LBC presenter James O'Brien has said he feels like a mug for defending former Cambridge University professor Jason Arday, who resigned following plagiarism allegations. O'Brien, who previously accused newspapers of studied and deliberate ignominy over their reporting of Arday, said he had a very, very personal reaction to the professor's resignation on Wednesday.
Despite his reaction, O'Brien said he did not feel guilt and suggested that only a racist would have doubted Arday's credibility as a Cambridge professor of sociology of education. Arday had been the university's youngest black incumbent before resigning this week after Cambridge launched an investigation into allegations of plagiarism.
"What's your takeaway here?" O'Brien asked listeners on Friday. "Because mine is very, very personal. I can't separate the personal from the public. I feel like a mug, actually, is the short answer."
O'Brien added that he did not feel guilt or think he should have done differently. "Who would meet a Cambridge professor and immediately start thinking, 'God, I wonder whether you actually deserve to be there?' I certainly wouldn't do that," he said.
O'Brien's Defense and Personal Contact
O'Brien continued by saying that if he were a racist and met a black Cambridge professor, he might have questioned whether the professor deserved to be there, but because he is not a racist, the thought did not cross his mind.
"But it's more the personal contact that I've had with him subsequently that makes me feel like a mug," O'Brien said. "The fact that he thought I was someone that he might be able to persuade to stick up for him when he knew that he'd done wrong."
Fabrication and Thesis Plagiarism Allegations
Since Arday's resignation, details have emerged regarding claims he made about his personal life. In a 2024 book proposal for his memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things, which is scheduled for publication next week, Arday claimed to have survived an unrecoverable accident, locked-in syndrome, and testicular cancer. Those anecdotes did not appear in the final version of the book.
US magazine The Atlantic reported other inconsistencies between the two versions regarding dates and characters. Arday had initially faced allegations that he plagiarised tracts of his PhD thesis from research conducted by another student.
Other claims regarding his personal life also came under scrutiny, including assertions that he ran 600 miles in six days and personally raised millions for charity. He also boasted of appearing in the television series Seven Up, despite the show first broadcasting more than 20 years before his birth in 1985.
Furthermore, academic institutions including the University of Glasgow, Durham University, and Ohio State University in the United States rebuffed Arday's claims to have held academic positions within their institutions.
Cambridge Investigation and Resignation Statement
After Cambridge announced on Wednesday evening that it would investigate Arday's conduct, he resigned from his post as professor. Arday said the storm surrounding his claims had come at a personal cost.
In a statement, Arday said: "While criticism is an inevitable part of academic life, what I have experienced has gone far beyond scholarly disagreement. The relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary have taken a profound toll on me and on those I love."
He added: "This decision should not be interpreted as a loss of faith in scholarship or in the values that first brought me to Cambridge. Nor should it be mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives that have surrounded me. It is simply the decision of someone who has reached the limits of what any person should reasonably be expected to endure."
