The Jason Arday scandal might seem extraordinary to many. It is less surprising for those of us in academia who have witnessed how structures have been put in place to ensure that DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) poster boys like Arday can flourish.

Women’s and Gender Studies’ lectures comprise often little more than a flagrant attack on conservative values

I have been speaking out about such developments since at least 2017 when I was turned down for an academic post at the University of Durham. A former don at Cambridge and Oxford, I had three monographs and about 17 articles in leading academic journals, and yet the post was given to a girl with just one article publication. After the process concluded, I was told: “You were by far and away the best candidate, but we couldn’t employ you because you are not diverse.” There are, of course, many such stories. This is what universities call ‘social justice’: the bureaucratised pre-occupation of failed academics.

One of the problems is that DEI is integrated structurally into the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) which assesses universities in Britain. And so, there is no incentive to employ a white male academic. He will simply be a blemish in their league table calculations. Britain’s universities are no longer focused on recruiting the best; they have DEI boxes to tick. Unfortunately, as we have seen with George Abaraonye in Oxford and now Jason Arday in Cambridge, things don’t always go to plan when candidates are assessed on the basis of ‘diversity’ alone and not academic excellence. The problem, however, goes well beyond these individual cases – shocking as they are. The rot is, in fact, systemic: non-subjects which now fill Britain’s universities risk alluring fake candidates and producing dubious research because they are not grounded in any intellectual tradition. They are ideological bait for activists who are ill-disposed to tradition and scholarship.

Our universities (Oxford and Cambridge included) offer too many courses in non-subjects that are ideological to the core. Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, Post-Colonial Studies – the list goes on and on. Basically, anything that ends in -Studies is a subject that has no concern for the truth and that employs people who are antithetical to intellectual rigour. Academics working in these fabricated subjects have ideological axes to grind with their ‘research’ on ‘whiteness’, intersectionality and other such made-up flapdoodle. Women’s and Gender Studies’ lectures comprise often little more than a flagrant attack on conservative values. No university worth its salt should be entertaining such ideologues who use terms such as ‘diversity’, ‘inclusion’, ‘minority’, ‘race’ and ‘gender’ as tools of political compliance.

Concomitant with the emergence of these non-subjects, the political bias in Humanities and Social Sciences has for a long time threatened the integrity of research. My own subject – Social Anthropology – has sadly become too often little more than ideological gibberish dressed up in meta-drivel that constantly tries to eke out some source of oppression or other. Anthropology needs to be ‘restored’, not ‘decolonised’. The subject grew out of colonialism. If you decolonise it, all that is left is hot-air. Its practitioners are almost without exception on the Far Left and their main objective seems to be to feed into the woke groupthink. I have never understood why academics are attracted to such ideological echo-chambers; I suppose it is some sort of security that they lack.

This intellectual degradation has been allowed to go on for so long because academics are overwhelmingly spineless cowards. Those that appointed Arday must have suspected that something didn’t add up, but were terrified of speaking up for fear of being called a ‘racist’. Even when the most outrageous Walter Mitty had been exposed, there was still silence. In time, the Arday scandal will prove to have been an extraordinary case of groupthink and will probably lead to some kind of MeToomovement in academia. It is ironic that universities which are meant to be theatres of open thinking and debate have ended up as hegemonic, close-minded factories of woke ideology.

Anthropology needs to be ‘restored’, not ‘decolonised’

If Britain’s universities are to salvage their tarnished reputations, there needs to be rapid systemic change. All the DEI criteria used for assessment and recruitment must be removed. Whole Faculties and departments offering degrees in ideological non-subjects need to close down. Only then will Britain’s universities be able to show that once again they are serious about scholarship, and not just dancing to the tunes of the cultural Marxists.

For too long, Britain’s universities have been run by an intellectual mob of Tartuffians who dress power up in the cuddly language of compassion. It is surely now time to push aside the post-modern nihilistic groupthink and make way for a new intellectual archaeology which offers students insights into the world from more diverse political and philosophical perspectives.

Universities must again devote themselves to the pursuit of truth and viewpoint diversity, and not wallow in group identity politics. For that to happen, and for them to restore their intellectual honesty, they need to dispense entirely with the DEI ideology and start employing scholars on the basis of academic excellence alone.