Cohan and Cagney

The New Neo Posted on by

Most of you have probably seen the movie “Yankee Doodle Dandy” starring James Cagney as George M. Cohan. I watched it on TV many times as a child, and loved it.

A while back I read that Cagney’s stiff-legged dancing in that film was an imitation of Cohan’s idiosyncratic dance style, and I started to wonder whether there was any film of Cohan dancing or singing. He died in 1942, so there should be something of the sort.

Not much, as it turns out. But a bit.

First, here’s Cohan singing “Over There” in 1936, when he was 58 years old:

And here’s Cagney singing the same song in the movie. He only sings a small part of the song, but gives it the same high energy. The movie was released in June, 1942 (Cohan died in November of that year, but apparently saw the movie). That was well -into WWII, although “Over There” was a song from WWI. But you can see why it meant so much at the time.

The following is the only footage I could find of Cohan dancing (it’s Cagney singing in the background, though). It’s about a minute long:

This is Cagney doing much the same number in the film “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” They’re both playing FDR, by the way, wearing a top hat:

I think you can see how well Cagney captured Cohan’s style. There were quite a few similarities between them: both had backgrounds in vaudeville, both were of Irish ethnicity (Cagney mostly, anyway), and both were relatively short (5’6″ for Cohan and 5’4″ for Cagney).

You can feel the playfulness and energy practically blast off the screen in both versions. Those were different times, weren’t they?

A wedding at Notre Dame

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a feel-good story:

A carpenter who helped restore Notre-Dame after the devastating 2019 fire was granted permission to marry inside the cathedral, becoming part of its first wedding ceremony in 30 years.

A remarkable exception was made when 29-year-old master carpenter Martin Lorentz was allowed to marry his fiancée, Jade, inside Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. Lorentz had spent three years hand-carving the massive oak beams used to rebuild “the Forest”—the cathedral’s intricate medieval roof structure, which was destroyed in the devastating 2019 fire. Because Notre-Dame is classified as a national monument rather than a parish church, private weddings have been prohibited for decades, making theirs the first ceremony held there since 1995.

In recognition of Lorentz’s dedication to the cathedral’s restoration, Archbishop Laurent Ulrich personally granted the rare permission. Around 500 guests attended the ceremony, including family, friends, and many of the craftsmen who helped bring Notre-Dame back to life. As the newlyweds left the cathedral, Lorentz’s fellow carpenters formed a traditional guard of honor, raising their axes overhead in a moving tribute to the man who helped rebuild one of France’s most treasured landmarks.

Hand-carving oak beams for three years.

Card-carrying DSA members: more Michigan news

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve previously written about the quandary faced by far-leftist DSA members/supporters in the general election. After winning the primary as radicals, how do they convincingly tack at least a bit towards the middle?

Here’s how one candidate for the US House of Representatives from Michigan’s 7th District, William Lawrence, dealt with it (the clip is about two and a half minutes long):

William Lawrence’s life story resembles so many other DSA member profiles, although it doesn’t include immigrant parents or having been born in another country. Lawrence was born in Madison, Wisconsin, a deep blue university community, but was raised in East Lansing, Michigan (another university community), son of two law professors at Michigan State University. He graduated from Swarthmore (sociology and anthropolgy degree) – a deeply leftist college – and was a climate activist there and ever since, as well as having been trained in community organizing. And of course, he says Israel has committed genocide.

In that clip of Lawrence explaining his DSA membership lapse, he looks a bit like a deer in the headlights. And yet he managed, in a fairly purple district, to defeat two formidable (and fairly moderate) rival Democrats: Ambassador Bridget Brink and former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam. Brink was an ambassador to Ukraine appointed by Biden, and in her mid-50s as opposed to Lawrence’s 36.

If you look at the primary results, you can see a familiar pattern. Lawrence got less than half: 43.7%, to be exact. But his two opponents split the difference fairly evenly: 28.8% for Brink and 27.6% for Maasdam. What would have happened had one of them dropped out? I can’t say, but there’s certainly a good chance the remaining candidate might have gotten nearly all the other’s votes and beaten Lawrence.

That didn’t happen. Lawrence will go up against Tom Barrett, the GOP incumbent, but it’s considered a swing district.

More Arday fallout: some students want their money back

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t blame them; his professorship was a scam for which the university is responsible. It showed a mindboggling absence of due diligence.

Apparently Arday was a tough grader, too:

A number of Mr Arday’s former students have complained that they received lower grades than expected after “inadequate” supervision by the professor. In one case, a student who asked to change supervisor was accused of being racist.

Separately, Prof Deborah Prentice, the university’s vice-chancellor, is facing demands to refund the tuition fees of students who were taught by Mr Arday after they were “deceived about the nature of their education”.

A mass refund or large-scale retrospective grade changes would be unprecedented in the university’s 800-year history.

I would be nice if they had to give refunds out of their own salaries, but that will never happen. I actually don’t think any refunds will happen, although every student Arday taught should get a pro-rated one. If not, his former students should sue the university for some cause of action involving fraud.

It would be a fitting logical consequence if Cambridge was made to pay, but although that probably will not happen in the monetary sense, I think it’s already happened in terms of the school’s reputation. Also, not only Arday should be losing a job over this. It could start with these two ladies:

Prof Prentice is also facing criticism for failing to grip the crisis engulfing the university, which has damaged its reputation on the international stage. The academics have accused the £507,000-a-year leader of the university of “inaction”, having made no public comments since The Telegraph first reported on the plagiarism row around Mr Arday a fortnight ago. He has now resigned.

It has also emerged that when Cambridge was sent fresh evidence of Mr Arday’s alleged plagiarism last year – having first been alerted to it in 2023 – the “responsible person” allocated to the case was Prof Hilary Cremin, the head of Mr Arday’s faculty who had told him he was “the best in the world” when he was hired.

Were they DEI hires as well? Both are white women; Prentice seems to have a conventional background in social psychology, whereas Cremin seems profoundly granola-esque.

Ann Coulter has pointed out the prevalence of women among Arday’s champions, boosters, and helpers:

All the people promoting Arday seem to be women – agents, editors, co-authors, professors:

Arday’s book editors—Dawn Davis and Kris Doyle

Eve Claxton – co-wrote the book with Arday

Jennifer Gates – Arday’s book agent

Prof. Hilary Cremlin – called Arday’s research, “the best in the world”

So his memoir was “co-written.” Interesting. The book supposedly got an advance of 1.4 million dollars (I wrote “supposedly” because, as far as I can tell, that’s based on Arday’s own report; and we know how reliable that is). Guess what? It’s going to be released anyway; my guess is that it may sell even better because of the notoriety:

Despite allegations against Arday, Simon & Schuster said earlier this week it was planning to go ahead with the publication of his memoir on 11 August in the US and 27 August in the UK. Simon & Schuster US told the Guardian on Thursday night it was “proceeding with the publication of Great and Unfortunate Things by Jason Arday as planned”.

In a previous interview with the Guardian, Arday said Simon & Schuster had offered 1.4m for the book in a “pre-empt”, a type of deal in which a publisher is so keen on a book they put in a high offer to take it off the table before it can go to auction. Arday did not specify whether the 1.4m figure was in pound sterling or US dollars. Simon & Schuster did not respond to a request to comment on the sum. …

One senior publisher said it was an utterly mad number, but that “madness sometimes happens”, so it was conceivable.

It seems that “madness” is happening more and more as time goes on.

The book’s title is Great and Unfortunate Things, which I think is nearly perfect as a description of the entire debacle – not that the book goes into that; I’m going to assume it does not. There’s also this great promotional material:

In comments reported by the Bookseller in April, Kris Doyle, the nonfiction publisher at Simon & Schuster UK, said: “I can promise you’ve never read a story like this – even the viral news headlines don’t do it justice.”

Arday’s lies were entirely egregious, and it doesn’t seem as though the simplest checks were brought to bear. There was totally and complete trust, a willingness to believe that was fervently intense, and a self-congratulatory glow for having done so.

Some of the Cambridge faculty seem to be angry and want an independent investigation:

The signatories want an independent investigation into the circumstances of Arday’s appointment, and any risk assessment made by the university’s management “when crafting a media narrative focusing on his youth, his race, and his transformative potential”.

It also wants details of the university’s handling of allegations of academic misconduct against Arday, including whether the university was involved in efforts to deter journalists from reporting on the allegations.

The university has denied supporting Arday’s efforts to stop publication of critical coverage in the Times Higher magazine last year, or funding his use of lawyers.

The signatories also call for an evaluation of the “enormous damage this episode has done to people of colour within and beyond the Cambridge academic community, and what can be done immediately to reassure them – and the wider public – that anti-racism and academic integrity at Cambridge are both essential and mutually reinforcing.”

It seems to me they want to have their cake and eat it too. Are “anti-racism and academic integrity both essential and mutually reinforcing”? Yes – if and only if the anti-racism is based on equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome.

Lastly, the more I think about the Arday case – and I’ve though about it a great deal – the more I think he wasn’t a DEI hire because of race alone. That was an element, of course. But I think the even-greater element in his story was his supposed profound autism and recovery to ascend the heights of intellectual thought. The two had a synergistic (shall we say intersectional?) effect, making him the perfect candidate for a university position based on sympathy, virtue-signaling, and wishful thinking.

[ADDENDUM: Some details on the complaints of some of Arday’s students:

Former Cambridge students who contacted The Telegraph complained that Mr Arday gave them minimal supervision, telling some they did not need supervision because they were so outstanding, only for them to get lower grades than predicted.

Interesting.]

News roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) The International Red Cross made an animated movie about a refugee from Afghanistan whom they considered a very sympathetic character. But he’s been arrested for murder in Greece, the country that took him in.

The case looks strong, and it was his American wife who gave police much of the evidence. From the Daily Mail:

The Red Cross has deleted a film tracking the journey of an Afghan migrant who is now accused of killing a British woman and hiding her body in a suitcase in Greece.

Sharif Ahmadzai, 26, was arrested on Monday over the murder of Scottish Christian Elisabeth-Jane Ross, in Athens.

Ahmadzai, a professional boxer who arrived in Greece on a small boat in 2016, is accused of killing Ms Ross before stuffing her body into a suitcase and ditching it in a derelict building.

The 38-year-old’s body was found by a homeless man on July 18, three days after she is believed to have been killed. …

Officers started probing Ahmadzai after his wife allegedly reported her husband had been behaving suspiciously on July 30.

She allegedly said she woke to find him missing on the evening of July 15 and checked his shared location which showed him at Ms Ross’s apartment.

Ahmadzai’s wife grew suspicious when it was announced Ms Ross’s body had been found. She left the family home with their baby and stayed in a hotel.

Ahmadzai gave her the sum of 2,550 euros and a new Apple iPhone 17 Pro but she refused them.

He used the dead woman’s credit cards. There’s much more to the story; you can read it at the link if you’re interested, but his excuse is that the woman was already dead when he arrived, and he panicked and stuffed her into a suitcase.

Sure thing.

(2) There’s no love lost between the NYC police and Mayor Mamdani:

Mamdani attempted to address about 3,500 residents and families attending the New York Police Department’s 43rd Patrol Borough National Night Out Against Crime event on Tuesday. His remarks, however, lasted less than a minute as loud boos, jeers and chants of “get out of here” and “nobody wants you” drowned out his voice.

The mayor attempted to continue speaking for a short time, but the jeers drowned him out. After the boos continued, Mamdani thanked the crowd with his signature hand-over-his-heart gesture, waved and walked offstage smiling. As he exited, the crowd continued to berate him, with some yelling expletives. An organizer attempted to regain control of the event, but the crowd persisted, booing and shaking their fists at Mamdani.

To be fair, the event occurred on Staten Island, a NY borough that is Republican and has been for quite some time. It is also the home of many NY police and firefighters, and lost a disproportionate number of residents on 9/11. For example, the borough has about 5.6% of New York City’s population but a quarter of the deceased firefighters lived there:

On Staten Island, 274 residents were killed, including 72 people who resided within two adjacent ZIP codes, 10312 and 10314.

The island has long been known as a blue-collar borough, home to first responders and office workers who enjoyed a quick commute to Lower Manhattan by the ferry.

“For Staten Island, 9/11 is a visceral part of our historical record,” said City Councilmember Joe Borelli, who was a 19-year-old Marist College student on Sept. 11, 2001.

Staten Island has a multitude of reasons to detest Mamdani.

(3) I don’t really think that praising Hasan Piker in any way is a good look for Democrats in Michigan. Debbie Dingell faces that quandary:

Rep. Debbie Dingell (MI-06) is one of the more well-known establishment Democrats in Michigan. A year or so ago, she warned against a looming “proxy battle” between the Democrat candidates over the issue of the Israel-Hamas war, something that ended up playing out throughout the primary between El-Sayed, Rep. Haley Stevens (MI-11), and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow.

Though Dingell didn’t endorse in the Senate primary, one got the impression that she wasn’t a fan of El-Sayed’s campaign, perhaps because she’s fond of reminding people that Michigan is a purple state, and far-left candidates like El-Sayed are not exactly what one would describe as “purple state material.”

But now we have this effort from Dingell. Although she is practically stuttering here and saying she doesn’t agree with Piker, she emphasizes how popular he is on social media::

If you don’t get X, she’s saying to Greta Von Susteren, among other things: “I guess he [Hasan Piker] works out and when he works out he looks really good and some people follow him for that. Not you or me.”

Democrats, and especially Democrats of Michigan, have some decisions to make about whether or not to support El-Sayed. I think almost all of them will fall in line behind him, and that may involve trying to explain away his closeness to the abominable Piker.

(4) Meanwhile, Democrats such as Julian Epstein are saying no to El-Sayed and casting their lot with his opponent Mike Rogers. They’re also putting their money where their mouths are. He wrote an op-ed piece in the NY Post entitled, “I’m a longtime Democrat — fighting for GOP’s Mike Rogers, and my party’s soul, in Michigan.” An excerpt:

President John F. Kennedy, in his inaugural address, may have said it best: “In the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”

It was a warning to those who tolerate the rise of authoritarian communism that they will inevitably end up next on the dinner menu.

Michigan Democrats, in nominating Abdul El-Sayed for Senate on Tuesday, seem to be riding the back of that tiger.

That’s an interesting JFK quote. It puts me in mind of the red-green alliance, which I first noticed in the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The leftists in that country thought they could ride the Islamist tiger. How’d that work out for them?

(5) Does Palestine have a distinct culture? Yes, violence:

There is no nation called “Palestine” and no “Palestinian” language, but there is a Palestinian culture. It was forged mostly by Yasser Arafat, the PLO’s leader for five decades, and is singularly defined by violence. Unique among all other Arab cultures and national identities, Palestinian culture and the Palestinian identity are predicated on a single political goal – the unceasing desire to destroy an existing country, in this case Israel.

Take away the resistance, and there’s nothing left of a distinctly Palestinian culture.

Cultures take centuries or millennia to form organically, but Palestinian culture, or “Palestinianism,” sprang into being quickly and artificially.

Historians might not agree on the precise date of the new Palestinian identity and its concomitant culture, but no serious scholar claims it to be much more than a century old.

Their violence is not limited to Israel as a target. They’ve wreaked havoc in every country that has taken them in in significant numbers.

Together at last

The New Neo Posted on by

A change of pace.

Who is this power couple? No, the photo’s not for a perfume ad. They’ve been dating for about a year.

Hint, hint, a quote from the woman:

‘I am very in love. And actually, that show was after I met the love of my life and so I felt very anchored by that because I’m a little bit like a rainbow kite.’

The pair were first romantically linked in July 2025 before going Instagram official in December.

Why, it’s Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau.

Trump gives limiting birthright citizenship another try

The New Neo Posted on by

If at first you don’t succeed, try try:

President Trump is signing two Executive Orders to protect the meaning and value of American citizenship after Trump v. Barbara:

The executive orders,Continuing to Protect the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship and Ending Birth Tourism, limit the scope, targeting future births in four categories:

– Either parent of that person is an alien enemy, defined to include any member of a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.
– Either parent is a foreign government employee working on behalf of a foreign government.
– Person is born in a territory or territorial waters of the United States where citizenship is not conferred by Federal statute.
– The entry of any foreign national into the United States via a nonimmigrant visa for the purpose of giving birth on American soil or any effort by any foreign national to facilitate the entry of any foreign national into the United States via a nonimmigrant visa for the purpose of giving birth on American soil.

I haven’t a clue how this would fare in a Court challenge. Legislation would do better, I think, but is probably impossible to pass at this point. Jonathan Turley gives his opinion here:

I will add that I believe that part of the goal is to simply discourage birth tourism, to maker it an iffier, more difficult, and more costly process. This might make the numbers go down significantly.

Primaries versus the general

The New Neo Posted on by

Ann Althouse mentions that the following is the top-rated comment at this NY Times article:

Third Way and some other centrist [Democrat] groups seem far more interested in defeating progressives than defeating MAGA and far more interested in telling Democratic voters they’re wrong than earning their votes. If moderates are losing, then the problem is with those candidates, not the progressives who beat them.

Top-rated comment? But it seems to be ignoring the difference between primary elections and general elections, a distinction that’s been known for just about forever. What appeals to the primary voter in a party tends to be more extreme than what will win in the general – not always, but often.

It’s a problem that doesn’t exist in deep blue or deep red states; in such venues, the candidate of the majority party almost inevitably wins. But in states that are at least potential toss-ups in the general, one way to deal with the dichotomy between the primary and the general is to manage to nominate a candidate who is perfectly positioned: extreme enough to satisfy the “base” but moderate enough to appeal to the more moderate voters in the state. Another way to deal with it in such states is to have the nominated candidate pretend to be moderate in the general election, but show his or her extreme leftism only after the win. Call it the Spanberger approach.

Then again, perhaps the author of the most-favored comment believes that extreme leftists really are in the majority, or can control the outcome of elections through fraud.

Note that Michigan’s El-Sayed won the primary election with less than 50% of the vote from Democrats. He beat his Democrat opponent Stevens by a tiny margin, and some of the votes went to distant third-place candidate Mallory McMorrow, who had previously withdrawn from the race and yet received 4% of the vote. McMorrow’s withdrawal was widely thought (and I agree) to have been an effort to increase Stevens’ changes of a win. If so, it didn’t work. But if Michigan had a system whereby primary winners had to receive 50% or more of the vote, it would have forced a runoff. Who would have won such a race? I can’t say.

Nor can I say who will win the general in Michigan, El-Sayed or Rogers (the Republican). Needless to say, I sincerely hope it’s the latter.

You may be tired of Russiagate, but Russiagate isn’t tired of you

The New Neo Posted on by

Some recent news [emphasis mine]:

The FBI opened a criminal probe specifically targeting Donald Trump in May 2017, alleging the newly elected president may have been acting as a Russian asset when he fired then-Director James Comey even though the bureau’s own evidence overwhelmingly showed at the time there was no collusion with the Kremlin.

Internal memos newly declassified by the White House show the investigation – codenamed “Oxferd Comma” – was launched in the immediate aftermath of Comey’s May 9, 2017, firing and was predicated on an allegation that previously released memos show the bureau’s own agents had mostly dismissed. …

… [T]hat decision proved anything but nonintrusive: it prompted the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller by Rosenstein and a nearly two-year probe that hampered the start of the Trump presidency even though Mueller’s team, like the FBI before it, was unable to substantiate any collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election. …

The memos are being released as federal prosecutors in Fort Pierce, Fla., reportedly investigate whether the FBI, DOJ and intelligence agencies engaged in an ongoing conspiracy to violate the civil rights of Trump and his supporters through repeated criminal investigations that lacked evidence of wrongdoing.

So this is about possible charges against the investigators. That raises the question we often ask: will anything come of it? It would be a very difficult thing to prove, although note that this investigation is currently not in Washington DC but in Florida. That may give it at least a fighting chance.

I have little doubt that such a conspiracy existed and that it did much damage. But I also think that many Americans don’t think that happened; in a sense, the conspiracy was rather successful in the court of public opinion. And some of those who do think it happened are happy that it happened. They belief it’s necessary to “cut down every law” in order to get the nefarious Trump.

[NOTE: What is this “Oxferd comma” thing? I know what the Oxford comma is, although I don’t use it. But Oxferd? Here’s an explanation:

Former acting Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark alleged the code name was deliberately altered to make records of the investigation harder to find.

“The FBI under James Comey and Christopher Wray was hopelessly corrupt. To penalize President Trump’s firing of Comey, they created a ridiculous investigation into Trump on the theory he was a witting or unwitting Russian agent,” Clark, who serves as vice president of litigation at the Oversight Project, told Fox News Digital.

“They called it OXFERD C0MMA (note the zero for the second ‘o’ and the misspelling of the University). The FBI managers thought this was clever. They imagined themselves as Blofeld in a James Bond movie deviously defeating the Freedom of Information Act,” Clark added, referring to the James Bond supervillain.

I hadn’t even noticed that zero for the O in “comma.” It appears only as “comma” in the first article I linked.]

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.]