whole shebang of progressive nonsense – for who could ever take them seriously again? But the roots of progressivism are too deeply embedded in the soil of public life. These hilarious exposures – see also Jussie Smollett – are not strong enough to dislodge them. The daring young man on the flying trapeze may fall to the ground with a splat, but the progressive circus is so big that it just moves on.

You can read some of Arday’s claims in this article from 2023. And you can find some of his debunked statements here. I think, however, that if checked, a great many other “facts” in his biography might be unsubstantiated as well.

Will Arday lose his position? Or will the wagons circle until the furor dies down, and will he remain?

AI narration

The New Neo Posted on by

AI narration has started to really really bother me.

So many AI-narrated videos feature fake British accents – why?

The tone is posh and often supercilious – why?

There’s monotony.

Many mispronunciations, like “desert” for “dessert” or vice versa. Or like “read” present tense for “read” past tense.

There’s the pause at the end of a line of text even if it’s in mid-sentence.

Some feature a little exhaled sigh – “ah” – in an effort to make the voice seem human. It’s an effort that fails utterly.

But most annoying of all is when AI narration uses the first person. Who is this “I” of whom you speak, kimosabe?

Is AOC far enough to the left to be the DSA’s pick in 2028?

The New Neo Posted on by

And does she hate Israel enough? Apparently there is doubt as to the leftist bona fides of the Grand Old Lady of DSA:

The DSA is riding high after the high-profile win of socialist Mamdani in 2025, capped off by a string of primary victories this year that have emboldened its more than 120,000 rank and file members nationwide.

But some DSA leaders are not yet on board the AOC train, and urged caution against getting ahead of the base while still hashing out the big questions regarding their platform, direction and whether her previous stance on Israel should be disqualifying.

The congresswoman previously supported sending defensive aid to Israel, but at a private NYC-DSA forum in April, she vowed to vote against sending any further military aid to the country, including defensive supplies, according to City & State NY.

Can’t have anyone who ever supported Israel, however tepidly. AOC hasn’t moved fast enough for some DSA members.

She’s now thirty-six years old – my, how time flies – and in November of 2028 she’ll be thirty-nine years old. The fresh young thing is being replaced by even fresher and even-more-leftist young things – Mamdani, for example, at 34, although he’s ineligible for the presidency (fortunately) as a non-native-born citizen.

Hard to keep up, things are moving so fast.

The fraud total is up to $230 billion

The New Neo Posted on by

A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

An announcement by Vance – just the tip of the fraud iceberg?:

“Just since the beginning of the Fraud Task Force that I started under the president’s leadership and direction, we have identified $230 billion of fraud that’s being perpetrated against the American people, and we have halted already $56 billion of that,” Vance told the gathered Cabinet, according to multiple accounts of the meeting.

President Trump, who presided over the meeting, wasted no time tying the findings to his predecessor’s administration, telling those in attendance that the level of corruption and fraud uncovered [from] the Biden years was unprecedented.

Once the payments go out, though, for the most part the money can’t be clawed back. An ounce of prevention is worth a tremendous amount.

More:

The scope of the $230 billion figure is broad, encompassing improper payments, systemic waste, and alleged criminal fraud spanning multiple federal agencies. According to reporting on the matter, the total includes tens of billions of dollars tied to fraudulent or delinquent pandemic-era small business loans, improper Medicaid and Medicare billing claims, unauthorized government contracts, and improper disbursements across state-administered welfare programs.

Of course – and especially if the money is gone for good – prosecutions must follow, as well as convictions, or this will continue. It will most certainly continue anyway if Democrats come to power.

It’s not as though we didn’t already know that government programs invite fraud. But the scope of it is absolutely massive, and we probably are uncovering only a small amount of it. Quite the swamp worthy of drainage.

[NOTE: Here’s an article appearing in the NY Post that focuses on the adult day care industry in New York’s Asian community. It is alleged to be rife with fraud. From the piece:

An investigation by The Post found seniors in a typical scheme get $500-$1000 a month in daycare kickbacks while the facility pockets upwards of $3,000 a month per patient.

According to city and federal data, Flushing’s SADCs billed a total of $733M from 2018-2024, the latest year for which spending figures are available.

From Dr. Mehmet Oz:

“Due to a lack of proper state oversight, these centers have become cash cows for criminal syndicates, who use kickbacks and other illegal practices to steal millions from Medicaid. When Flushing, Queens, alone accounts for roughly 14% of all social adult daycare spending in New York state, it’s pretty obvious that these centers aren’t popping up solely to fulfill a legitimate need in the community,” he told The Post.

There’s much much more at the link.]

The art of the self-deportation deal

The New Neo Posted on by

On incentives for self-deportation:

Offers of up to $3,000 per person have helped spur more than 200,000 migrants to “self-deport” from the U.S. — but about half made the move while locked up in detention centers, according to a report Tuesday.

The voluntary mass exodus started slowly, with only about 24,000 people signing up during the six months after the Department of Homeland Security launched the widely advertised program in May 2025, Axios said, citing internal agency data.

But White House officials — including deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller — pressured DHS to ramp up the operation, called Project Homecoming, an unidentified source told Axios.

“They wanted like thousands pushed through on a daily basis, and we were putting through like dozens,” the source said.

Self-deportation actually wasn’t uncommon in the much more distant past – a past that included a lack of government-funded welfare for immigrants. It was sink or swim, except for voluntary charities which included help from religious and/or ethnic communities.

Later, there were requirements that to come here legally through the family-based program, an immigrant’s relatives (or other sponsors in certain cases) who were already here legally were required to document that they have the funds to help support the immigrant if need be. This still occurs for those particular programs for legal immigrants, but if you look at the link you’ll see there are many circumstances where the immigrants are nevertheless eligible for government aid.

And today, apparently 61% of households in the US headed by an illegal immigrant receive means-tested government aid of some type. Here are some figures:

Roughly half of all immigrant-headed households in the U.S. use welfare — and among illegal immigrant homes in particular, it’s even higher, at 61%, according to a new study Wednesday that argues that’s another reason to enforce immigration laws.

By comparison, just 37% of U.S.-born households use welfare, the Center for Immigration Studies calculated, based on 2024 Census Bureau data.

The numbers challenge the notion that illegal immigrants can’t get assistance.

Do you remember back in 2012 when Mitt Romney talked about self-deportation of illegal aliens, and he was criticized for it?:

Governor Romney: “Well the answer is self-deportation, which is people decide that they could do better by going home because they can’t find work here because they don’t have legal documentation to allow them to work here.”

Will this work? Unlikely. Lessons from Mexican migrants, which comprise more than half of the unauthorized population and, the country closest and presumably the least costly for “self-deportation,” suggest otherwise. Studies show that during the 1970s and early 1980s, roughly one of every two migrants returned home within a year – and seventy-five percent left within two years – meaning most did in fact “self-deport.” The vast majority of Mexicans came not to settle, but to earn enough money to better their and their families’ lives at home. But this pattern – called circular migration by scholars – starting changing in the late 1980s (also when the United States began hardening its southern border). Today, fewer than one in ten immigrants return each year to Mexico. Thirty odd years ago Romney’s policy of self-deportation occurred regularly, today it does not.

In the 1800s and early 1900s, the phenomenon of self-deportation was called “return migration” and the numbers were significant. Here’s some data (the article was written in 2017):

Thirty million migrants moved from Europe to the United States during the Age of Mass Migration (1850–1913). Yet one in three of these arrivals eventually returned to Europe, a rate of return migration that is even higher than today.

[A personal note: one of my relatives who came here in the first years of the 20th century had trouble making it in the US and was unhappy here. He had come from Russia prior to the revolution and was so hopeful about the possibilities of life under Communism that he returned to the USSR some time during the 1920s. A bad bet, it turns out. He was still alive when I was a child, and my (Communist) uncle, who lived near us, used to periodically visit the USSR, bringing back a ton of boring slides that we were forced to politely watch. My uncle’s trips to the USSR included visiting this self-deported cousin or whatever he was. My uncle bought him many things to make his life easier, because he was living a subsistence existence, whereas my uncle had amassed quite a cozy nest egg living under evil capitalism.]

Venezuela post-Maduro

The New Neo Posted on by

Rubio address the situation in Venezuela:

Speaking in an interview that aired Saturday on Fox News’ My View with Lara Trump, Rubio said the United States never viewed Maduro’s capture as the end of Venezuela’s transition but rather as the beginning of a lengthy rebuilding process after more than a quarter century of authoritarian rule.

“A system that’s been in place for over a quarter century… those are deep roots that you have to deal with,” Rubio said. “We’ve always talked about phase one, where our priority was stabilization. We didn’t want the country devolving into civil war, mass migration, civil unrest and so forth.” Rubio said the administration believes Venezuela has now entered the second stage of that strategy, focused on economic recovery, although he acknowledged that the devastating June 24 earthquakes have complicated the effort.

Only after those objectives are met, Rubio said, should Venezuela move toward democratic elections. “Ultimately, you have to have transition,” he said. “At some point in time, there has to be legitimate elections at every level so that people know that the government that’s there is a legitimate government chosen by their people.” Rubio added that national reconciliation would be the first prerequisite for that transition, arguing that Venezuelans have remained politically divided for decades and suggesting that post-communist transitions in Eastern Europe offer useful models.

That all sounds quite reasonable to me.

Venezuela has dropped out of the headlines, though. The long hard task of rebuilding a country isn’t the sort of thing that makes sound bites.

The death toll in the earthquake now stands at about 5.5 thousand, according to this article from about a week ago. I’ve tried to find the best figures on the number still missing, and I’ve seen estimates that range from 1,000 to 30,000. That’s quite a gap.

And then there’s the Michigan race for the Senate

The New Neo Posted on by

The red-green alliance seems to have taken over the Michigan Democrat Party and is poised for primary victory:

Leftists are now giddy with the latest poll results coming out of Michigan, which indicate that another Muslim socialist appears to be running away with the Democrat nomination for U.S. Senate.

Slate’s senior politics editor, Jim Newell, in his newsletter to readers, said:

“The most-watched Senate primary in the country finally concludes this coming Tuesday, as Michigan Democrats choose between progressive insurgent Adbul El-Sayed and moderate Rep. Haley Stevens to go against GOP former Rep. Mike Rogers this fall… If El-Sayed wins, it would be a shocking change in Democratic politics, with typically cautious Democratic voters nominating a leftist in a critical purple-state Senate race. And then we would just have to see how that would go in November! If he were to win the general, it would prompt more risk-taking from Democratic primary voters down the road. If he were to lose, Democratic voters would quickly revert to nominating cyborg ex-Marine prosecutors selected by Chuck Schumer.

Yes, this is a test case to see whether a far-leftist Israel-hating Muslim can win statewide in a state that’s somewhat blue but not entirely so. As such, Michigan is perfectly positioned for the test, and El-Sayed is the perfect candidate as well. Michigan Democrats who support El-Sayed have two big things going for them in this sort of contest: it is the state with the highest Muslim percentage of residents of a state that isn’t already deep deep blue (see this list), and the GOP is organizationally weak there and the Democrats have control of the voting apparatus in large cities.

I offer this recent poll with the caveat that it might be designed and manipulated to motivate Stevens voters (Stevens is El-Sayed’s Democrat opponent in the primary) to vote tomorrow. But it indicates that Stevens has a better chance than El-Sayed to beat Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate:

In the EPIC-MRA poll, 44 percent of respondents said they would cast their ballot for Stevens or would consider doing so if the election happened that day, and 42 percent said the same of Rogers. Fourteen percent were not sure about their preferred candidate or did not give a response.

In contrast, 46 percent of respondents said they would back or were considering backing Rogers, while 43 percent said the same of El-Sayed.

The margin of error for the poll is 4 percentage points, so the results for both Democratic candidates against Rogers are within that margin.

Sort of a garbage poll, but there it is. Note also the large number of “undecideds.” How anyone can be undecided at this point is beyond me. The contrasts could not be more stark.

Dearborn is, as you probably know, the epicenter of the red-green movement in Michigan – the first Arab-majority city in the US.