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Journalist under investigation for trying to expose Cambridge plagiarist | EXCLUSIVE
Aug 7, 2026
The professor at the centre of a high-profile plagiarism row has resigned from his post at the University of Cambridge following extensive backlash.
Jason Arday, a professor of sociology of education at the prestigious university, was placed under formal investigation on Wednesday following allegations he plagiarised his PhD thesis and other research.
In a letter to colleagues, published on the Good Law Project website on Wednesday evening, Professor Arday said the decision had been taken for the wellbeing of himself and his family.
Jack Grove, a reporter at The Times Higher Education was investigated by the Met police for his involvement in the story. Shelagh Fogarty is looking for answers.
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0:00
Many of you might not have heard of Professor Jason Arday
0:04
his young black professor in Cambridge University, the first, sorry, the youngest black professor, I should say
0:10
at the university in the university's history, saying it was something he could scarcely have imagined as a child
0:15
He has since been accused of misrepresenting his achievements, not necessarily his abilities, but his achievements
0:24
and plagiarism as well in some of the work that he has put out
0:28
Well, last week, Zach Polanski joined five Labour MPs in signing an open letter in support of Professor Arday
0:35
The letter said coverage of the academics claims amounted to a smear campaign and attacked persistent attempts to discredit a man they describe as an exceptional figure
0:48
Yesterday, here on LBC, the leader of the Green Party reacted to Jason Arday, the Cambridge professor accused of plagiarism and embellishment, resigning
0:55
as he's outlined in that statement after the university announced he is indeed to face new
1:01
investigations into the truth or not of his qualifications and career do you still stand by
1:07
him well i don't know jason and the reason why i signed that letter is ultimately it was saying
1:12
that we should have a fair process that the university should have a fair investigation
1:16
and that this shouldn't be judged by social media or by the telegraph newspaper or indeed people who
1:21
have been accused of racism in the past who are pointing accusations at Jason. I support what
1:26
Cambridge are doing. I think where there are questions to be asked, and of course, people should be investigated. And I've just heard that while we've been on the air, Jason Arday has
1:34
resigned from the University of Cambridge with immediate effect. So what's your reaction to that
1:41
I think the whole affair sounds pretty sad. Again, I think it would be good actually if
1:46
the investigation still was carried out, because I think it would be good to know the truth
1:49
but ultimately I think these things should be about fair process and transparency rather than
1:53
trial by media. Well it emerged just a few days ago that the Metropolitan Police carried out an
2:00
investigation into a journalist who was looking into questions about the Cambridge professor
2:07
accused of plagiarism and now being investigated by the university itself. Nick Ferrari today on
2:14
LBC asked the Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley whether that four-month investigation
2:18
into the journalist Jack Grove was necessary or appropriate. A four-month investigation. Why was that necessary, Commissioner
2:26
We dropped the ball on that one, Nick. Let's not sort of beat about the bush. A report came in, I think it was of harassment or some crime like that
2:35
It should have been screened out earlier on as not requiring investigation. When you say screened out, it should have been one phone call, no further action
2:41
Nothing requiring police action. It's sat on an officer's workload and he made a couple of phone calls
2:45
which in hindsight, we shouldn't have done that. so the big organisation will make the odd mistake
2:49
Apology to the reporter involved? Yeah, we shouldn't have made that call to him and said that
2:53
It wasn't quite an apology at the end there, but he made himself clear. Jack Grove joins me now
2:56
reporter at The Times Higher Education, and the journalist who the Met Police
3:01
launched that probe into, that four-month probe, during his journalistic investigation into Jason Arday
3:07
Jack, thanks for joining me today. Good afternoon to you. Good afternoon to you, darling
3:12
Am I right in saying you weren't aware of the investigation until officers called to tell you it had been dropped
3:19
Yeah, I was in the office in February, early February. I got a call and I returned it and it was a Met Police officer
3:27
and he explained to me that a complaint had been made against me
3:31
and I wasn't to contact Professor Arde again directly. Oh, do they have the right to tell you to do that
3:40
Well, I sort of explained that I was a journalist and did he realise that I was actually speaking
3:48
to a journalist because it seemed a very strange thing to ask me given that I felt this was
3:54
a story of significant interest. The only thing I've really asked Jason Arday about is his academic publications, his PhD
4:07
And also some of the things on his CV, which I found quite difficult to corroborate, let's
4:13
say, because some of the running feats were just absolutely staggering. And there was no evidence to suggest that they'd taken place
4:23
So I thought that was okay to ask him about those things And then obviously put it to him to Cambridge other of other institutions and then yeah then later on heard that I been investigated by the
4:40
police so it's interesting without knowing you were being investigated you were told
4:48
to drop it or to stay away from him I was told not to contact him directly which sort of suggested
4:54
that I'd been harassing him and sending him, you know, huge amounts of emails or calling him
5:01
But actually, I've never tried to call him. I've sent him maybe three or four emails directly
5:07
All my emails have been really with the Cambridge University press office
5:13
And so, you know, I was really struggling to work out why that would lead to a complaint
5:19
Well, you didn't quite get an apology from Sir Mark Rowley there with Nick
5:24
did you i wonder whether one will come who knows but but do you do you feel your owed one
5:28
do you need one i'm happy to i'm not i'm not really i'm not really bothered about pursuing that
5:35
i think you know the police have got better things to be doing than um you know investigating this
5:40
any further really i mean i'm happy with what mark rowley said there and i've got a lot of respect
5:46
for what police police do that's a difficult job and who knows what they were told in this case so
5:51
I'm just happy to leave it there and you know I just get on with my job. Well let's get back to
5:57
the the story that you were chasing. In his resignation letter some of which I read out
6:04
earlier he is basically saying the professor is basically saying I don't accept what people are
6:13
saying about me is true I'm resigning because of the pressure the unrelenting and extraordinary
6:18
pressure that I, because I have been the figure I am, the youngest black professor in university's
6:23
history, have been on the receiving end of. Do you continue to take issue with that or have
6:29
questions around the truth or otherwise of his CV? Well, when I started looking at this
6:37
I was looking at his academic records and things that were in the public domain. I mean
6:41
these were these were public speaking biographies they were you know his wikipedia page his uh public
6:50
talks that were on youtube so things like this they weren't sort of hidden documents i was
6:55
finding it was all out there in in the public domain so he was he was an unusually public
7:01
professor as well wasn't he because of the story of his life and he would talk about his life and
7:06
his achievements including his running and charity stuff in his academic talk so I felt that was
7:13
you know fair enough to ask him about that and uh yeah I was surprised when I was told that
7:21
that it wasn't a legitimate line of questioning um by Cambridge and then also I was uh you know
7:31
then to get a call from the police was very odd. And have you ever received an answer from him
7:37
or from Cambridge University about the quality of the provenance of his publications
7:47
his PhD, the truth or otherwise of aspects of his CV? Have he or they ever responded to it, to you
7:55
Well, this sort of brings in another element of the story in that we had assembled quite a big dossier of evidence
8:03
in terms of the plagiarism in the PhD. This wasn't a small amount of plagiarism
8:09
This was maybe almost 100 pages of line-by-line, meticulous comparison between the two PhDs
8:18
the one that was published six years before his. So there was a lot of evidence
8:24
I'd shown it to some academics just to make sure I'd got this absolutely right
8:28
and they said there's definitely something in this you should put it to cambridge put it to his
8:32
institution so they knew about that uh and then we were going to publish a story but then we got a
8:39
letter from his solicitors and we weren't able to go ahead because of various reasons we were
8:46
basically then trusted the institutions to do their job and look into it do you believe given
8:53
what both Zach Polanski said, that people of colour are being held to a higher set of standards and this is another example of that according to Zak Bolanski on LBC Are you absolutely copper certain in yourself that if the professor had been a white professor
9:12
you would have investigated in the same way? I'm not accusing you of racism, I'm just asking you
9:18
And if you had investigated a white professor in the same way
9:22
do you think the police would have become involved, I wonder? well i write stories about research integrity almost every day uh and this is not unusual for
9:33
what i do in my job i basically look at interesting stories around research and academia and
9:39
i get lots of tip-offs from people and i i'm i'm always keen to look at them and see if they're
9:44
they're worth investigating so yeah i look at them sometimes they're interesting and sometimes we
9:51
We cover quite a lot of them anyway, so I felt like I should look into this
9:56
because I had had Dave Harris, who's a professor, had contacted me two years before last summer and said
10:03
have a look at this. So there were several people who were raising concerns about this
10:09
and I thought I should look a little bit further into it, and then I was really astonished by some of the things I found
10:16
What do you say you have found? Well, I've found widespread copying of another PhD thesis. And I think this goes a lot
10:31
it goes beyond just sort of a couple of lines here and there. It's sort of almost a wholesale
10:38
lifting of someone else's PhD in some cases, you know, pages of verbatim text taken from another
10:44
person's PhD and then not really acknowledged in the way that it should be acknowledged
10:52
So I felt like that was important to raise. It's very unusual for this to happen
10:58
I mean, people aren't really checking, but it is unusual. In your view, is it on a bigger scale than you've typically seen when you've looked at
11:04
academic rigor? It was off the scale. It was completely far beyond anything I've seen
11:15
And, you know, people do get accused of plagiarism, but normally there's some mitigation
11:21
But actually, this was very serious. And so I had a dilemma
11:26
Should I look further into it? And then I did look further, and I found all this stuff about his life
11:30
and his running achievements and the charity stuff. And so I felt I had to put them to Cambridge and to Professor Arday
11:39
And then we eventually had to sort of park the story for a while and hope that it would be investigated
11:52
Some people who think that the right thing is happening here and that he's resigning and his qualifications, his history is being examined
12:00
say that it is important for the integrity of academia, the integrity of publications and universities and reports and papers and the like
12:11
And I think in general terms, people would want that rigour to be applied to our academic institutions
12:17
Of course they would. He's not here to defend himself. But what we do have to go on is this page, page and a half long resignation letter
12:25
in which he says, I have tried to continue in the job because I believe deeply in values of higher education in rigorous scholarship
12:34
It's your contention, by the sounds of it, that he has absolutely broken the rules of rigorous scholarship
12:41
Well, I think the evidence is overwhelming in terms of his academic record
12:47
There's been some excellent reporting in The Telegraph and The Times on this internationally as well
12:55
it's been looked at and I don't think anyone's really disputing that it is plagiarism I think
13:00
Professor Arday has even sort of admitted it himself but and but said there's mitigations
13:05
what uh it was decided there was mitigations he should keep his PhD so yeah it's not up to me to
13:11
decide you know if he keeps his PhD or not but I think as a journalist I'm I should be allowed to
13:17
raise these things with his employer given that Cambridge is you know known for its academic
13:24
standards and it should be aware of these things so I felt like I was just doing my job in that sense and yeah I mean I will continue doing that And I ask questions of everyone Is one of your questions
13:41
and it's been raised by other people as well, whether or not Cambridge University
13:47
in its excitement at this young black professor and how impressive he seemed
13:53
and how user-friendly he was, he was a great communicator for all the, you know, for the communication difficulties in the
13:59
beginning of his life. Here he was, you know, guest editing the Today programme, you know
14:04
being a very public figure and a very engaging public figure, that they were too quick to believe
14:10
everything he told them simply because they wanted that representation in their university
14:17
Do you fear or think that that's part of this? Well, he is a very great, he is a great
14:23
communicator and he tells a great story that people have really bought into so obviously
14:31
that's an important thing for a professor to be able to do but you also need to have a really
14:36
rigorous academic um that we need you need really good research papers you need to be able to
14:46
lecture to look after phd students there's lots you have to do as a professor it's not just about
14:53
telling interesting stories not just a title yeah it's it's really important you're basically
14:58
entrusted with the future of academia and to bring on the next generation of academics so
15:05
people are no the academics i know are really meticulous in in everything that they say
15:11
and they they claim in their papers they have to be able to you have to be able to check them
15:19
And people have been starting to check the claims that he's making, and they're very difficult to verify, let's say, that
15:27
So you have to be held to account. You have to provide records for everything you say in academia
15:35
So I think there's definitely questions here to ask about how he came to occupy that position
15:44
but also when the concerns were raised it should have been investigated
15:50
Do you believe race is playing a part in any of this? Either his appointment and the enthusiasm
15:57
around his appointment and his role in Cambridge or the enthusiasm of investigating him? Do you
16:04
think, not necessarily just by you, but do you think race is playing a part in any of that? I
16:08
mean clearly your focus in your work as you've outlined clearly is the importance of academic
16:13
rigor but do you think the fact the position and the sort of almost societal position he held at
16:20
that university is at play here? I don't really want to get into that side of things I just say
16:28
that there's some really good black academics out there doing some really good work and even
16:35
Kehinde Andrade who's criticized people he's a very compelling speaker great writer and has been
16:42
a really important part of the academy for a while. And, you know, I don't dispute he should be a professor
16:51
but there's, you know, there's a lot of good black academics out there
16:56
who, you know, are doing great work. And, you know, I don't exactly see that this is the issue
17:04
There's, it's more that this was a very high-profile position and you needed, you know, scrutiny comes with that job
17:14
The underpinning of academic rigour is what's driving you, you seem to be saying. Yeah, exactly. That's my job
17:19
That's what I look at in terms of, I look at people's academic record and what they publish
17:25
and what they say in the public domain. So that's what I was looking at
17:30
It wasn't particularly anything else. Well, listen, thank you, Jack, very much for talking to us today
17:36
I was keen to speak to you today. Jack Grove, reporter at the Times Higher Education and the journalist who the Met Police launched a probe into during his investigation into Professor Jason Arde
17:46
something that Mark Rowley said today to Nick Ferrari was a mistake, shouldn't have happened, that the police, the Met, dropped the ball
17:55
What lessons are you taking from the story of Professor Arde, Professor Jason Arde
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