Diversity, Equity, and Confabulation

If The Onion or Babylon Bee or another satirical publication wanted to spoof the absurdity of DEI — the ideology of "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" — they couldn't have invented a character as unbelievable as Jason Arday.

But Arday is very real: Born in 1985, in 2023 he became at 37 the youngest black man ever to hold a professorship at Cambridge University.

Naturally, he had to overcome great adversity to do so — indeed, superhumanly great adversity.

Arday, the son of Ghanaian immigrants to London, is not only black; he's autistic and was nonverbal until the age of 11, according to glowing media profiles he's received.

He's epileptic, too, he claims — yet that didn't stop him from "running 30 marathons in just 35 days," as told in Britain's Independent newspaper.

That would sound farfetched coming from someone else, but Arday is apparently as exceptional in body as he is in mind:

In a 2021 blog post on the "International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination," the University of Bath presented Arday as claiming that he'd played both soccer and snooker (kind of like billiards) at a professional level as a child — though on July 30, the university amended the transcript of Arday's conversation to say he'd only played soccer "semi professionally" and was "really good" but "not good enough to be professional" at snooker.

Never mind — he has so many other claims to fame that correcting that legend takes little away.

After all, Arday was also a star of perhaps the most famous documentary in British history, Michael Apted's "Seven Up" series, which followed the same group of subjects from childhood to old age at seven-year intervals, starting in 1964.

Starting, that is, 21 years before Professor Arday was born.

No, the series didn't add new participants over time — the whole point was to track the very same people who took part in the first installment.

Yet thanks to DEI, truly anything is possible.

Arday now says that when asserted in 2022, "I was part of a programme, actually, which ... was called Seven Up at the time. And Seven Up is basically when they follow you over the duration of your life, so they follow you at (ages) 7, 14, 21. I was pulled out of the project when I was 14," he was talking about a totally different "Seven Up."

As with so much else in Arday's biography, evidence for this, other than the professor's say-so, is absent.

And there is so much more to his story — the brain tumor he overcame while getting his Ph.D., the 600 miles he ran on a treadmill in six days, the millions of pounds he raised for charity ...

A miraculous fellow like Arday might never have been admitted as a student at Cambridge, let alone made "professor of the sociology of education," if not for the spirit of DEI.

Yet now he faces accusations of plagiarism because more than 100 passages in his dissertation appear to be lifted from another academic's work.

He insists he's a victim of racism and insufficient accommodation:

"Arday did not dispute the allegations of plagiarism," the BBC reports, "but defended himself by arguing that he had not received adequate supervision during his Ph.D. given his autism and learning disabilities ..."

Even the left-wing Guardian newspaper found Arday less than reliable when he claimed a campaign to get him fired from Cambridge included a man threatening him with a knife — video showed no man and no knife — and someone sending a severed pig's head to his parents. (London butchers and police said their recollections and records conflicted with Arday's story.)

When the paper asked about the discrepancies, Arday replied, "To be honest with you, I thought you'd just believe me."

The trouble is, too many in the media and academy have believed Arday all along.

He's a poster child for the suspension of common-sense DEI demands of its believers on both sides of the Atlantic.

When he's just a professor of the sociology of education, even at a university as prestigious as Cambridge, an Arday is comical.

But it's no joke when DEI spreads from sociology and education departments to every other corner of the academy, including medical and law schools — and from there into hospitals and courtrooms.

Left unchecked, there's no limit to how far DEI will go:

If Jason Arday next decides he's an airline pilot, who will keep him out of the cockpit?

Honest, competent minorities wind up under suspicion when DEI lowers standards for anyone who fits the right racial profile.

By fueling such suspicion, DEI creates a market for itself — as its purveyors claim only affirmative action can overcome the public's bias.

Professor Arday's tall tales are beyond belief, yet they reveal the naked truth about DEI.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
• 07/28/26: Democratic Socialists of America vs. John Adams
• 07/21/26: Why Dems Can't Do Better Than Kamala Harris in 2028
• 07/14/26: Prescription for a Socialist Workforce
• 07/07/26: The Smithsonian's Patriotism Problem
• 06/30/26: Bill Maher, Liberalism's Apostate
• 06/23/26: Can Anyone Govern Britain -- or America?
• 06/16/26: University Professors Against Academic Freedom
• 06/09/26: Pope Leo Courts the Global Left
• 06/02/26: A Mass-Graves Myth Is Media Malpractice
• 05/28/26: Dems Face Midterm Disappointment
• 05/26/26: Dems Face Midterm Disappointment
• 05/12/26: Dems finally come clean 'bout their radical design
• 05/05/26: The Silenced Generation
• 04/28/26:Colleges Are Making Political Violence Worse
• 04/21/26:Immigration Amnesty by Any Other Name
• 04/14/26: A New Extreme in Gerrymandering
• 04/07/26: A New Extreme in Gerrymandering
• 03/17/26: Why Are Senate Dems Making Air Travel Worse?
• 03/10/26: Cuba Should Accept Trump's 'Friendly Takeover'
• 03/03/26: Immigration Enforcement Saves Lives
• 02/24/26: How a Party Offends Its Voters
• 02/17/26: Why Are Anti-ICE Activists Building Borders?
• 02/10/26: A Japanese Lesson for Troubled Britain
• 02/03/26: The Trump Coalition Wins But the GOP Brand Doesn't
• 01/27/26: Canada Should Warm to Trump's Arctic Plans
• 01/20/26: From Rock to Tech, Talent Flees Taxes
• 01/13/26: Woman Who Weaponized Car Against I.C.E Endangered Her Life -- and Yours
• 01/06/26: Tim Walz Personifies Dems' Decline
• 12/30/25: Harvard Says Yes to Discrimination, No to Western Civ
• 12/23/25: JD Vance Gets America's Creed and Heritage Right
• 12/16/25: Trump's Inflation Trap
• 12/09/25: Biden's Immigration Debacle Is the Media's, Too
• 12/02/25: 'Iryna's Law' and the Bad Judges Who Make It Necessary
• 11/26/25: Marjorie Taylor Greene's Exit Is a Warning to Republicans
• 11/19/25: Trump Hasn't Lost Hispanics (Yet)
• 11/11/25: Trump's Tariffs on Trial
• 10/28/25: MAGA Makes Allies Great Again
• 10/21/25: How To Make the AmericaS Great Again
• 10/16/25: Columbus Day Celebrates Our Civilization
• 10/09/25: Why Sharpies Are Made in America Again
• 09/30/25: Assata Shakur and Other Parents of Political Violence
• 09/09/25: Who's Accountable for Autopen Pardons?
• 09/02/25: Gender dysphoria is a mental-illness, NOT an all-encompassing delusion
• 08/26/25: Trump's Industrial Policy Is Realism, Not Socialism
• 08/19/25: Is Gavin Newsom the Dems' Answer to Trump?
• 08/12/25: Just Say No to More Marijuana
• 08/05/25: Will the GOP Make Libs Generous Again?
• 07/30/25: Trump's Trade Lesson for Economists (and the World)
• 07/22/25: Whose Politics Canceled Stephen Colbert?
• 07/08/25: A Big Beautiful Test of GOP Principles and Discipline
• 07/01/25: Dems Need Populism, But Not Zohran's Sort
• 06/25/25: Secure Borders Win Wars Like This One
• 06/18/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/17/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/04/25: State that's long eluded GOP turns toward Trump
• 05/21/24: Trump's Sun Belt Hopes and Rust Belt Needs
• 05/14/24: What Trump Sees in Doug Burgum
• 05/07/24: The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden's Party
• 05/06/24: Nationalists of the World, Unite?
• 04/25/24: Foreign Policy Splits
• 04/16/24: How pro-lifers stand to lose everything gained in overturning Roe
• 04/02/24: PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.
• 04/02/24: Who Wants to Be House Speaker?
• 03/26/24: Trump Hunts for a VP Close to Home
• 03/19/24: Princess Kate and Democracy's Discontents
• 03/12/24: Can Biden Buy the Voters?
• 03/05/24: Veepstakes Give Trump an Edge
• 02/20/24: Do Americans Trust Either Party?
• 02/13/24: Vladimir Putin -- A Passive Aggressor
• 01/23/24: Will 'Lawfare' Take Trump Off the Ballot?
• 01/16/24: Will Africa Save America?
• 01/09/24:'The Sopranos' at 25: A new world tragedy
• 01/02/24: Trump, Biden and a Fight for the Heart
• 12/12/23: What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
• 12/12/23: Biden Looks Doomed -- But Is He?
• 12/05/23: A Test for Trump and His Rivals
• 11/21/23: When Inequality Is Fatal for Men
• 11/14/23: Nevermind, The Battle's Over
• 11/07/23: War in the Dem Party -- and at the Opera
• 10/24/23: Israel's Lesson for 2024: A Lib Crackup
• 10/17/23: Libs' Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
• 10/10/23: Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
• 10/03/23: Will Gavin Newsom Copy Trump?
• 09/26/23: Biden's a Loser -- but Dems Can't Ditch Him
• 09/19/23: Do Sex Scandals Matter?
• 09/12/23: Cornel West Spells Doom for Biden
• 09/05/23: What Trump Does for Democracy
• 08/2/23: Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
• 08/22/23: Take 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Seriously
• 08/16/23: How America Kills Its Own
• 08/08/23: The Biden Pardon That Can Spare America
• 08/01/23: Harding, a consevative for the ages
• 07/25/23: Demography Destiny, for Us and China
• 07/18/23: The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
• 07/11/23: Britain's Bad Example for American Conservatives
• 07/05/23: Could We Still Win a Revolutionary War?
• 06/27/23: Civilizations Clash -- in Ukraine and at Home
• 06/20/23: China Comes for the Caribbean
• 06/13/23: Fertility, Family and Bio-Socialism
• 06/06/23: From American Dream to Orwell's Nightmare
• 05/23/23: Ukraine war is an existential struggle --- for the West
• 05/23/23: Learn the Right Midterm Lessons -- or Lose in 2024
• 05/16/23: Feinstein Today Is Biden Tomorrow
• 05/09/23: Trump, DeSantis and Political Courtship
• 05/02/23: RFK Jr.'s Threat to Biden
• 04/25/23: Biden's Lost Generation
• 04/25/23: Who's In Charge of Clarence Thomas?
• 04/11/23: Beyond AI, Our Cyborg Future
• 04/04/23: 2024: 3 Leaders, 1 Way to Win
• 03/28/23: Climate Science Makes a Bad Religion
• 03/21/23: All the Conspiracy That's Fit to Print