Exchange on Jason Arday

26 August 2026

Dear Workers Hammer,

The premise of the political arguments in WH’s August 18 supplement is that Jason Arday’s academic career “was built on lies”. This means that his BA and MA degrees from St Marys University were not honestly earned. Likewise for his PhD from Liverpool John Moores University, and his professorships at Ohio State University, University of Glasgow, Durham University, University of Roehampton and Cambridge University. Jason Arday came to symbolise liberal identity politics and DEI initiatives in elite education. But that does not mean that his impressive academic achievements were not fairly earned.

The WH supplement reports “that Arday has been accused of widespread plagiarism in his PhD” [2015]. Earlier this year, Liverpool John Moores University investigated the accusation. On August 20, Middle East Eye (MEE—which ICL press has quoted in the past) reported on their conclusion (see “Jason Arday’s marathon challenge and other claims found to be true after his death”. Note: other publications have also cited the University’s findings below.)

What WH characterized as “well established fact[s]” are nuanced (see above), inconclusive and in dispute. Just as importantly, the evidence resulted from a racist frenzy seeking to disprove Arday’s extraordinary claims, in order to discredit his standing in academia, and in the case of right-wing media, the entire DEl agenda. WH repeated the media distortion that 9 of Arday’s 30 marathons were run on a “broken leg”. Actually, Arday claimed he ran the marathons with a “hairline fracture”, not a broken leg. None of the media witchhunters (right-wing and liberal) sought or provided evidence that Arday did not run the marathons. Far-fetched? Indeed! But Middle East Eye looked for evidence that he did in fact run the 30 marathons, and easily found many pieces of evidence to corroborate Arday’s claim, including multiple contemporaneous published articles, photographs and testimonies (see enclosed). Likewise for several other disputed claims, and the deliberate misinterpretations of Arday’s words.

In 1998, Bill Clinton said that he did not have sex with Monica Lewinsky. At the time, WV wrote that his statement should not be considered a lie, since the question should never have been asked. In 1995, a jury acquitted OJ Simpson of murdering ex-wife Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. Why? The evidence against him was tainted by the prosecution’s blatant frame-up—centered on the falsifications of racist LAPD detective Mark Furman. Jason Arday’s Cambridge appointment triggered a racist frenzy to find evidence that would assassinate his character, tarnish his achievements, and sabotage his career—he became a sacrificial lamb of the anti-DEI campaign. It should never have happened. But it did happen, the “facts of the story” are not well established, and all such evidence is tainted.

Mark Toronto

30 September

Dear Mark,

Thank you for your letter. Before answering your factual arguments on the Arday case, it is worth stepping back and looking at its broader significance. The hounding of Jason Arday symbolised the crisis of liberal anti-racism. He himself embodied these politics and all its contradictions. When allegations of plagiarism surfaced, and when further scrutiny of Arday’s life story revealed several lies and exaggerations, the right-wing found the perfect stick to beat all “woke” initiatives with—and to strike fear among all black academics.

The reason we titled our article “Anti-racists must draw the right lessons” is because, following Arday’s tragic death, many anti-racists drew the conclusion that to question Arday’s claims was inherently a capitulation to racism. More broadly, the lesson that is being drawn is that in the face of a right-wing assault on DEI and liberal anti-racism, the left must close its eyes to the glaring problems with the whole edifice of “wokeness” and defend it unconditionally. This is the disastrous course we criticised—and which you do not touch on in your letter.

What your letter—and most of the left—fails to understand is that Arday’s elevation to the highest levels of academia was not merely because of his PhD, but also because of his life story and identity. The Cambridge dons were only too eager to tell the story of this black, disabled and working-class man, fighting against incredible odds to become Cambridge’s youngest-ever black professor. They saw in his appointment the ultimate proof of their own “goodness.”

Now, the right-wing is on an offensive to crush all the concessions accorded to minorities in recent decades. They are using the real fraud and contradictions of this ideology to target all black people in what is indeed a racist frenzy. The question is: how will anti-racists react? What is needed is to draw serious lessons, oppose the racist frenzy while at the same time denouncing the strategy centred on empty tokenism, which did nothing for the majority of black and brown people.

If we insist on going against the stream on the question of Arday, it is not to be provocative, but because it is impossible to defeat the right-wing assault while clinging to the sacred cows of liberal identity politics. The point is that we need a different class-struggle strategy to advance the fight against racial oppression.

At the heart of liberal anti-racism is the illusion that minorities can free themselves by climbing to the top echelons of capitalist institutions—as opposed to collective struggle. A whole economy was built around “white guilt”, where “anti-racist” credentials can be bought. And, in turn, some minorities took advantage of this through exaggeration and lies. Shortly before his resignation, Arday claimed he was paid £1.4 million by Simon & Schuster for the rights to his memoir. There is a pressure to deliver—and a financial incentive too.

But since Arday’s death, the dominant current among anti-racists is to treat Arday’s hounding as nothing but a racist frame-up. We are told to close our eyes to the obvious problems with liberal anti-racism. The beginning of a left-wing critique of identity politics has been shut down, with left-wing journalists like those at Novara Media forced to do Maoist-style self-criticism for the “crime” of having covered Arday’s story. I fear your letter is bending in the same direction by engaging in a hopeless attempt to debunk the right-wing narrative on a “factual” basis.

Let’s start with the plagiarism accusations. Liverpool John Moores University’s investigation hardly shows that no plagiarism took place. It concluded that the multiple passages in Arday’s thesis lifted from another work (sometimes with the same copy-editing mistakes) were the result of an “honest and reasonable error”. Many other academics pointed to problems in other parts of Arday’s work, and many refused to defend Arday during the witch hunt because they knew exactly what was going on.

As for the Middle East Eye article you reference, it does not prove that Arday ran 30 marathons in 35 days. It cites news clippings from the time repeating Arday’s claim, and a few testimonies of people who saw him run. The piece also does not prove the mountain of other claims Arday made about his life story. What about the claim he played as an under-18 for Crystal Palace? That he travelled to Africa and South America for WaterAid—a claim the charity denies? What about his claim to have had testicular cancer? Or to have spent months in a coma after a near-death car accident? There are many more. Do you really think that it is by defending these various claims that we can best advance the anti-racist struggle?

As for the comparisons you raise, they have little to do with the Arday case. Bill Clinton’s “morality” was questioned over his private sexual life—an issue which should not have been subject to public debate. In contrast, Arday’s life story and identity were central to his appointment as a professor and public profile. The case also has little to do with OJ Simpson, where the Los Angeles police fabricated evidence in a racist frame-up. The campaign against Arday was certainly initiated by racists, but it wasn’t a frame-up.

You raised these two examples to argue that the facts of the Arday case are tainted and should essentially be disregarded. This approach is no better than defending the truthfulness of Arday’s claims. Closing our eyes to abuses and excesses in the anti-racist movement will not help the movement draw any critical lessons and will only help paint it as unserious and deluded.

We hope this reply has been clarifying.

Comradely, Vincent David, Workers Hammer editor