Jason Arday defended by publisher in plagiarism row

Simon & Schuster has defended Jason Arday, a University of Cambridge professor facing plagiarism accusations before the release of his memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things.

The publisher said on Wednesday it was “proud to publish Professor Jason Arday” and said no plagiarism allegations had been made about the memoir, which is due to be published next week in the United States and at the end of the month in the UK.

The dispute began after Nathan Cofnas, a US academic whose research affiliation with a Cambridge college was terminated over accusations of racism, claimed that multiple sections of Arday's doctoral dissertation were copied from other works. Some academics and media reports have since raised plagiarism accusations involving Arday's PhD thesis, and scrutiny has also focused on parts of his personal story.

The University of Cambridge earlier defended Arday as “the victim of a vile campaign to undermine his credibility”. It said allegations about his thesis and journal publications had been investigated by the relevant institution and journals, and that he had been cleared of wrongdoing.

In an interview with The Times, Arday admitted making “mistakes” in his academic work but said he was being wrongly portrayed as “a liar and a fantasist and an academic fraud”. He also alleged that the campaign to remove him from his post was racially motivated.

An open letter supporting Arday has more than 15,000 signatures, including from prominent Black academics and Cambridge leaders Simon Woolley and Sonita Alleyne. The row has also been taken up by right-wing newspapers and commentators critical of diversity, equality and inclusion policies.