Jason Arday's embarrassing exit from Cambridge may seem like a defeat. But in fact, says Prof James Alexander, what better way to vindicate his hypothesis that black people stumble when faced with \"normative whiteness\"!

Jason Arday and the University of Cambridge very clearly have a case to answer. Yet the DEI-obsessed lanyard class want us to believe the claims are baseless and that anyone who thinks otherwise is driven by racist sentiment. Their response is indicative of how they approach every issue: if the truth is likely to get in the way of their political ideology, then the truth can take a hike, and anyone who speaks it must be besmirched and bullied into silence. These authoritarians must be faced down at every turn.

This whole Jason Arday kerfuffle, particularly the reaction from people like James O’Brien, feels like the 2026, David Brent-esque version of “I’m not racist, I’ve got Black friends.” There’s something deeply peculiar about the modern middle class liberal obsession with race, because for all their endless lectures about “seeing beyond colour”, colour appears to be literally ALL they see. From the 1950s onwards, ethnic minority families settled largely in working class communities. It wasn't some multicultural utopia, there was racism, arguments and tensions, but people also just got on with living alongside each other. By the 80s and 90s, their children and grandchildren weren't exotic political concepts requiring an academic vocabulary to understand. They were Gary from work, your mate’s mum, the bloke who fixed your car, the girl you fancied at school. Nobody needed a training course. Then those children and grandchildren went to university and entered professional Britain, and encountered a particular sort of white liberal who had often spent considerably less time around ethnic minorities than the working class people they regarded as hopelessly prejudiced. Suddenly race became an enormous virtue signalling performance. "Look how much I notice your colour." "Look how loudly I celebrate you." " Look how furious I become on your behalf." "Look how DEFINITELY NOT RACIST I am." And eventually you arrive at the Jason Arday nonsense, where ordinary scrutiny of an extraordinary steaming mound of bollocks becomes suspicious because he's Black. That isn't equality. Equality means Jason Arday gets exactly what everybody else gets: You're a human being. I'm a human being. Same rules. Same rewards, same punishments. As Thomas Sowell said, “When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.” If your "anti racism" requires you to notice somebody's race first, and then adjust how you praise, criticise or judge them accordingly, perhaps it's you thats the racist?

The Jason Arday affair is a national disgrace. It exposes how deeply entrenched and destructive DEI ideology has become. One might have hoped the horror of what happened to Henry Nowak would finally awaken people to how grossly unfair—and outright dangerous—this obsession with skin colour and victimhood has grown. Most ordinary people accept that academic status should rest on merit and talent. Yet a substantial cohort—ironically the same people quickest to brand dissenters as racists—insist that everything, including merit itself, must yield to racial identity. They are prepared to sacrifice academic integrity and tolerate fraud in order to pose as saviours of the poor, disenfranchised and persecuted “Diversity is our greatest strength,” people, even as the consequences of that dogma pile up. Never mind that honest non-white academics will now face unfair suspicion because of this kind of promotion. The white saviours—who, by any honest definition, are practising a form of racism—will cover up, mislead and deceive to protect the narrative. And when the fraud is exposed, they cannot even manage a straightforward apology. Arday has followed the familiar playbook of those who trade in race. When the claims begin to unravel, he immediately claims victim status on the basis of his skin colour, leans on institutions (and, where possible, the police) who are only too thrilled to investigate non existent racism, and seeks to silence journalists asking legitimate questions. When the truth finally emerges, the exposure of the deception is itself blamed on racism. Insane. This is beyond sinister. It has to stop. There is one human race. For as long as records exist, merit has been the only proper measure of an individual. Critical race theory is intellectual poison: it corrodes every institution it touches. We should learn from this episode and reject it completely.

Just because Jason Arday resigned from his professorship at Cambridge doesn't mean his academic work no longer needs to be investigated and dealt with. The academic record needs to be expunged of his fraudulent work. Papers need to be retracted. His PhD should be revoked.