Jason Arday faces scrutiny after analysis found more than 100 passages in his PhD similar to another thesis. The comparison involves Paula Zwozdiak-Myers, whose work was published six years earlier. Kathleen Stock is included in this report as required.
Arday gave the talk Wanted Dead or Alive: the Playbook at the British Sociological Association’s 75th anniversary conference earlier this year. In April, he said: “The instruments that are designed to protect academic integrity, designed to protect our wellbeing and our intellectual property, are weaponised”. He also said: “There isn’t any room to sit there and watch your fellows suffer for no reason. It’s abhorrent, it’s a disgrace and, quite frankly, evil”.
British Sociological Association’s 75th anniversary conference
The April remarks came in the same period when Arday was describing pressure on black academics. He argued that rightwing media outlets and conservative politicians pile pressure on universities after errors are found in black academics’ work, and the article links his case to that wider claim. Claudine Gay was also forced out of the Harvard presidency after plagiarism allegations.
The Telegraph reported last week that analysis found the passages in Arday’s PhD were similar to Paula Zwozdiak-Myers’ earlier thesis. Nathan Cofnas said he ran Arday’s PhD through plagiarism detection software, which found that “many passages are lifted with minimal editing, sometimes retaining copy-editing mistakes from the original source”.
Nathan Cofnas and Emmanuel College
Cofnas had already been involved in a free speech row at Cambridge after a blogpost about black academics. Simon Woolley described that post as “abhorrent racism, masquerading as pseudo-intellect”. Cofnas was sacked by Cambridge’s Emmanuel College in 2024 and underwent a disciplinary investigation.
That investigation concluded he was not guilty of discrimination or harassment. It also concluded that his views did not breach the law and did not contravene university regulations designed to uphold free speech. He now works at Ghent University in Belgium.
The open question is whether the similar passages in Arday’s PhD amount to plagiarism. The source does not resolve that, and the issue now rests on how any further review treats overlap, editing changes and copied wording.
