Jason Arday | Diversity policy and academic excellence go hand in hand
The tragic affair surrounding the British professor Jason Arday is seen by some academics and the media as proof that diversity policy and academic excellence are at odds with one another. Machiel Keestra sees it differently. “Diversity policy can never and must never mean that scientific integrity or academic performance are assessed less critically.”
Jason Arday’s prestigious appointment in 2023 as Professor of the Sociology of Education at Cambridge was remarkable, not only because of his age – he was just 37 – but also because, as the child of Ghanaian parents, he was one of the few Black professors at Cambridge. Unsurprisingly, he received a great deal of media attention and was approached for all manner of roles.
Following earlier concerns, a recent online publication revealed extensive plagiarism in his doctoral thesis. The author of that publication, a postdoc from Ghent University, also used this case to illustrate his view that differences in race are linked to differences in intelligence and academic success, and that diversity policies are therefore pointless. That publication sparked a media storm, in which not only was Arday’s academic work scrutinized, but it also emerged that he had spread misleading stories about his background. Arday was subsequently subjected to fierce public criticism and racist comments. He felt compelled to resign and was found dead shortly afterwards.
Serious questions
The affair naturally raises serious questions about academic integrity and the procedures by which universities appoint academics. But at least as remarkable is the much broader conclusion being drawn from Arday’s case. His failure is seen not merely as that of a single academic or appointment committee, but as evidence that diversity policies and academic excellence are at odds with one another. I do not wish to leave this unchallenged here.
Scientific fraud and plagiarism are, unfortunately, timeless and cross-disciplinary phenomena. Fifteen years ago, Diederik Stapel, then a professor of social psychology in Tilburg, handed back his doctoral degree to the UvA when it emerged that he had been committing fraud for years using fabricated datasets. Andrew Wakefield’s infamous article on an alleged link between vaccination and autism was ultimately retracted by The Lancet. In the natural sciences, Jan Hendrik Schön’s spectacular research into (semi-)superconductivity proved irreproducible: dozens of articles were retracted, including by Nature, Science and Physical Review.
A self-regulating field
Science is regarded as a self-regulating field. Such cases of fraud therefore rightly lead to critical self-examination by journals, research funding bodies, professional associations and appointment committees. It is striking, however, that Stapel, Wakefield and Schön did not spark a debate on whether there was a place for white men in science in general, or whether a recruitment policy favouring white men had fundamentally failed. They were regarded as individual fraudsters and their cases as a reason to tighten up assessment procedures.
How different the outcome was in the case of the young Black professor Arday. Here, the focus is primarily on universities’ diversity policies. The Ghent-based postdoc had already set the tone when he called for a revolution against “the DEI devil” and said he would combat the “tyranny of wokeness”. According to him, diversity policy is said to have contributed to Arday’s appointment, resulting in a lack of critical scrutiny of his work and career. The desire to appoint a young Black professor is said to have stood in the way of critical assessment. In doing so, universities are said to be betraying the meritocratic nature of academia, in which only talent and merit should determine a person’s opportunities.
Blindness
It would certainly be a bad thing if, in Arday’s appointment, signs had indeed been ignored that would have prompted further investigation in the case of other candidates. Diversity policy can never and must never mean that scientific integrity or academic performance are assessed less critically. If an appointments committee has allowed itself to be blinded by enthusiasm for a candidate’s background or representative significance, it must also be possible to investigate this.
However, it does not follow from this that diversity policy as such is at odds with academic quality. That conclusion presupposes that we know exactly what academic “merit” is and that our existing procedures measure it objectively. Academic grades, publications, citations and research funding secured are relevant indicators, but none of them constitutes a neutral and comprehensive measure of academic talent, as they all prove susceptible to manipulation, strategic networking and other factors. The Matthew effect – whereby those who are already successful find it easier to gain new opportunities, resources and recognition – also makes it clear that merit and acquired position cannot simply be equated.
Benchmark
A truly meritocratic university therefore requires more than simply applying the same benchmark to everyone in a formal sense. It also requires attention to the circumstances under which people are able to deliver the performance that is subsequently measured against that benchmark. The position of women in academia offers an instructive example of this. Decades of diversity policies, grants and initiatives have led to the situation where around thirty per cent of professors in the Netherlands are now women. That modest proportion also illustrates how slowly such changes take place. An academic career is preceded by a long educational journey in which expectations, stereotyping, advice, access to networks and role models all help to determine opportunities. This also applies within academia itself, meaning that a long accumulation of advantages or disadvantages influences a person’s prospects.
Measures to counteract such mechanisms are therefore not necessarily an infringement of meritocracy; on the contrary, they may be a prerequisite for realising it more effectively. These measures benefit both the academic world and society as a whole. After all, academia benefits not only from diversity of expertise, but also from diversity of social perspectives. These can influence the choice of research questions, research practice, and the interpretation and implementation of results. That is why it is important to draw the right lesson from this case.
A striking asymmetry
In the cases of Stapel, Wakefield and Schön, it became clear that they had been exposed as individuals and that specific peer review and assessment processes had failed. Nobody regarded their fraud as evidence of the poor academic qualities of white men as a group, or as an indication of misguided university staffing policy, or as a reason to stop peer reviews. In Arday’s case, however, such conclusions are being drawn: his failure and his appointment are being used as evidence that the group he represents does not belong at the university and that university diversity policies come at the expense of excellence. That is a striking asymmetry.
A scholar from an under-represented group apparently bears the burden of representation more readily: his achievements are not viewed solely as individual accomplishments, but are also said to say something about the group to which he is counted. Arday must be able to be assessed and judged without reservation on the basis of his own academic conduct. But his fraud, in itself, says nothing about the academic talent of Black academics or about the desirability of diversity policies.
The fact that a white professor who commits fraud primarily prompts a call to improve quality control, whilst a black professor who commits fraud is cited as evidence against diversity policies, shows that background apparently still matters in our assessments. In this respect, this affair actually reaffirms what all manner of commentators are trying to deny: it is still necessary to continue working towards diversity, equality and inclusion at the university, and to combat racism.
Machiel Keestra is Central Diversity Officer and assistant professor of philosophy at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies at the UvA.
