“Arday was treated not as a scholar but as a mascot, one who was particularly expedient for an institution that had been regularly embarrassed by its historic record on race: too few black students (in my cohort at Cambridge matriculating in 2015 there were only 15 black males out of 3,449 students); single-figure black academics (which is still the case); allegations of institutional racism. Independent of the merits or pitfalls of his own scholarship, what success looked like for Arday in this role was limited; what accountability could look like if misconduct occurred was constrained by him being a vehicle for Cambridge to signal its institutional progress.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/06/jason-arday-dei-race-issues-university-of-cambridge