Several people have realized that many of Jason Arday‘s extraordinary claims about his life could actually be tested empirically. These include his assertions that he was so autistic that he did not speak until he was eleven, could not read or write until he was eighteen, running 600 miles in six days, completing 30 marathons in 35 days (the last ten with a cracked fibula), his 5-million-pound donations to charity, and his academic jobs. (Some of the latter, like his claims of holding visiting professorships at the University of Glasgow, Ohio State University, and Nelson Mandela University, have already been discredited.)
But the claims of not speaking until he was eleven and being illiterate until eighteen have always baffled me. Not only do they not seem credible (he started university at age 20), but surely, if they were true, there would be records. Does he not have parents who will attest to this? What about friends or associates? Why did not of these people weigh in supporting Arday when the press began investigating him? Because he’s made these claims repeatedly and they’ve been a crucial part of the attention he got, it’s incumbent on journalists to investigate their truth.
Well, the Guardian, which unexpectedly broke a lot of the Arday stuff in the MSM, has done so. The results are mixed: some remember him being quite vocal in primary school, while others buttress his own story. Click below to read the story. Arday’s own biography, Great and Unfortunate Things, wass published in the U.S. Tuesday and is coming out in the UK on August 27.
I’ve indented some excerpts.
The story of Jason Arday’s extraordinary rise to becoming the youngest black professor in the history of the University of Cambridge is all the more remarkable for one claim: that he did not learn to speak until just shy of his 12th birthday.
This claim was mentioned in a letter announcing his resignation last week, which came amid mounting questions about his academic work and statements he had made about his past.
Arday wrote that becoming a professor at Cambridge was something he “could scarcely have imagined” as an autistic child who was “unable to speak until I was 11 years old”.
His memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things, was published by Simon & Schuster in the US on Tuesday and is due to be published in the UK on 27 August. It tells the story of how he joined Cambridge aged 37 despite having been non-verbal throughout his childhood and only learning to read and write aged 18.
But interviews with former schoolmates have produced conflicting accounts of his childhood. Two remember him speaking at primary school, describing a chatty child who loved making jokes, while two others say they did not hear him speak until he reached secondary school.
Jonathan Stewart, 40, told the Guardian he remembered Arday from when they were children growing up in south London. He described him as a good mimic who entertained other pupils by putting on accents and singing songs.
Stewart, a YouTuber who says he was in the year below Arday at Heathbrook primary school in Nine Elms, south-west London, said the academic was known as the class clown. “He was always cracking jokes. He was the comedian guy, he would even put on voices,” claimed Stewart, who said he regularly attended church with Arday.
. . .Another man, 40, who was also in the year below Arday at Heathbrook and asked not to be named, said: “I don’t remember too much about him but I certainly recollect him being able to speak.” Both this man and Stewart said they were in touch with people who had been in Arday’s class.
Arday writes in his memoir that as he approached the age of 12 the local council was on the verge of pulling his speech therapy support because he had made so little progress.
“But miraculously, just a few days shy of my 12th birthday, I spoke. It was at the start of one of my sessions, and Katrina [his speech therapist] had just said: ‘Hello, Jason.’ At that moment, I was fiddling with my hearing aid, which was bothering me, and then I took it out of my ear and said hello back to her.”
But here’s some support:
Arday denied the accounts provided by Stewart and the second man and organised for the Guardian to be sent statements by two school friends, Nick Clark and Mike Freeman, who said the account in his memoir accurately reflected the boy they remembered at school.
Clark said: “As a boy, I remember Jason not speaking and being regularly removed from class for additional support throughout his time at Heathbrook. I was not in his secondary school, but we joined the same football team at 13, when we became great friends, playing football together ever since.”
Clark’s mother, Caroline Russell-Clark, also sent a statement saying she helped out at Heathbrook for a couple of years when Arday was very young.
. . .Russell-Clark said Arday remained in the same class as her son throughout primary school. “I do not remember him speaking until he was playing in the same football team as my son aged 14/15.”
Freeman said: “I remember him not speaking during our time at Heathbrook primary school. He was regularly taken out of class for his educational needs. His severe special needs didn’t stop him playing football and games with me and others as he was still friendly and could communicate through play and actions.”
. . .Arday claimed to have completed 30 marathons in 35 days, run 600 miles in six days and raised £5m for charity over several years. After facing questions, he revised some of those claims and instead said he was part of a fundraising group that he was unable to name for legal reasons.
He also told the Guardian he had been the target of threats after his Cambridge appointment, including having a severed pig’s head delivered to his parents’ home. Subsequent investigations found no evidence to support this claim.
Simon & Schuster, which bought Arday’s memoir for a seven-figure sum, according to the academic, is pressing on with its publication and launch in the UK. The publisher did not respond to requests for comment.
So there you have it. The claims about marathons, running, and raising millions of pounds for charity were never credible and now he’s “revising” them. The proven claims about plagiarism Arday has fobbed off on a tendency to engage in “mimicry” because of his autism.
As I mentioned before, nearly all publishers, including mine, require when you publish a book, you’ve also signed a statement saying that what you assert in your text is, to the best of your knowledge, true. And surely Simon & Schuster would have done that, too. Presumably, even though many of Arday’s claims are questionable, Simon & Schuster could put that off on Arday and not their own fact-checking, which is usually minimal for most publishers. (Libel is an exception, and often mandates that a manuscript be given a “legal read.”)
What can we make of this? The plagiarism, which is extensive, is on its face unethical, and Arday’s excuses are not excusable. The marathon and charity claims are already being walked back, and the claims about recurring brain tumors, mini-strokes, and other physical ailments stretch credibility. As far as the autism and late speaking/literacy claims, well, they bear more investigation, but they’re certainly questionable. All this points to the man as a fabulist who may actually believe all the stories he told. If he doesn’t, he’s a grifter.
At least the Guardian had the moxie to investigate Arday’s claims, though there’s lots of room for more investigation—if anybody’s interested. (Apparently Simon & Schuster is not.) What is truly lame is the New York Times’ new article, “Takeaways from Jason Arday’s memoir” by Neil Vigdor (article archived here). No conclusions are reached, all judgment is suspended. The “takeaways” are simply the claims Arday makes in his book—claims we already know about. The article is superfluous and bespeaks a lack critical acumen in even noting that Arday’s claims could be investigated.
Just from an “evidence” perspective, both at the time and now the whole thing has (rightly) blown up.. pretty much ALL of his wild claims are verifiable, provable and/or deniable.
He’d be a fun bug to squash if one were a prosecutor b/c like most criminals, he never thinks of the evidence that could pile up against him.
D.A.
NYC
I agree on both primary points (reserving on the “b/c”), and I’d add “investigator” to “prosecutor.” Except, of course, who really cares enough to invest the effort?
What seems extra reprehensible is Simon & Schuster’s decision not to pull the publication. Presumably, the book is even more valuable now that Arday’s name is in every media and they figure some people will read it just for the sensational value. If so, they should publish it as a work of fiction, not memoir. And haven’t we been here before with the fraudulent memoirs? This is ultimately what comes of the idea that everyone has “their own truth” instead of there being something we can identify as true.
Since memoirs are often unreliable and the reader approaches a first person account knowing that it may be biased, I can understand why Simon & Schuster are going ahead with publication. It’s not an academic work; it’s meant to reveal the thoughts and character of the author as they recount what they remember. Fibbing and fabulation reveals quite a lot.
What makes this particular unreliable narrator more frustrating than the farm-bred actress who recounts how she “grew up in the theater — greasepaint flows in my veins” is that Arday’s an academic. They should have higher standards. His story is also being used to set policy and buttress an ideology. Thus, he’s open to being exposed and criticized.
The bad memoir turns out to be valuable. May they all set their lies down in print for a bit of gold.
I am autistic and one of my areas of study is mental disorders (ADHD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, etc.). As many people with autism will attest, his passing off his plagiarism and other ethical misdeeds on autism is an insult to the autistic. The high-functioning autistic (e.g. those with BA, and is in a Ph.D. program) are perfectly capable of not plagiarizing and understanding what is plagiarism, and the “Autism made me plagiarize” argument also doesn’t even make any sense.
Further, as others have noted, in his interviews, he shows no signs of autism, much less a profound autism that caused him to be mute until 11.
This guy is such a nut that he’s unwittingly created an entire industry around his fabulism. It’s almost like your Spot the (Fill-in-the-blank) feature. With Arday, it’s “Spot the Crazy Claim.”
The nyt article is a simple waste of bits & bytes; looks like the writer had an hour before lunch to skim the book and put together a few column inches for his editor.
While Arday is clearly (i have 98-100% confidence in this) a fabulist of the same cut as disgraced former U.S. Congressman George Santos, I would be interested in learning whether his claimed early autism is true or just his origin fable. Right now, a less than serious asking of questions to a few people who may or may not have known him and may or may not be being truthful is a 2-2 tie of he said/she said. Surely some publication has the interest and people with proper skills to seriously investigate those early years. If he were a severely impacted special needs student as he claims, it would be a heck of a story. If not, double-shame on him for trying to profit on the backs of those kids who are really on the autism spectrum.
Comment by Greg Mayer
Vigdor’s piece in the Times is not a review of the book. A review (or perhaps two– the Times sometimes commissions separate reviews for during the week and the Sunday Book Review) will come later. Vigdor is simply listing the main claims made by Arday in the book. This is actually useful, as it saves Times readers from having to read the book, and marks what’s in the book (as opposed to the drafts that have been obtained by some journalists), thus allowing his evolving claims to be compared. Most readers are not paying rapt attention to the Arday follies, and Vigdor’s piece is for them.
GCM
Sorry, Greg, but there are at least three previous stories about Arday that, in toto, give all the information in this piece. If they’re going to review the book, they can both repeat the claims and then evaluate them. What the author does here adds nothing I can see to what the NYT already published!
Here’s one piece: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/books/jason-arday-cambridge-plagiarism.html
Here’s another: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/books/review/cambridge-jason-arday-resignation-investigation.html
If Jason Arday and George Santos form a band, they could call it The Fabulists.
Does anyone have any of his homework assignments from when he was in school? That should settle it.
I must admit I have a different take on Arday.
I suspect he has some kind of disorder or mental disability. I don’t have a good label. So I suspect he is as much a victim of all this* as is anyone else. What for me is interesting is how certain aspects of the Cambridge establishment were duped by all this. And how slowly they seem to be coming to terms with what happened. On the other side we have people piling on Arday, when closer scrutiny might be placed on the factors that led up to Arday’s placement.
*this …. this is the unfolding universe. I am surprised that those of us who don’t believe in free will seem to have so little sympathy for the characters acting out this particular mess.
I don’t agree that he’s any kind of victim. Arday was not a passive character in his own life a la Chauncey Gardner. He actively pursued an academic career and used his fabulist claims plus autoethnography to boost himself over the heads of real scholars. Every research dollar Arday was awarded (there were many millions), every scholarship, and every faculty job could have gone to someone else.
Part of the problems is that it’s not safe to assume that the people awarding the research dollars, the scholarships and jobs could themselves (then or now) distinguish genuine scholarly work from Arday’s fables. Having worked for 25years among people who cannot make such distinctions, I see Arday as at least a LITTLE bit the ‘victim’. People like him don’t actually have to do much to be picked up and ‘mentored’ by corrupt colleagues who promote them in order to decolonise the academy and to tick boxes next to their own KPIs. The Ardays quickly get swept into an ideological vortex and promoted for the wrong reasons. It happened at Cambridge, it happened at my university, it happened at Bates College, it happened at the NZ Royal Society, with ‘research’ grants and publicity and even with the election to FRSNZ status.
I’m sorry Mike … my point was not clear. In either a deterministic or indeterministic universe, we are all ‘victims’. Victim may not be the best label, but I don’t think you got my drift, despite your later retraction.
Unfortunately I have to withdraw my comment. Arday was found dead earlier today, and his apparent suicide would certainly make him a victim of this terrible mess. I’m so sorry for his family and friends.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1j1ye6n30no
He was indeed a victim. Nevertheless, everything you write in your earlier comment is still true.
From Wikipedia:
In the UK it is almost certain that the National Health Service would have been involved in managing any of Jason Arday’s health problems. People can now access their own NHS health records on line, so he could, if he were so inclined, produce third party evidence of his (alleged) health problems.
Arday’s PhD needs to be revoked.
His dissertation appears provably plagiarized
I would also take a look into Arday’s Master and Bachelor. He lied time and time again and passed off other people’s work as his own. I would be surprised if his doctoral dissertation were his first attempt at cheating.
20 years ago, the affair of Ward Churchill at U. Colorado brought attention to the pretendIndian scam, in which then-Prof. Churchill was a pioneer. Perhaps the Arday affair will bring some attention to bogus aspects of something called “Sociology of Education”, apparent focus of Hilary Cremin, Arday’s most gushing partisan. How is it that Prof. Cremin’s specialty of “Peace Education” has equivalency with such secondary, old-fashioned educational concerns as literacy and numeracy?
I’ve been chivvying along our new students to do their online “referencing and plagiarism” module this week and it’s been impossible to avoid making a joke about Cambridge every time.
It’s now all academic as Arday has been found dead. Despite all this is very sad, albeit predictable.
Arday may be dead, but this is beside the point. His memory lives on in the farrago of shambolic institutional platitudes bestowed on his ‘protected characteristics’.
John McWhorter’s article in City Journal seems the most insightful comment. I draw readers’ attention in McWhorter’s comment that what if the Non-White person had been of Arday’s ‘protected characteristics’ in all but one — ethnicity? If the scoundrel had been ethnic South Asian, or Indian-Chinese-Denisovan such as myself, or Patagonian, the hypothesis is that this affair would not have reached so far up the class-conscious ladder of British institutional prestige. McWhorter labels this the ‘Magic Negro’ nexus.
Ramesh
2% articulate Denisovan, 49% Indian, 49% Chinese.
The key word in the comment by Ramesh is “hypothesis”, one that still needs to be tested by more than reference to the unfortunate general history of bigotry in academia. Though it would not surprise me that racism was involved here, each case needs independent, objective testing (if that is possible). Arday was guilty or he wasn’t. Let’s wait and see.
Is it not implausible (impossible?) for someone who cannot read, write, or speak to complete elementary school in the UK? And once he could speak at 11, complete high school still not knowing how to read or write until 18? I know compassionate promotion occurs, but surely not to this extent?
The schools he attended would have extensive records, intersecting with NHS records, of his special needs assessments and provision, such as speech therapy. His speech therapist and teachers could also confirm or deny his story. I suspect that, even though he’s now sadly taken his own life, confidentiality concerns will stop this information from becoming public, at least in the short term.
After his death I also heard him described, for the first time, as a “husband and father”. Is that true?