Investigation challenges Jason Arday’s claims that he was nonverbal until age eleven

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.