The Arday case has laid bare a crisis that the university must address

The depressing and tragic story of Jason Arday, Cambridge’s youngest Black professor, has taken a sad turn following his suicide. In itself, it adds little to the assessment that could already be made of the ideology which has dominated a significant part of the humanities and social sciences in the US, the UK and, to some extent, Europe for more than twenty years. It is an ideology that it would be wrong to equate with ‘wokeness’, which represents its most grotesque and easily criticised aspect, because it is far more extensive, ramified and harmful than that. That it constitutes – taken as a whole, and not merely in its ridiculous extremes – an intellectual and moral catastrophe has long been evident to me, given that it substitutes moralistic judgement for philology, the present for the discovery of the past, and egocentrism for respect for difference (which certainly does not exempt us from judging it). Sooner or later, therefore, we will need to analyse its roots, its origins and its developments, and take stock of the damage it has caused and continues to cause, including by fuelling equally aggressive reactions. In the immediate term, however, it would be important for the humanities and social sciences – and especially their leadership – to use the Arday case to reflect on the responsibilities of at least some of their members, which are by no means insignificant. I shall therefore confine myself to stating my views on the matter.

The story itself is quite clear: an intelligent, kind and, in all likelihood, likeable and charming young Black man (what successful impostor does not possess these qualities?) has capitalised on the catastrophe currently afflicting, for ideological reasons, a significant section of the humanities and social sciences – a section concentrated, moreover, in the most renowned universities – to further his career by telling ‘stories’. If you think about it, this generally has little to do with his skin colour or any particular ideology: when the conditions arise to profit from the ideological, religious or personal folly of others, those whom Molière called ‘Tartuffes’ of whatever colour – all more or less intelligent, lively and likeable – step forward to capitalise on it, with varying degrees of success. Ideology and skin colour, however, do play a part in the tragic outcome of the story: Arday capitalised on his skin colour and was persecuted more than other impostors precisely because of it. Racism and ethnocentrism, alas, do exist; they are not confined to white people, and they are always abhorrent. But if this is true, it is above all true that neither he nor his persecutors are responsible for what happened, and that it therefore makes little sense to continue denouncing his imposture or to condemn those who persecuted him most fiercely simply because he was black.

Those truly responsible are, in fact, the academic leaders who allowed this charade to take place; rigorous investigations should be launched into them, starting with the then Director of the Faculty of Education at Cambridge, who in 2023 addressed Arday with words that make her either a queen of lies or a complete fool: “You are the best in the world in terms of your research… We are so lucky to have you…”. Alongside her, the members of the committee that selected Arday and the university’s senior management who allowed this to happen should be subject to an academic inquiry – certainly not a judicial one – as should those who subsequently continued to defend indefensible decisions, even through legal threats which, as appears to be established, were used against those who first exposed the fraud.

Only through a rigorous internal inquiry, establishing responsibility and motives, could Cambridge regain its lost honour. The same applies to the other great centres of academia in the now-Western world, including Harvard, which its post-war reformers sought to transform into the second Athens of a new West. The case of its former president – forced to resign following an extremely painful hearing on anti-Semitism on campus and the discovery that some of her quotations were inaccurate, yet retained in her position as a professor after acknowledging some of her mistakes – tells us a similar story. This, too, along with other issues – such as the ‘statements of faith’ required of new recruits as a precondition for employment – must be addressed, in order to begin to remedy the catastrophe and, at the very least, to rein in the fanatics and charlatans who now inhabit some of the leading universities of what was once the West, bearing witness to its crisis.

Europe, too, should reflect on this: I recall European projects – considered the most prestigious and certainly the best-funded – which asked historians in advance to contribute their research towards building a shared past and raising awareness of it. And our university system ought to do the same; it harbours – partly due to European insistence – a great deal of hypocrisy in what used to be the humanities and social sciences component of the so-called ‘Third Mission’ (which some now call the ‘Fourth’), as if it were possible for a university to have a positive influence on the country or region in which it is located without focusing on sound research and teaching based on knowledge of the best research carried out by others, if not directly on its own. As a great and witty teacher whom I am pleased to remember, Riccardo Picchio, used to tell me – a young lecturer in Italian in post-war Poland who brought Auschwitz to public attention in "L’Avanti" – do we really want to reward those who spread what they do not know and who, by teaching banalities or falsehoods, do more harm than those who do little but at least cause little harm to students? It is a rule that it would do no harm to apply to our universities as a whole, rather than pushing them to make up for shortcomings in their core missions with vague social commitments of various kinds.