Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Jason Arday Plagiarism Case

One lesson: Apparently, the Jason Arday "syndrome" exists not only in "non-elite" universities or colleges.

Oohay. 

On Friday, August 7, 2026 at 12:34:52 AM CDT, Bunmi fatoye-matory <bunmifm@gmail.com> wrote:

Jason Arday: Fabulism versus Irresponsibility

By Ato Quayson - Professor at Stanford University

Let me start by making a full disclosure: I am a Ghanaian who gained a PhD from the University of Cambridge and also taught for a decade on the English Faculty there before moving to North America.

There are many aspects of the Jason Arday story that I find deeply unsettling.

1. It is quite clear to me that Arday is a highly inventive fabulist. But whatever backstory to his life he has shared, whether it is running 600 miles in 6 days (revised to 12), not reading until being able to speak until he was 11 and to read until he was 18 and yet gaining a PhD by the age of 30, and running 30 marathons in 35 days, all share a common theme. Basically, it is that despite the incredible disadvantages he has faced all his life he is capable of unimaginable superhuman feats of grit and endurance. This theme has been central to his self-presentation from the start.

2. It is also clear that he was badly served by his mentors in all the institutions he has studied or worked at. Liverpool John Moores University is perhaps most culpable for not providing him with the proper guidance and supervision to help exorcise the plagiarist tendencies he exhibited in his dissertation and elsewhere. This should have been picked up early so that he could be set straight. Of course, some students are simply not subject to good advice, and this may have been the case with him. But if so, then he should not have been allowed to graduate with a PhD from the institution.

3. I wish this problem were only one for Liverpool John Moores, but unfortunately it is quite common. A comparable case is that of the disgraced Chris Spence, who was Director of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) from 2009-2013, when he admitted to having plagiarized several passages in a op-ed piece he co-wrote for the Toronto Star. The TDSB is the fourth largest school district in North America and carries substantial stray over educational policy in the Canadian province. It turns out that several passages of Spence’s 1996 PhD dissertation submitted to the University of Toronto had also been plagiarized. Clearly, something was seriously wrong with the system that granted him the doctorate. But in 2017, the university investigated the allegations and found him guilty of serious academic misconduct. They rescinded the degree. I suspect this laxness regarding the application of rigorous academic standards by mentors and supervisors is particularly common for students who happen to be black. The idea is that since they have made it so far through various woes and tribulations, that they should not be impeded by the standards applied to others. This is of course a complete insult and disservice to the many hardworking black students who have labored through our best educational institutions.

4. One wonders why the Cambridge University search process was not able to pick up the flaws in Arday’s profile. Clearly, they were enamored of the fairly tales Arday shared with them. So, there are serious questions to be answered regarding Cambridge’s usually reliable procedure for appointing people to professorships. But in this case it may come down not to failures of the search committee itself, but to weaknesses in the search process at Cambridge more broadly. At Stanford, where I am currently based, appointment to the position of Professor requires among other things the soliciting by the relevant department of at least 9 external referee letters for inclusion in the candidate’s dossier. Sometimes the number of letters tendered in support of a candidate can rise to 15. The effect of this large number is that it is unlikely any problems with a candidate’s career will not be picked up by one or more of the referees. And once it is picked up and reflected in a referee letter, the relevant department is obliged to make a careful response to the allegations and include these in the dossier for onward transmission to the Dean’s Appointments and Promotions Committee. And presenting chairs are seriously questions about all aspects of the dossiers being submitted before a vote is taken on the suitability of the candidate. This is after the same process has already been had at the department level. Many searches have failed on the grounds of unsatisfactory responses to negative assessments from referees, sometimes seemingly minor but for Stanford’s university hiring system the sign of patterns suggestive of potential problems lurking for the future. It is good that after originally supporting him, Cambridge finally launched a thorough investigation of the accusations against Arday and that Arday himself decided to resign rather than face the ignominy of full exposure.

5. As for Arday’s own repeated defence of being the subject of racial hounding because of his academic achievements, I hope no serious person buys that ridiculous tripe. Accusations of plagiarism are a very serious matter among scholars and should not be taken lightly for any reason. And it is a serious insult to hardworking ethnic minorities and persons with disability to feel that they are being submitted to lower standards because of their neurodiversity or race. While Arday’s own case might be put down to sloppiness, given the extent of allegations he should also take full personal responsibility for not discovering and applying the rigorous scholarly standards required of both his discipline of educational sociology and of academia in general.

6. There are many lessons to be drawn from this sorry saga, not the least of which should be that the mentorship of rising scholars and academics is a very serious matter and should be undertaken by both individuals and university systems with all seriousness and diligence.

--
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USA Africa Dialogue Series - From Terrestrial to Cosmic History: The Global Cosmology Introduction and the Acknowledgement Pages of Toyin Falola's Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems: Ifá Priestcraft Review No.4, Part 2

                                                                           From Terrestrial to Cosmic History

                                         The Global Cosmology Introduction and the Acknowledgement Pages of Toyin Falola's 

                                                 Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems

                                                                               Ifá Priestcraft    Review No.4

                                                                                                    Part 2

                           

                                                                   Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju    

                                                                           Compcros

                                                    Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

This essay describes my sense of elevation on reading the introduction, "Cosmologies in Global Historical Context", the preface and acknowledgements pages of Toyin Falola's Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems. I examine the introduction's pioneering effort in locating the indigenous Yoruba Ifa knowledge system and one of its adepts within the global sweep of cosmologies, from the mythic to the scientific.

I also explore the ramifications of this achievement for Falola's own work, in general, as well as mine, in relation to Falola's dedicating the book to me, complemented by a fulsome passage thanking me in the book's acknowledgements, where he also describes his own spiritual orientations as they feed his scholarship. A picture emerges of scholarly and spiritual vocations operating in rhythm in an oscillation between personal and cosmic history and meaning.

The main essay is complemented by pictures that either visualize its references or dramatize the inspiration and challenge the book embodies for me. This inspiration and challenge are represented by the book's pioneering identity in terms of its scope of scholarship in embedding indigenous Yoruba cosmology and its Ifa system within global cosmology, integrating that expansive and yet focused exploration with the study of an Ifa adept. Ifa Priestcraft thereby contributes to the embryonic field of the study of masters in indigenous African spiritual cultures, generating for them a prominence that resonates with the globally penetrating visibility of great figures in other spiritual and philosophical traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and Western esotericism. 

''How could one emulate this achievement?" I ask myself.

I therefore provide images and verbal snapshots of my own work in the study of adepts in classical African spiritualities, to complement the discussion on the book on Elebuibon and to motivate myself to emulate the intrepid  scholar who wrote that book. Such emulation would involve unifying the diffuse publication strategies represented by my  work with the more concentrated approaches demonstrated by  the Elebuibon book. I would thus be fulfilling a goal on escalated scholarly projection long advised by Falola and by Nimi Wariboko, another scholar and friend I met through Falola.

Contents 

Image and Text: Collage Showing Ifayemi Elebuibon at Various Stages of His Life

Abstract

The Silence Before Dawn

Image and Text: The Flow of History

Elebuibon and Ifa Within a Global Cartography of Cosmology

Image and Text: Nimi Wariboko

Elebuìbon Amongst Great Cosmological Minds

Image and Text: Joseph Ohomina

From African History to Cosmic History

Image and Text: Bruce Onobrakpeya

Implications of Falola's Achievements in Writing Ifa Priestcraft

Image and Text: Chiagoziem Orji 

The Unexpected Mirror

Image and Text: David Ebengho and his Shrine Complex

"A Cosmologist from His Mother's Womb"

Image and Text: Onome Odogu

''Know Thyself''

The Caravan to Infinity

Image and Text: "Eniyan Ni Aso Mi",  ''People Are My Clothing''

Scholarship and Spiritual Identity

Implications of Falola's Achievements in Writing Ifa Priestcraft

Falola lives and works principally in the United States of America. Elebuibon lives in Nigeria. Falola has flown countless hours from the US to Nigeria, on various occasions, at significant expense, to conduct the research eventuating in the first book,  and a substantial one at that,  on Elebuibon, written by someone other than the famous  babalawo. The first book known to me on Elebuibon is his autobiography Osundagbonu: The Sole Journey of a Priest. 

Falola is therefore the first to immortalise in scholarship beyond the subject's own writings, the historic figure that is  Elebuibon. Trained in social and economic history but reinventing himself as a boundary crossing, discipline unifying investigator and writer, Falola has broken strategic ground through Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems.

What is the scope of scholarship on spiritual masters in African and particularly Nigerian spiritualities, in general, and indigenous African and Nigerian spiritualities in particular?

I am not aware of any book on Susanne Wenger, a pivotal figure in endogenous Yoruba spirituality in Nigeria, written by a Nigerian, although a good number of essays exist.

How much has been written, talk less a book, about the storied life of Wande Abimbola, pioneer Nigerian scholar of Ifa, illustrious academic and eventually global Ifa representative?

Nigerians are writing books. Biography and autobiography are rich genres in Nigerian writing. A visit to such bibliophilic centres as the University of Ibadan bookshop and Mosuro the Booksellers in Ibadan, as well as to Glendora  in Lagos, among bookshops that emphasize such offerings, will make that clear.

It would seem, however, that the genre of spiritual biography and autobiography, particularly of adepts in indigenous African spiritualities, is deeply underrepresented.

Falola must be celebrated for his omnivorous intelligence, for his ''monstrous'' dynamism, his pervasive presence in African Studies, in general,  and Yoruba Studies, in particular, his self constitution into something like a one man humanities and social sciences university.

''Monstrous'', signalling the inadequacy of conventional, positive evaluations of a phenomenon, compelling recourse to unconventional forms of expression, inverting the negative in order to create shock value, thereby evoking the shattering of conventional evaluative matrices by the phenomenon referenced.

How can one learn from and possibly emulate this whirlwind of scholarship and writing?

What does it take to write a book like this one on Elebuibon,which moves from cosmologies across the globe into  endogenous Yoruba cosmology, focusing these subjects through a practitioner of  indigenous Yoruba spirituality? 

Developing cognitive potential, from determined curiosity to cultural immersion, organizing  textual resources, in terms of books, building resources for field work and cultivating the steel like determination of a Falola who may be described as chasing ideational, textual and impact immortality through totalistic actualization of his creative abilities. 

The development of balance between inspiration and intellect, spontaneity and order must be well honed. One needs to think in terms of long spans of time through which creativity moves across various thresholds to emerge in the bookfest that is the yearly avalanche of Falola publications. 

Cultivating such qualities is vital to taking my work, as depicted in this essay, from its current fragmentation and need for comprehensive depth across all its subjects, to the solidity and thoroughness constituting Falola's scholarly ideal.

This would imply a re-calibration, a reconstitution of the self, a reorientation from satisfaction with the thrill of scholarship to directing this excitement to a quest for investigative depth across board. It would also necessitate a sensitivity to the audience reach of my scholarship and writing into the depths of time, seeking  immortality of influence within as broad a range as possible.

Falola's scholarly writing is generally glorious and at times individually wonderful. It is not always even, however,  in its quality of accomplishment within the same book and between books, though the architectures of knowledge developed are often powerful, and at times, unrivalled. His essays demonstrate a more even polish across their formative structures, enabling ease of entry into his gargantuan body of work. His autobiographies, however, are peerless in his oeuvre for totalistic refinement and multi-expressive power,  providing an indispensable complement to his scholarship.   His Yoruba and English poetry is memorable, at times sparkling with immortal force. Across the permutations of his creativity, however, his ''terrible'' determination is evident, a person absolutely resolved to scale all walls to make his mark on history.

I am using the word ''terrible'' as an adaptation of the Italian  ''terribilità'',  an ''art-historical term meaning an awe-inspiring, sublime quality of powerful will, emotional intensity, and fierce grandeur. It was first used by 16th-century contemporaries to describe the overwhelming force and psychological depth of the masterpieces of  the sculptor, painter, architect and poet Michelangelo Buonarotti'' understood by some as the greatest artist in history. (Google AI)

Beginning from social and economic history, Falola has taken all fields in the humanities and social sciences, in relation to Africa, but expanding to embrace selected global contexts, as his domain. Are they not all historical phenomena existing within the movement of time?

Adding artistic creativity represented by splendid poetry in Yoruba and English and the narrative skill of a novelist represented by his autobiographies, a cognitive ensphering emerges, akin to the calabash as metaphor of cognitive and cosmic totality in Yoruba and Zulu thought, as described by Babatunde Lawal and Mazisi Kunene, respectively, the latter in Anthem of the Decades. A conjunction of various creative possibilities of the self is accomplished by the unusually self sensitive individual, uniquely alive to his own creative powers, doing justice to the range of human experience as subjects of study and expression.

Image and Text: Chiagoziem Orji 

                                                                                   

                                              

                                                     

              

Chiagoziem Orji is a consummate demonstrator of the aesthetic and ideational power of classical Igbo spirituality and philosophy. My most detailed study of her work so far is ''Onye Kwe, Chi Ya Ekwe'', ''My God Affirms, When I Agree": Chi, Creativity, and Cosmic Nexus in the Art and Thought of Chiagoziem Nneamaka Orji: The Way of the Calabash 5''.

Picture from Orji.

 

The Unexpected Mirror

The acknowledgements pages of Ifa Priestcraft  include a fulsome celebration of my own work, complementing the dedication of the book to me and Falola's rich online essay explaining why he made that dedication. 

Ironic, beceause I'm still trying to understand the logic of my style of scholarship and of my larger commitment to the development of knowledge.

Falola's celebration of my writing provokes me to plunge into my own oscillations between individual and cosmic history, into my quest for ultimate meaning in relation to myself as a cosmic traveller passing through Earth on a journey the rationale, beginning and destination of which are unknown to me, as is the case with most of humanity.

A quest for the meaning of existence as I remain enmeshed in trying to make sense of the terrestrial construction and cosmic context of my life in the decades of my movement from the day I was born in Ibillo, in Nigeria's Edo State to this day in Lagos.

A quest within my sense of myself as akin to a spider hanging in space, neither belonging to the ceiling nor to the ground, located in space but not located on any space, a social outsider and cognitive wanderer.

Image and Text: David Ebengho and his Shrine Complex

                               

         

Collage by myself showing David Ebengho, centre bottom, his ephemeral shrine art, top left, one of his Shango shrines, top centre,

his Azen shrine, top right, one of his Olokun shrines, bottom left, and what might be a Mammy Water votive assemblage, bottom right.                                                                                                              

            

Collage by myself Showing David Ebengho, top left, one of his shrines to the Benin/Edo God of the Waters, Olokun, centre,  and his certificates of recognition as an indigenous doctor.

 David Ebengho has assembled, over a lifetime, a magnificent, multi-deity shrine complex at his house at 2nd Cemetery Road, Benin-City. I have written what I expect are the first studies of that shrine.David Ebengho and His Cosmological Shrine collects my essays on his shrine and spiritual practice. My Magnificent Shrine and Fellowship of Chief Ebengho in Benin-City is the first image collection of the shrine and activities performed there. All pictures from 2022.

Pictures   by myself.

            

"A Cosmologist from His Mother's Womb"

Falola states in the dedication of his book-" to Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, a cosmologist from his mother's womb".

That is meant metaphorically but it takes my mind to when the cosmological hunger hit me as a teenager, on reading, in my family's library, the account of the Buddha's life and thought in  Charles Connell's  World Famous Rebels. I was so moved by the force of that story that,  sitting in meditation on the verandah of my family's house in Lagos, I resolved not to rise from that spot until I had received enlightenment into the ultimate meaning of existence, as the Buddha did under a bodhi tree after years of unfulfilled quest in pursuit of that understanding. His perseverance paid off as he describes himself as gaining the illumination he sought while seated in meditation at that spot. 

Of course, when time for dinner came, I went in to eat, my resolve forgotten, but that metaphysical hunger, ignited by reading that book, has remained a lifelong flame, shaping every aspect of my life.

Image and Text: Onome Odogu

                                                                                                               

                         

These images represent all I have left of Onome Odogu, a great shrine artist and priestess of Ekene and other deities in Agbahar-Otor in the Niger Delta. She refused to let me take her picture beyond this image of her hand holding a sacred object at her door, with her husband in the background. 

''My juju no go gree'', ''My spirits will not agree'', she declared in pidgin English, the only language we shared, in response to my request to photograph her and her shrines. ''E go be as if I dey sell my juju'', ''It would give the impression I am selling my spirits''  she concluded, even as she acknowledged that the publicity generated by my sharing online pictures and information about her and her spiritual and herbal practice would attract paying customers to her.

Amazed that such principled reticence  could still exist in the world of 2024 when I met her, while  perhaps most others are pursuing maximisation of visibility in the Internet powered world, I had to be content with pictures of her hand and of the single shrine she let me photograph.

The shrine is created as an aid to  reaching towards Osanoboa, the Urhobo name for the creator of the universe. This  process is evoked by the elegant stick pointing towards the sky  on the platform above which it is raised. On that platform  would be placed assorted fruit offerings. That shrine, however, though elegant in its simplicity in relation to its lofty goal,  does not suggest the artistic grandeur of Onome Odogu's shrine art.

While planning in later 2024 to visit her again and encourage her to let me take pictures of her and her work, I was informed she had passed away.

Thus a great master of the sacred left the world, with no visual record of her magnificent art, nor of her vigorous ritual dancing, which I watched with great appreciation, no record kept of what must have been a rich spiritual journey eventuating in the superb shrines I witnessed.

Her house, shown in the picture, was basic, unplastered, with an open air kitchen outside the house and few windows. It may have belonged to her or to her and her husband, was solidly built but was quite basic, suggesting that their money may have been invested more in their spiritual practice than in material comforts.

       ''Requiem For but Not Goodbye to an Adept of Urhobo Spirituality, Mrs Onome Odogu'' is my previous tribute to her.

Pictures  by myself.

''Know Thyself''

Falola has succeeded in channelling his own cognitive hunger into institutionally operational  scholarship.

I have tried the same, without success. "A person who should be in academia roaming on social media" is how Professor Michael Afolayan once described me in an expression of puzzlement or frustration. A bewilderment which, I, too, long suffered, in terms of what Afolayan, in another context, describes as my ''epistemic mission'' in its peculiarity of expression. My own sense of pained confusion as my scholarly career has unfolded in unanticipated ways has given way to acceptance.

To each his own. The fish can thrive only in water, not in any other liquid.  All animals cannot be assessed in terms of their ability to climb a tree. The jungle is home to various kinds of creatures.

The Caravan to Infinity

Do the acknowledgements of Ifa Priestcraft illuminate Falola in terms of his own cosmic journey, one out of a multitude of creatures coming and going on Earth? 

It suggests him as a person sensitive to the absolute significance of the opportunity granted him to be alive and conscious. Therefore he seeks to understand as much as possible about the existence in which he is enmeshed, focusing his attention on the contexts represented by his own being- hence his continually unfolding sequence of autobiographical publications. This context extends to his Yoruba ethnicity, demonstrated by his kaleidoscopic range of writings on the Yoruba, as a group and as individuals. 

This personal framework further expands into continental Africa, the near full range of the existence of which Falola burrows into in numerous writings. This contextualisation further escalates into the transcontinental, people of African descent beyond Africa, also richly illuminated by Falola's work. The ultimate context, the global, is  demonstrated by his locating Africa in its larger human framework as well as his forthcoming study of humanity's journey of knowledge as coexisting units of a collective yet individually distinctive complex of journeys, a project he titles Knowledge Empires.

Within this complex of belongings, of travellers from the unknown to the unknown, the companionship of fellow travellers proves invaluable for him, sharing their own insights and perplexities, their joys and struggles, enriching his grasp of the tapestry of existence as dramatizing the cosmic dynamism of human being expressed through the intersecting individualities of the innumerable inhabitants of the planet.

His eloquence on this in relation to Africa is spell-binding:

 

My friends and fellow thinkers, my believers and those who share my visions of a free and self-determined African future: thank you, every one of you, for confirming my determination not just to let our culture survive but to help it thrive. I appreciate your friendship and support in both the quiet times and the times of turmoil. And I also acknowledge, in the secret places of power and grace, the unseen hands and voices: the ancestors who whisper in the ears of seekers; the spirits of knowledge who open roads when people close doors; and the cosmic forces of creation that insist, without cease, that who we are can never be ended, and that what we know can never be forgotten. I would not have this book realized but for your blessing; it remains in this acknowledgement to all who believe in the divine intelligence of our heritage.
(p.346)

 

Image and Text:     "Eniyan Ni Aso Mi",  ''People Are My Clothing''         

                                                                 Unrobing and Rerobing Sequence at Falola@65 Banquet

                                                                                                                          (Flickr)

These pictures depict what I describe as the unrobing and rerobing sequence of the banquet of Tuesday, 30 January 2018, at the International Conference Centre, Ibadan, part of the Toyin Falola@65 Conference and festivities. Adeshina Afolayan assists Toyin Falola in putting on the agbada, an elaborate form of classical Nigerian male couture, presented to Falola by the conference organising committee composed of himself, Samuel Oloruntoba, looking on, smiling at Afolayan's right, Wale Ghazal and Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso.

On being presented with the splendid agbada, Falola spontaneously removed his cap and the exquisitely prepared agbada he was already wearing, in order to put on the new one he was being presented with, in recognition of the grand symbolism represented by the presentation, in a culture, Yoruba/Nigerian/African, in which clothes are central symbolic forms, artistic and scriptic signifiers, at times functioning as an entire library of semiotic configurators, as in Nigerian Cross River ukara cloth encrusted with the cosmos spanning Nsibidi symbolism and Ghanaian Adinkra symbolism originating from its use in symbolising messages brought from beyond birth and messages taken beyond life in the world.

"Eniyan ni aso mi", states the Yoruba proverb, which may be translated as "People represent the clothes with which I am splendidly adorned", a saying that encapsulates the symbolism of the presentation ceremony at the Falola conference banquet, a ceremony that incidentally sums up the implications of the festivities dramatized by the celebration of Falola.

Falola's younger professional associates whose lives he has contributed to shaping positively have chosen to expand the scholar's self adornment generated by the reach of his scholarship by showcasing that achievement through this conference and its festivities, achieving the monumental scope of the celebrations by drawing upon the goodwill of numerous people positively impacted by the master scholar's intellectual and pastoral genius as thinker, institution builder and mentor, the triadic configuration of Falola's career, as outlined by Gloria Emeagwali in her keynote speech at the conference.

Without the recognition of one's achievements by others, how will the significance of that achievement be actualised among humanity? Without helping to build others through recognition and cultivation of their potential, how will the commonwealth of human well being expand?

Falola has adorned himself. Falola has adorned others. Those others whom he has adorned have chosen to adorn him in turn.

What the pictures lack in resolution, they makes up for in their evocation of the kinetic power of the experience they capture.

Pictures by myself.

Scholarship and Spiritual Identity

Falola is writing, therefore, as a scholar who  shares in the cognitive universe of the babalawo, the adept in Ifa's esoteric knowledge, whom his book his about. His childhood in Ibadan's Ode Aje initiated him into the compelling force of indigenous Yoruba spirituality, Islam and Christianity, as narrated in his autobiographies A  Mouth Sweeter than Salt, Counting the Tiger's Teeth and Malaika.

This spiritual fashioning is amplified and focused through his intellectual development issuing in his education and practice as a scholar.These convergences have made him into an adept in spiritual culture in his own right.

He demonstrates a multivalent spiritual culture evidenced by his accounts of spiritual guidance ( Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, "The Journey of Toyin Falola", Parts 1,  2, 3, 4 and the acknowledgements pages of Ifa Priestcraft) the quality of his writing on such subjects,  from the critical ( Sacred Words and Holy Realms; Yoruba Metaphysics), to the narrative and poetic ( Malaika and the Egungun section of In Praise of Greatness) and combinations of these (''Ritual Archives" and "Terrapolis and Orisa Energies").

In Ifa Priestcraft, therefore, Falola's central subject is classical Yoruba cosmology in relation to Elebuibon, but in sections of the book, such as in the acknowledgements and the preface he opens up about his own cosmological orientations as a traveller on a knowledge road similar to Elebuibon's, enabling him give credence to  the foundations of the knowledge universe in which Elebuibon lives, vivifying his explorations of that world through the force of his own testimony.

The pan-cultural Traditionalist school of scholarship represented by Titus Burckhardt, Rene Guenon, Amanda Coomaraswamy, and by implication, Ahmadou Hampate Ba and Nimi Wariboko, come to mind as exemplars of a similar culture. Even Immanuel Kant, understood as a destroyer of Christian beliefs is adequately understood only in terms of his conjunction of the sacred and the secular, the non-rational and the rational in his writings where he reexamines the foundations of Christian thought and it seems, of his earlier writings. 

An epistemologically plural cognitive identity is emerging in Falola's scholarly writings, integrating the spiritual intelligence of Malaika: A Memoir of My Encounters with Islam with the superbly intellectually refined synopsis of the ''Author's Notes'' in Yoruba Metaphysics: Spirituality and Supernaturality. 

Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems is also a personal testimony, as the author pursues, in his own way, the quest Elebuibon is on, the very fact of existence as a constantly unfolding  puzzle, writer and subject, priest and researcher, walking to the drum beat coming from everywhere and nowhere.

Previous Essays in this Series of Engagements with Falola's Ifa Priestcraft

1.Biography as Cosmology: The Significance of Toyin Falola's Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems: An Anticipatory Review  

2. Biography as Cosmology: The Significance of Toyin Falola's Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems: An Anticipatory Review Within a Visual Quest for Cultural and Metaphysical Roots

3. From Home to Infinity: Cosmology, Ifá, and the Architecture of Human Understanding in Toyin Falola's Ifá Priestcraft: Ifáyemí Elébuìbon and Yorùbá Ancestral Knowledge Systems: Ifá Priestcraft Review No.3

                 

                                                                              

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Jason Arday Misdemeanours Saga: Ato Quayson and his Interlocutors Weigh in on Facebook in an Ongoing Discussion

So you have outsourced many of your responses to the "almighty"/"all-knowing" Wikipedia!? -- the alpha and Omega of knowledge!?

Oohay

On Friday, August 7, 2026 at 10:34:19 AM CDT, 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Bro Ato should not rush to dismiss the anti-racism of bro Jason as 'insulting' to people like him. Racism is real in academia and someone struggling with autism may get it harder than others. In Cambridge, as Ato knows, there are no search committees. They have electors who vote to award professorships. When the electors voted to award an honorary doctorate to the great Derrida in the early 1990s, dozens of philosophers around the world signed an open letter to denounce him "In the eyes of philosophers, and certainly among those working in leading departments of philosophy throughout the world, M Derrida's work does not meet accepted standards of clarity and rigour.". Cambridge stuck to its guns and awarded the honorary degree. 

In the case of Dr. Arday, the allegations of plagiarism were duly investigated by the awarding institution and the finding is that there was no evidence to support the allegations even though there are 'reasonable errors' in the dissertation. Bro Ato is right to defend academic standards but he was too quick to dismiss allegations of racism. Jason is neither Shakespeare, King, nor Derrida, but his work on Cool Britannia offers promise of great contributions to come. 

I asked AI if great men from the past also faced plagiarism allegations and the answer is:

By modern academic standards, Shakespeare frequently borrowed plots, characters, and historical material from earlier writers. For example, many of his plays drew heavily on sources such as Holinshed's Chronicles, Plutarch's Lives, and earlier plays. However, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, this kind of borrowing was a normal literary practice and was generally not considered plagiarism in the modern sense. Shakespeare's originality was seen in how he transformed existing material through language, characterization, and dramatic structure.

So, most scholars would say:

• Shakespeare borrowed extensively, but
• He is not usually labeled a plagiarist by the standards of his time.

Martin Luther King Jr.

The situation is different. Researchers working on the King Papers Project at Stanford discovered that portions of King's doctoral dissertation and some academic papers contained unattributed material from other scholars. Boston University investigated and concluded that King had improperly used material without adequate citation. The university did not revoke his Ph.D., stating that the dissertation still made a significant scholarly contribution, but it formally acknowledged the citation problems. [en.wikipedia.org], [ebsco.com]

Most historians therefore agree that:

• Some of King's academic work contained plagiarism by modern academic standards. [en.wikipedia.org], [ebsco.com]
• This finding is separate from the significance of his leadership in the American civil rights movement. [en.wikipedia.org], [ebsco.com]

In short

• Shakespeare: Extensive borrowing, but generally not considered plagiarism in the context of Renaissance literary practices.
• Martin Luther King Jr.: Scholars and Boston University found genuine plagiarism in parts of his academic work, particularly his doctoral dissertation. [en.wikipedia.org], [ebsco.com]

This comparison also highlights an important historical point: what counts as plagiarism depends partly on the intellectual norms and citation practices of a particular era.

Biko

On Friday, 7 August 2026 at 01:34:57 GMT-4, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovadepojuifa@gmail.com> wrote:

Ato Quayson

e͏o͏o͏S͏r͏d͏n͏t͏p͏s͏h͏3͏7͏0͏2͏l͏1͏l͏m͏2͏i͏c͏m͏7͏6͏7͏l͏c͏a͏6͏f͏f͏h͏g͏i͏3͏c͏0͏m͏i͏h͏u͏0͏t͏f͏1͏8͏g͏0͏8͏9͏9͏l͏u͏5͏4͏4͏u͏3͏8͏ ·

Jason Arday: Fabulism versus Irresponsibility

Let me start by making a full disclosure: I am a Ghanaian who gained a PhD from the University of Cambridge and also taught for a decade on the English Faculty there before moving to North America.

There are many aspects of the Jason Arday story that I find deeply unsettling.

1. It is quite clear to me that Arday is a highly inventive fabulist. But whatever backstory to his life he has shared, whether it is running 600 miles in 6 days (revised to 12), not reading until being able to speak until he was 11 and to read until he was 18 and yet gaining a PhD by the age of 30, and running 30 marathons in 35 days, all share a common theme. Basically, it is that despite the incredible disadvantages he has faced all his life he is capable of unimaginable superhuman feats of grit and endurance. This theme has been central to his self-presentation from the start.

2. It is also clear that he was badly served by his mentors in all the institutions he has studied or worked at. Liverpool John Moores University is perhaps most culpable for not providing him with the proper guidance and supervision to help exorcise the plagiarist tendencies he exhibited in his dissertation and elsewhere. This should have been picked up early so that he could be set straight. Of course, some students are simply not subject to good advice, and this may have been the case with him. But if so, then he should not have been allowed to graduate with a PhD from the institution.

3. I wish this problem were only one for Liverpool John Moores, but unfortunately it is quite common. A comparable case is that of the disgraced Chris Spence, who was Director of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) from 2009-2013, when he admitted to having plagiarized several passages in a op-ed piece he co-wrote for the Toronto Star. The TDSB is the fourth largest school district in North America and carries substantial stray over educational policy in the Canadian province. It turns out that several passages of Spence’s 1996 PhD dissertation submitted to the University of Toronto had also been plagiarized. Clearly, something was seriously wrong with the system that granted him the doctorate. But in 2017, the university investigated the allegations and found him guilty of serious academic misconduct. They rescinded the degree. I suspect this laxness regarding the application of rigorous academic standards by mentors and supervisors is particularly common for students who happen to be black. The idea is that since they have made it so far through various woes and tribulations, that they should not be impeded by the standards applied to others. This is of course a complete insult and disservice to the many hardworking black students who have labored through our best educational institutions.

4. One wonders why the Cambridge University search process was not able to pick up the flaws in Arday’s profile. Clearly, they were enamored of the fairly tales Arday shared with them. So, there are serious questions to be answered regarding Cambridge’s usually reliable procedure for appointing people to professorships. But in this case it may come down not to failures of the search committee itself, but to weaknesses in the search process at Cambridge more broadly. At Stanford, where I am currently based, appointment to the position of Professor requires among other things the soliciting by the relevant department of at least 9 external referee letters for inclusion in the candidate’s dossier. Sometimes the number of letters tendered in support of a candidate can rise to 15. The effect of this large number is that it is unlikely any problems with a candidate’s career will not be picked up by one or more of the referees. And once it is picked up and reflected in a referee letter, the relevant department is obliged to make a careful response to the allegations and include these in the dossier for onward transmission to the Dean’s Appointments and Promotions Committee.

And presenting chairs are seriously questions about all aspects of the dossiers being submitted before a vote is taken on the suitability of the candidate. This is after the same process has already been had at the department level. Many searches have failed on the grounds of unsatisfactory responses to negative assessments from referees, sometimes seemingly minor but for Stanford’s university hiring system the sign of patterns suggestive of potential problems lurking for the future. It is good that after originally supporting him, Cambridge finally launched a thorough investigation of the accusations against Arday and that Arday himself decided to resign rather than face the ignominy of full exposure.

5. As for Arday’s own repeated defence of being the subject of racial hounding because of his academic achievements, I hope no serious person buys that ridiculous tripe. Accusations of plagiarism are a very serious matter among scholars and should not be taken lightly for any reason. And it is a serious insult to hardworking ethnic minorities and persons with disability to feel that they are being submitted to lower standards because of their neurodiversity or race. While Arday’s own case might be put down to sloppiness, given the extent of allegations he should also take full personal responsibility for not discovering and applying the rigorous scholarly standards required of both his discipline of educational sociology and of academia in general.

6. There are many lessons to be drawn from this sorry saga, not the least of which should be that the mentorship of rising scholars and academics is a very serious matter and should be undertaken by both individuals and university systems with all seriousness and diligence.

Lloyd Amoah

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Fabulism indeed and slipping through the cracks in an intriguing way This Ghanaman paaaa.

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Tikia K. Hamilton

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I wonder how generative AI will impact these discussions. It’s like we exist in two parallel universes with one space holding true to standards and the other fully embracing what amounts to cheating, in my opinion. Which side will win out?

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Seth Lerer

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Thank you Ato for this thoughtful and balanced view. It really helps to understand this as a symptom of larger issues.

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Rita Barnard

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Very sage account, Ato! I remember seeing the news of Arday’s hire and found him an impossibly interesting character even then. I agree with the comment by Jana about the pervasiveness of posturing, invented selves, Potemkin villages, fakes etc in our time. The story is disheartening, yet somehow symptomatic of many present ills.

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Kayy Jayy

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I said something similar under another post that his missed citations , and referencing errors doesn’t seem to be an accidental oversight , I’m in my PsyD program and the biggest complaints I see from doctoral students are always about their committees lengthy , and sometimes unclear editing process

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Jay Maine

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3. the claims about academic standard for blacks is is a complete reach and and I’d love to see your evidence other than this recency bias. I would be unsurprised if some critical research into the subject would suggest other wise.

5. Both can be true. His fraudulence doesn’t take away from the type of person who loudly pressed. But I agree with you for the most part.

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Edited

Kweku Darko Ankrah

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Now as a result of Arday's flowery story telling and allegations of plagiarism which.ought to be placed at the footsteps of Liverpool John Moores and his PhD Committee Supervisors, every right-wing media and racist platforms with their pseudo African supporters with low self-esteem about their own identity are attacking black excellence and academic capabilities. Instead of seeing Arday's issue as that of human nature or personal hubris and institutional supervisory negligence, African/black and liberal scholars are being accused of engaging in fake scholarship and their positions in academia are secured via Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Thank you, Prof Ato Quayson, for your erudite opinion on the matter.

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Edited

Phil Tew

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Very wise commentary, Ato. In my time up to retirement, I was external to a great number of doctorates. There was a general diminishment of standards that if it continues will eventually become a real problem,.

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Rahul K. Gairola

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this, Ato, and also for being a supportive guide during and after my time at Cambridge.  There is indeed much to think about here with respect to mentoring, identity, representation, mistakes, etc. Neurodiverse scholars of colour around the globe will no doubt be impacted by the fallout resulting from this very unfortunate case.

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Edited

Richard Drayton

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I’m in the process today of composing my own thoughts about this very sad affair, which every senior scholar with a darker skin will pay a price for. 

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Aminah Emunah Hasan-Birdwell

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Richard Drayton junior scholars will pay a bigger price.

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Cindy Wu

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I hear you and see you. I'm not disagreeing with the substance of what you're saying at all, but I'm just very frustrated with the double standard to which white scholars who were found to have plagiarized are held. Our university president, who is white, plagiarized parts of her dissertation, and yet, she is still president. She also called the State Police on students and faculty protesting peacefully in April 2024 and did many other nefarious things in the short time she has been here. https://www.ipm.org/news/2026-02-03/iu-president-whitten-accused-of-plagiarized-dissertation-iu-says-theres-no-merit

IPM.ORG

IU President Whitten accused of plagiarized dissertation, IU says there’s ‘no merit’

IU President Whitten accused of plagiarized dissertation, IU says there’s ‘no merit’

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Edited

Jana Giles

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This does not take away from the fact that fabulists and plagiarists abound of all races, genders, and abilities, and at all levels and walks of life in our current culture. Whether they are held to account or not is also a matter of concern. George Santos comes to mind and certain people in the highest possible position....

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Edited

Flair Donglai Shi

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This case has been so utterly confusing for outsiders like me...very conflicted feelings...thank you for providing this valuable perspective and analysis Prof. Quayson!

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Heru Khuti

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Thank you for your reflections. I have not seen evidence nor investigation conclusions that verify the accusations so my speculation is that if the dissertation related accusations are true that another cause for insufficient mentoring and supervision by his committee could have been that he was working in department that did not have faculty in Africana Studies or his area of it to be familiar, literate enough in the literature to flag the problems or present enough as a knowledge worker on the job with their students to have flagged the problems. Oftentimes, our work isn't taken seriously enough by faculty mentors, supervisors, and peers for them to read and engage our work diligently.

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Ashleigh Harris

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What worries me most about this is how it’s been picked up by media. We could all name a number of cases of people abusing the academic system for their own personal gain (and I’m by no means defending that). But how often do those cases (if they ever get revealed) reach media interest. The most worrying thing about this is how the media has latched onto the phrase ‘poster boy for XYZ’. That’s what makes it news. And that is seriously icky.

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Efua Oyikwan

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Ashleigh Harris Exactly this. The investigation itself is legitimate and should run its course. What troubles me is what is already being built around it. The “poster boy” framing turns an individual academic misconduct case into something much bigger: an implied indictment of Black excellence, scholarship and the institutions that sought to address historic underrepresentation. We’re already seeing people like Matt Goodwin run with precisely that narrative. Whatever the investigation ultimately concludes about this individual, it cannot logically tell us whether Black academic excellence is genuine. Yet that is exactly the doubt some are already trying to seed.

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Emmanuel K. Dogbevi

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Thank you, Prof, for adding to this very important conversation.

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Moses Khisa

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I haven't followed this sad saga, thanks for highlighting it and offering your perceptive reflections.

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Brenda Brown Leighton

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... that he could have carried along so many on this fantastical charade for this duration...

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Amatesiro Dore

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Please, this is some European and Caucasian alternate universe where the best candidates are traditionally ignored over the chosen candidates with enough skeletons for control, lesser pay and tokenism.

The UK producing 10 Prime Ministers in 10 years as it was in the failed state of Italy before Meloni [pardon my fabulism] is epitome of a dying civilisation where the immediate past Prime Minister should be imprisoned.

Oxford, Cambridge, European University Institute: all shit [pardon my French] because the entire academia is currently a collection of occultic and pretentious wankers mostly engaged in sex work to survive the global economy meltdown.

Universities in 2026 are a fucking waste of time populated by people producing useless research in a world where AI beats most originality.

He's not the problem. Just a symptom. Ask most donor agencies in love with "stories" over competence.

You're all sick in the head.

Consider the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize brouhaha, Pedophiles running LinkedIn, Trump is President again!

Zero accountability across all sectors in the world. Why should the corruption escape universities? Do social workers, students and politicians fall from Andromeda? Yea are all guilty of the same shit in different ways.

Praise be!!!

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Oye Journal Fuoye

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Amatesiro Dore 

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Pakar Erst

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Plagiarism cancels out any future work in research and education. It’s the basic test of capacity and integrity.

Such characters often take to sensationalism to make up for their deficits.

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Sindre Bangstad

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This is tragic in all respects. It was plainly obvious from the start that his story could not be true. Shame on the universities involved for wanting to believe the unbelievable for so long, and not exercising proper faculties. Simply promoting him to a full professorship on the basis of such a poor academic record, and lavishing him with honorary doctorates, is beyond belief. The fallout will be terrible not only for this poor young man but also for emergent Black or neurodivergent scholars.

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Jana Giles

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Thank you for chiming in; I was hoping you would. These are also my conclusions and impressions about this sad story, especially the tendency to lower expectations for black and other underprivileged students. This is insulting to them and ill serves our society. And the need for rigorous vetting of appointments is also critical and so often does not happen, even if most institutions cannot hope for 9-15 letters. I will refrain from saying more. Thank you for your mentorship at Cambridge and over the years.

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Abigail M Opong-Tetteh

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I was waiting patiently to hear your thoughts on this very sad story. And you're spot on. Thanks Prof

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Timothy Burke

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I think I'm in the same furrow as you are here. https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/academia-fabulists-and-safeguards

TIMOTHYBURKE.SUBSTACK.COM

Academia: Fabulists and Safeguards

Academia: Fabulists and Safeguards

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Oye Journal Fuoye

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Linda Ampah

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Well said Prof.

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George Twumasi

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A brilliant piece

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Kari Bannerman

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Mental health issues

He’s not correct

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Katrien Pype

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences! They resonate!

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F.E. Guerra-Pujol

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Wow! Fifteen letters of reference just to get an entry level academic job? No wonder why us first-gen minorites can't get a job in academia, let alone tenure!

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Ato Quayson

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F.E. Guerra-Pujol, not an entry-level job, just to be promoted to a full professorship, as in Jason Arday's case. An entry-level job requires only three references.

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Samuel Abokyi

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You are spot on.

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Kenneth Surin

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Arday received his PhD in 2015, and held academic posts at the University of Roehampton, Durham University, and the University of Glasgow before he was appointed Professor of Sociology of Education at Cambridge in 2023. Therefore, between 2015 and 2023, he held 3 academic posts-- an exceedigly rapid transit between institutions. It is customary for institutions to hold a third-year review of newly appointed academics. Given his rapid transit, was he even subjected to a third-year review at any of the places that employed him?

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Timothy Burke

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Kenneth Surin It's not clear that he held a post at Glasgow, unfortunately. https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/26433564.glasgow-university-denies-jason-arday-visiting-prof-claim/

HERALDSCOTLAND.COM

Glasgow University: Jason Arday was 'never a visiting professor here'

Glasgow University: Jason Arday was 'never a visiting professor here'

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Theo Acheampong

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Indeed, accusations of plagiarism are a very serious matter among scholars and should not be taken lightly for any reason, whether it is from our own African/Black/Minority Communities or Caucasian circles. We must not lower the standards! There are so many such characters parading around with accolades and titles that they haven't truly earned. I blame the universities for not doing a thorough enough job in the hiring process.

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Jay Williams

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More of this story Jaz Wilch

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Jaz Wilch

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Jay Williams the more I learn about this story, the more I think this was a setup. I feel like there's a reason people like this get put on pedestals (and then swiftly exposed). There's no way that no one in the PhD process picked up that ya boy was lil off.

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Jaz Wilch

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Jay Williams also, see the posts about the man that went on this crusade to expose him in the first place. His work has been criticized as racist and argues that things like intelligence are racially based traits.

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