August 6, 2026

REMINDER: THE WORKING CLASS IN THIS COUNTRY HAVE NEVER GONE FOR LUXURY BELIEFS LIKE SOCIALISM.

Posted at 2:33 pm by Stephen Green

WHO HAD TO LOSE FOR JASON ARDAY TO WIN?

A few days ago, I had lunch with a friend. An exceptional scholar, and a genuinely nice man, he had once again failed to secure a permanent academic position, despite a stellar publication record and a strong résumé. Now, having spent years in the halfway house of the postdoctoral world—neither fish nor fowl—he is ready to throw in the towel. He plans to spend one last year on the academic job market and, if nothing concrete materializes, he will leave academia forever.

As I offered the usual platitudes that were offered to me when I was in his shoes—you’ll get something, it’s a numbers game, they would be crazy not to hire you—I could not help but think of another young scholar, who had won spectacularly, while my friend had lost.

Jason Arday is a professor of sociology of education at the University of Cambridge and, as Cambridge’s press office keeps reminding the world, the youngest black person ever to hold a full professorship at the university.

* * * * * * * *

Of the whole saga, one line that has struck me was Arday’s remark to The Times last week that “We’re talking about academia here. I didn’t murder somebody.” He added: “I think the cruelty that I’ve experienced, and the positioning of me as this kind of liar and fantasist, is totally unacceptable.”

No, Arday did not commit murder; on this we don’t have a good reason to doubt his word. But I could not help but to think of my friend who, having contributed earnestly to the total sum of human knowledge, was left out in the cold while Arday, who is at best a mediocre researcher and at worst a serial liar and fabulist, enjoyed the highest prizes our profession offers and an institution willing to stake its thousand-year-old reputation on defending him. At the time of writing, [August 4th, before Arday resigned – Ed] the university is still standing behind him, and his book, warts and all, will still hit shelves in the coming days.

Undoubtedly, along Jason Arday’s road to the top of world academia, there surely were more qualified candidates for the academic positions he won. Given the zero-sum nature of the job market, this certainly meant that somewhere out there, a deserving researcher’s career was cut short, because Arday got the job they deserved.

They might even have been a member of an ethnic minority group, though perhaps with a less “inspiring” backstory. Their grief was almost certainly private, but their loss was that of the entire academy. Arday is a villain, but so is everybody who enabled his ascent without a second thought.

Related: The Jason Arday farce is an embarrassment to black Britain. “The ultimate casualty of the Arday scandal isn’t one man’s career, nor the bruised egos of those who rushed to his defence. The tragic reality is that Jason Arday has potentially done far more damage to black Britons than any racist agitator ever could. External critics and bad-faith actors can only ever attack from the outside – their prejudices are expected, discounted and easily identified. But Arday’s unchallenged rise, if the allegations turn out to be true, has handed our harshest detractors the ultimate weapon. It provides a silver bullet to anyone looking to roll back equality legislation or widening-participation schemes, or to question every rightful appointment and call professionals like me ‘diversity hires’. No external opponent could ever inflict as much damage as this case potentially has.”

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

THEY BOTH SOUND LIKE HASAN PIKER:

Posted at 1:32 pm by Stephen Green

KURT SCHLICHTER: Win the War Already.

Will this work? If we have the courage and the commitment. The only way our enemies ever stop us is if we stop ourselves. So, let’s not stop. Look at Iraq: for years we allowed a stalemate until George W. Bush surged our forces and they broke the back of the resistance. The mullahs are not going to go easy. They’re religious fanatics convinced of ultimate victory. Let’s disabuse them of that notion the hard way.

Of course, people like me who support actively winning the war — instead of abandoning it or letting it fester like a suppurating wound — will get called “neocons” or “warmongers” by idiots. Oh no, mean names — we should totally give up lest they taunt us a second time. But this isn’t about personalities. It’s about our country. We need to win this. And the way to win this war is to win it. That means leveraging our military capability to the maximum and denying the enemy any respite or sanctuary to rebuild.

Faster, please.

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

THIS FEELS VERY WRONG: Anthropic Destroys Books. “Shades of Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End, where a tech company shreds books in the process of scanning them. If Anthropic took inspiration from that, they must have missed the part where the entire destruction process was unnecessary, as non-destructive methods were just as effective. Just as in the real world, there are a wide variety of non-destrictive overhead scanners. With an estimated post-IPO value of $500 billion to $1 trillion, I think Anthropic can afford to hire a few more people to run the scanners.”

Posted at 12:45 pm by Stephen Green

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Jason Arday Resigns From Cambridge.

Meanwhile, his autobiography is set to be released in six days. Will it get pulled? Heavily revised with a surprise ending? For the moment no one is saying one way or the other.

A representative of Simon & Schuster, which has so far stood by the book, told The New York Times on Wednesday that the publisher had no comment beyond the statement about Arday it released last week, citing “the professionalism and integrity he has brought to every stage of the publication.”

Simon & Schuster ought to be shredding these into pulp but will they? Stand by to find out.

John Podhoretz also believes Arday’s book will likely be pulped:

But who knows, perhaps it’s onward and upward for Arday?

On a more serious note, will Cambridge use the Arday fiasco to reflect on what happened? Nahh, probably not, but you never know:

UPDATE: According to the Grauniad, “Simon & Schuster still plans to publish book by Cambridge academic who resigned this week amid plagiarism claims:” Jason Arday claimed he was paid ‘1.4 million’ by publisher for memoir. “Arday did not specify whether the 1.4m figure was in pound sterling or US dollars. Simon & Schuster did not respond to a request to comment on the sum.”

MORE: “One senior publisher said it was an utterly mad number, but that ‘madness sometimes happens’, so it was conceivable. They said a book such as Arday’s would normally be expected to sell about 5,000 copies, so with £2 of royalty per copy, that equates to an advance of £10,000, not 1.4 million dollars or pounds.”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

BY THE NUMBERS:

And according to Grok, golf courses use roughly 30–31 times more water than all U.S. data centers combined.

Posted at 12:29 pm by Stephen Green

SENATE PANEL VOTES TO HOLD FAUCI IN CONTEMPT:

But the resolution might not even get a chance to pass the full Senate. The measure would be subject to the chamber’s 60-vote threshold to break a filibuster, and it is unlikely that it would receive the consent of enough Democrats to move toward final passage.

Rather than send it to the floor after the committee vote, Paul has said he plans to send it directly to the DOJ.

“There’s not a lot of precedent for a lot of this, but it isn’t a law, so there isn’t any exact procedure that it has to follow,” he told reporters earlier this week. Paul added that the committee would also include a legal brief on “whether or not the Fifth Amendment applies when you have a pardon.”

President Joe Biden a day before he left office issued Fauci a preemptive pardon covering any crimes he might have committed from January 1, 2014, to January 19, 2025.

That is one reason why Paul’s previous pleas for the DOJ to prosecute Fauci have failed to elicit a case. The senator has referred Fauci to the department under both the Biden and Trump administrations, but neither one moved to bring charges.

Republicans have long called for prosecutions against the former health official. Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas said the federal government should appoint a special counsel to investigate him.

“What Fauci did would make Watergate look like some type of a Tiddlywinks game, with his cover-up, as well,” he told National Review. “That’s what really needs to be done. They need to get this out of Washington, D.C., and get the politics out of it. Americans deserve the truth.”

Speaking of getting out of DC: It’s Not Over: Now Another State Is Coming for Fauci After His Disastrous Senate 5th Amendment Fest. “Florida and Alabama are investigating him on the state level, and now Louisiana is jumping aboard too.”

UPDATE:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

HE’S DEAD, JIM: Iran president met supreme leader in darkness — and isn’t convinced it was him. “Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was whisked to a secret location in Tehran, shoved into the back seat of a dark car with blacked-out windows and told he was sitting next to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei — except he never actually saw the man, according to a bombshell report from Iran International.”

Posted at 11:43 am by Stephen Green

YES:

Posted at 11:27 am by Stephen Green