Talk:Jason Arday

Recruitment details

Most readers (myself included) have very little knowledge of the British university system, aside from what they might have seen in the Harry Potter saga. In this instance, we are dealing with a college (Jesus College), a university (Cambridge), and a faculty (Faculty of Education). Which of these entities was the precise recruiter of Arday? Is a copy of the "job description" available? What were the details of the recruitment process? What are the implications (explicit or not) of being linked with Jesus College (instead of another college) ? I think that an UK insider would be more efficient than me in researching these questions. Thanks in advance. Pldx1 (talk) 22:21, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

Well, Harry Potter is not set in a university, though some scenes were filmed in Oxford. ;-)

The Oxbridge situation is more complicated than in most British universities. The university is divided into colleges, which originally were like residential dorms with in-dorm teaching. A college teaches many subjects. But there are also faculties (historically more recent) which coordinate the teaching of particular subjects across the colleges, so that a subject like sociology is not completely fragmented, which it would be if the colleges didn't cooperate. My understanding, as an Oxbridge outsider, is that a professor is appointed by the university, but the faculty will run the search committee, and the successful candidate will get a fellowship at a college afterwards. Doric Loon (talk) 09:17, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

I found generic criteria for being a professor at Cambridge, so presumably the colleges would be required to follow those standards. Anyway, I looked through the generic page on Academic ranks in the United Kingdom as well as the University of Cambridge and Colleges of the University of Cambridge pages, but none of these offer any real detail about the process, responsibilities, etc of the recruitment of professors. I could not find any WP:RS describing these things with a quick search. I would think that this normally doesn't interest many people, so it might be impossible to find sources that do not require WP:OR. This may have changed due to Arday and people might want to be on the lookout for future publications, especially if Cambridge publishes a report about the hiring of Arday, where they may explain such things and then the media might report on that in ways that allow such things to be added to Wikipedia with proper sourcing. Aapjes (talk) 12:53, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

This 12 August statement by Cambridge Vice-Chancellor Deborah Prentice says:

We will now investigate the circumstances around his appointment by the Faculty of Education back in 2022 [...] The findings will then inform a review of the process for the appointment of senior academic roles. As you are fully aware, appointments to senior academic roles, as in the case of the Faculty of Education and Jason Arday, are currently led at Department level.

If I'm not mistaken, "Department" and "Faculty" are more or less synonymous in this context. See e.g. . — Chrisahn (talk) 13:45, 4 September 2026 (UTC)

I agree with your assessment, Sir. And the link you provided does show there is correlation. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 10:54, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

• The first five undersignatures of the GoodLawPetition were five College Masters or prominent professors at Cambridge. A few days later (on August 6, 2026), only Simon Woolley remained, and only in a strictly personal capacity. What could be said about that (=what are the RS saying)? Pldx1 (talk) 10:50, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

  This seems unrelated to "recruitment details" was this intended for a different thread? Simonm223 (talk) 12:11, 10 September 2026 (UTC)

  I had the impression that the five could be related to some degree with the recruiting process. I am searching for RS having noticed this factoid... and commented about. Pldx1 (talk) 19:54, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

• At https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/jason_arday_appointment_to_cambr, there are some documents issued by Cambridge Uni concerning this recruitment: job description and requirements among them. A description of the commission is also given. Pldx1 (talk) 10:15, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

  This is a bunch of primary source documents. What exactly are you expecting us to do with this? Simonm223 (talk) 11:25, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

  Expectation 1: "us" could check if these documents are real and genuine, and not a forgery

  Expectation 2: "us" could read them.

  Expectation 3: "us" could find if some RS discovered the very existence of these documents, or even commented them.

  Searching often helps finding, and more people searching could result into more findings.. Pldx1 (talk) 09:43, 24 September 2026 (UTC)

  This is WP:NOR, surely? Whynotlol2 (talk) 11:17, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

  It would be a violation of WP:OR for Wikipedia to interpret these primary source documents. If @Pldx1 believes reliable secondary sources exist that do, they are welcome to find such sources. But they can hardly complain other editors aren't doing it for them. Simonm223 (talk) 12:43, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

  English grammar, please ! "we could find if some RS discovered the very existence of these documents, or even commented them" means "find if some RS discovered them or even find if some RS commented them". And doesn't mean "we could find if some RS discovered them or, otherwise, we could comment them by ourselves". Pldx1 (talk) 22:40, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Katharine Birbalsingh

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I was interested in this discussion by Katharine Birbalsingh, which sees the Arday story in terms of white guilt. Since this is a highly contentious issue, I'd rather leave it to those who have been working here intensively to decide if that goes in the article. But it seems to me that her criticism of Cambridge is rather more relevant and interesting than that of Cofnas. Doric Loon (talk) 11:12, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

She's a crank and that is a YouTube video on her personal YouTube channel. She is just a commentator here. She wasn't centrally involved in the events that the article covers in the way that Cofnas was. There's no RS here, nothing we can use. --DanielRigal (talk) 11:25, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Agreed on all counts. Whynotlol2 (talk) 20:27, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Using the so called "white guilt" to explain why a nine members committee at Cambridge was so unanimous about the Jason Arday's recruitment is what some bloggers are already doing. In some months, the formal inquiries launched at Cambridge will sheed more light on this question. Or maybe not. Pldx1 (talk) 16:49, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article length and WP:SIZERULE

This article is now nearly 12,000 words long, which is a touch short of the standard word limit for a taught master's degree in the UK. Per WP:SIZERULE, this would be too long for most articles, but is definitely too long for this article. This article is concerned with an academic who met WP:NACADEMIC, but was not a household name until the end of July. The reason the article is so large is because we seem have to accumulated references to practically every piece of coverage and public comment since the recent news story broke. The mere fact that some detail, opinion, or biographical fact appears in an WP:RS, does not mean that it automatically has to be discussed in this article.

Making this page navigable and readable can be achieved without spinning off another article. I would be strongly opposed to this. Everything that needs to be said about Jason Arday's life and career, the scandal, and the press coverage, can be said in this article in less than half the current word count. The article should be reduced for the following practical reasons:

• No one is going to read a master's thesis-length article anyway.
• It is difficult for readers to navigate.
• The information they are looking for, that is, the information most salient to their interest in the topic, is buried in vast quantities of extraneous detail.

I am happy to do the work of trimming down the article myself. Input from other editors would also be welcome. Do we agree in principle that this is a good idea? Endymion.12 (talk) 13:44, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

The readable prose size of the actual text itself excluding references is under 8,000 words so it's currently okay per WP:SIZERULE. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:12, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Exact: 44543 characters (6777 words) "readable prose size". Grimes2 15:17, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Excluding references, the prose is still 6,923 words long by my count. I think reduction is due given my reasoning above. Endymion.12 (talk) 15:32, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

i think it's fine, but it shouldn't be any longer. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:38, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

If you're going to cut anything, I would cut Jason_Arday#Possible_implications_for_academia. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:48, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Agreed, though the first paragraph might be rescued and put somewhere else. Equally, do readers who visit this page really want to know about his childhood snooker exploits? Endymion.12 (talk) 16:02, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

As others have pointed out, it's half this length in readable text, so there's no real issue here. I do not agree that it needs to be substantially 'trimmed'. Whynotlol2 (talk) 20:01, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Arday's former mentor

The sentence Simon Woolley, Principal of Homerton College, Cambridge, and Arday's former mentor meets the sourcing criteria, as it relies on at least one reliable source. However, it seems that none of the reliable sources containing this sentence provide any detail about the said mentorship. It is as if *n-1* sources simply mechanically repeated the claims of a single imaginative source. Further details would be welcome. Pldx1 (talk) 10:33, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

What detail were you hoping for? I'm not sure what the relevance would be of going into further granular detail about the mentor/mentee relationship here. What would it add to the article as a whole, in your view? Whynotlol2 (talk) 22:39, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

@Pldx1 if you believe some more detail is required on a topic it behooves you to find reliable secondary sources that address it. Simonm223 (talk) 12:28, 5 October 2026 (UTC)