Episode Details

Americans already suspect that higher education is a politicized grift. And Jason Arday’s story won’t convince them otherwise.

Arday was celebrated as the youngest black person ever appointed to a professorship at Cambridge — despite a history of fabulism that defies belief. He’s claimed to have been nonverbal until age 11; unable to read until 18; to have run 600 miles in 65 days; raised more than $7 million for charity; survived a coma; and beaten cancer.

Neither Cambridge nor Simon & Schuster, publisher of his autobiography, apparently thought to verify his claims. He’s resigned after a plagiarism scandal and a pending investigation about his academic qualifications and honorary appointments.

Here’s the lesson: Rather than making academia more inclusive and equitable, DEI has exposed just how corrupt the whole enterprise has become.

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