Like many conservative academics, I watched the Jason Arday saga unfold with horror.

It is sad and tragic that he died. Unlike those on the left who celebrated when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, I take no joy in Arday’s death.

But his death should not keep us from confronting the question his career leaves behind: How did someone like Arday rise as high as he did in the academic world—and what does that portend for the rest of us?

Arday’s story is basically a modern retelling of the old fable, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” in which a couple of con men posing as weavers convince a vain and petulant emperor that they can make him the most beautiful suit of clothes ever seen. Moreover, the cloth will be magic, in that only those who are good and wise can see it.

When the emperor and his advisers look in on the “weavers,” they see nothing on the loom, yet they dare not say a word lest they be thought evil and foolish. Then comes the day when the emperor dons his new clothes and parades through the streets to the oohs and aahs of the townspeople—until one little boy tugs on his mother’s skirt and asks, “Mama, why is the emperor naked?”

Why, indeed?

In this updated version of the story, Arday is, of course, the con man; the leaders of Cambridge University are collectively the emperor, and the distinguished faculty are the townspeople. The question that arises is how did this happen? How did no one see that the emperor was naked?

The answer is that practically everyone at the university did see—just like the townspeople in the old fable—but were afraid to say so. They feared looking dumb or insufficiently woke in front of their colleagues and the general public. Or worse, they feared losing their jobs, as appears to have happened to the guy who finally pointed out Arday’s plagiarism.

Because that is the true legacy of the DEI regime in higher ed—and no doubt elsewhere: it produces not equality or harmony or justice, but abject fear leading to cowardice and, ultimately, stupidity.

The elevation of Jason Arday so far beyond his capacity and qualifications was many things, but mostly it was just stupid. Consider UC-Berkeley economist Carlo Cipolla’s definition of stupidity: doing things that harm others while bringing no benefit to and perhaps even harming oneself. Remember, too, Cipolla’s observation that such stupidity has nothing to do with intelligence, education, or status.

How did we end up with a Jason Arday? Because the people who hired him, who theoretically should have known better, were vain, petulant, arrogant, and shockingly stupid—and everyone else, who also should have known better, was too cowardly to point this out. Their actions in elevating the man or allowing him to be elevated hurt many, not least of all Arday himself. They also hurt his students, his colleagues, and the literally thousands of more qualified scholars who were passed over or never considered for the job.

But mostly they hurt the institution. Cambridge University, once revered, is now a laughingstock. They not only handed over a coveted sinecure to a fraud and a grifter but praised him publicly as “the best in the world” at what he did—which, ironically, might be true, if we consider fraud and grift to be what he did. (Ibram X. Kendi, né Henry Rogers, squirms with envy.)

The truly alarming part is that such stupidity and cowardice are not limited to Cambridge. Academia throughout the West, and certainly in the United States, is largely populated with exactly the kind of people who fell for Arday’s con—and the higher up the administrative ladder you go, the more likely you are to find them. Some have themselves been credibly accused of academic charlatanry, as we’ve seen recently at place like Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Maryland, along with a host of “lesser” institutions.

I’ve been fortunate in my career that I haven’t had to deal with as many naked emperors or cowardly townspeople as some of my colleagues. But observing our “betters” at places like Cambridge and Harvard, and knowing how things tend to filter down in academia, I suspect it’s only a matter of time.

I suppose, if worse comes to worst, I can always identify as a sociologist, fabricate some “research,” plagiarize a few papers, invent a compelling bio, and come out as non-binary. That should be a fine enough suit of clothes to satisfy any emperor.

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