Angry but important - @HJoyceGender with wider thoughts higher education in the UK today following the Jason Arday affair. She and others were shocked to see some of what passes for scholarship today. (Also makes a reference to @CharlotteCGill ) ‘Arday’s plagiarism, and the poor quality of his individual work, are the least of what is so enraging about this story. The bigger problem is that he was part of a broader endeavour that made both him and others more stupid and useless. In a functioning market — one without government subsidies for useless qualifications and where the customers and end consumers’ interests were aligned — fields like the one Arday worked in would attract few or no students — perhaps the occasional eccentric with private means. Academia is supposed to be self-regulating, but the Arday affair shows that it really cannot be trusted. In a mawkish and condescending op-ed published in the Telegraph on August 19th, five days after Arday’s death, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge, Chris Smith, wrote: “Our former Senior Tutor at Pembroke College in Cambridge used to say in his speech to the incoming first-year students, on their first day: “You’re not here to learn to be clever; you’re here to learn to be kind.” We should all perhaps reflect on that message, in the aftermath of the tragedy of Jason Arday.” Honestly, what does he think Cambridge is — a pre-school? What does he think universities are for? Kindness is taught by example, and largely before children turn 18. And no institution can have more than one purpose. If they try to add another, they will inevitably lose sight of the original one and end up with none. For universities, that purpose is supposed to be the pursuit of knowledge, not “kindness”. Pursuing knowledge will sometimes be unkind. When academics who commit plagiarism and departments who appoint incompetents for base reasons such as politics are revealed in public and shamed, it will feel “unkind”. And more generally, free inquiry will sometimes turn up inconvenient, unwanted and actively hurtful truths. A university that thinks kindness is more important than those truths is not worthy of the name.’ open.substack.com/pub/helenj…