Extracts from 11 Aug article in Spectator by Andrew Gilligan: After the Jason Arday disaster, here is new evidence that things have gone deeply wrong at Cambridge University. We can reveal that a former supporter of Hizb ut-Tahrir, now banned as a terror group, has been appointed assistant research professor of education at Cambridge, in the same faculty as Arday. Ahmed is now responsible for postgraduate research in education at Britain’s top university, and for teaching undergraduate students, the future leaders of the profession, ‘how education shapes individuals and society.’ Farah Ahmed has explicitly attacked ‘western education’ as a ‘threat’ to Muslims, condemned democracy and integration, and criticised British schools for teaching pupils that child marriage is wrong. During her time at Cambridge, she has written that the Islamic concept of education is sharply opposed to ‘gaining literacy and numeracy and other disciplinary skills demonstrated through qualifications’. She attacks schools’ ‘attempts to integrate Muslim children’ as seeking to ‘produce new generations that reject Islam… if society is built on kufr [unbelief], it is our duty to tackle this challenge as a community in order to protect our young from its corruption.’ Worst of all, ‘religious tolerance is primarily pushed in religious education’, meaning that ‘Islam is taught as a religion like any other, putting its value on the same level as Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism and the like.’ Science is a problem too, because in the ‘teaching of evolution, Muslim children will be exposed to ideas that contradict Islam’. And in any subject, boys and girls may be asked to work together.

Did Jason Arday’s PhD examiners actually read his thesis? And did the electors who appointed him to a Cambridge professorship read his work? The questions raised by this affair go well beyond plagiarism. My latest for UnHerd:

The following little gems were not spewed out by The Postmodernism Generator, nor are they part of an Alan Sokal hoax. They are a representative selection from Jason Arday’s thesis, which earned him a PhD from Liverpool John Moores University. The University of Cambridge was mightily impressed, and they elected him to a professorship at the young age of 37. His thesis is now under suspicion of plagiarism, but plagiarism, if proved, would seem to be among that document’s lesser problems. “Throughout the process, at critical junctures the researcher was conscious that with regards to providing knowledge to the participants regarding reflection and mentoring, a contradictory position was being adopted, with regards to eliminating anything that may resemble a hierarchical structure.” “As the researcher, there was an awareness that the legitimacy of such suggestions regarding reliability are open to critique, however, this research study adopted these principles in attempting to maintain reliability through a qualitative research design.” “As the researcher, textual units concerning the narratives and biographies were identified based on the criteria that the identified themes were fit for purpose in supporting the themes associated with the study.” “As with other forms of discourse inquiry, narrative inquiry is underpinned by a social constructivist paradigm, in which behaviours and their meanings are socially situated and socially interpreted.” “This process allowed the researcher to immerse themself in the data collated.” “References were made with regards to the benefits that were gained from the peer-mentoring experience, with regards to developing pedagogically and working as part of a collegial environment to support each other during teacher training.” “An important consideration which also formed part of the theoretical paradigm for the research recognised that the mentoring process is socially constructed, and therefore the relationship between the participants and the researcher needed to be tailored towards supporting the professional development of the student teachers, and making them autonomous social actors in this process, hence the researcher adopting the secondary position of facilitator within the research.”

Man attempts to behead another man in the street. "No evidence of terror at this stage, say police" If that isn’t terror, what is? How much more terrifying does it need to be to qualify as terror?