A second part of Cambridge University’s review or investigation into the Jason Arday affair has been announced. Arday, you will remember, was the young professor of the Sociology of Education, whose status as the youngest black professor ever appointed by Cambridge was greeted with an almost worldwide fanfare, and ended in his tragic death.
The first part of the investigation, announced in September, will, according to the BBC, “examine the support, interventions and protections available to Arday during the period prior to his death.” In other words, it will treat the affair as if it were primarily a psychotherapeutic problem.
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The second part of the review or investigation will not consider, the BBC continued, “whether the allegations concerning Arday’s research, qualifications and academic record are proven”—whether, for example, he was a plagiarist, or whether his work had any academic value. Instead, “It will examine the university’s institutional arrangements for recognising and responding to race equality, including how these arrangements operated in relation to the scrutiny Arday experienced.”
Nor, according to the BBC, will the review “conduct an independent assessment of the ‘scholarly merit or integrity’ of Arday’s published work, nor make an academic judgment about his suitability for appointment.” In other words, it will be an elaborate and expensive charade designed to obfuscate and throw up a smokescreen to prevent the essential question about the whole affair from being either officially asked or answered: Should Arday have been appointed in the first place? The review will be like the blindfolded monkey who sees no evil.
The man appointed to chair the review, Jason Beer, a senior barrister, said on his appointment:
Part Two [of the review] will examine some difficult and potentially uncomfortable questions. I will look not simply at what the University’s policies and procedures required, but also at whether they were themselves reasonable; how they operated in practice; who was responsible for making decisions; what information was reasonably available to them; whether relevant concerns were recognised and properly addressed; and whether the University’s various structures and functions worked together effectively—all in the case of Professor Arday, and more broadly.
He will do all this without knowing, or apparently even wondering, whether Arday should ever have been appointed by Cambridge. What clarity of conclusion could be expected from a man who speaks, or feels obliged to speak, such fluent bureaucratese?
Cambridge University’s review, so called, is a typical example of modern British public administration: simultaneous work creation and work avoidance, all at great, not to say pharaonic, expense.