Where now does Cambridge University turn? How can it ever recover the respect its 817 years of quality higher education have earned it? William Shakespeare, scholarly, but not of a university, is well-placed to ask, as in the Twelfth Night, “Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time, in you?”
Having failed societal expectations indecently rushing to appoint Jason Arday as its ‘youngest ever black professor,’ to elevate itself within diversity, equality and inclusion, the excruciating ‘woke’ elements of today, we can paraphrase Joseph Heller’s ‘Catch 22,’ take on Shakespeare, for in supporting woke policies, maybe “some are born mediocre, some achieve mediocrity, while others have mediocrity thrust upon them.”
Since 1209, this most respected of institutions, now confronted with the consequences of its folly, has found its ramparts threatened, like Jericho, by the clarion call of a public outcry as the consequences of the appointment, ridicule, resignation, and finally, the tragic demise of its “youngest ever black professor”. Even the most ardent calls for ‘reflection,’ in the wake of Arday’s demise, cannot assuage the remorse Cambridge, and the ‘woke establishment,’ like Lady MacBeth, rudely unaware, musing, “Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand,” as, among much hand-wringing, it remains like her, unrepentent, with blood on their hands.
The reality and manner of Arday’s passing should never appease earlier student concern about his lectures, their learning, and their academic ambitions, as he confused his students, while his student supervision, the one-to-one support that keeps students focused and productive, lacked scholarly aptitude and integrity. Yet, Cambridge ignored their complaints, so must be asked, as in Hamlet, “Oh shame, where is thy blush?” Jason Arday will now appear as a tragic fantasist to rival Walter Mitty, the character drawn from James Thurber’s short story, ‘My World – and Welcome to It,’ in which Mitty imagined himself as a fighter pilot, surgeon, and killer, before dying, bravely, in front of a firing squad. There was no firing squad for Arday, though he sought haven, again as in Hamlet, “the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns,” as his only way out.
Trouble looms, as his failings have exposed Cambridge; so enthusiastic were they to achieve primacy in the ‘woke’ universe, they never completed elementary background, scholarly, and employment checks on him before Professor Hillary Cremin went rushing to the media with her gushing pronouncement that “we are so lucky to have you.” She must surely now explain the rationale behind his appointment, and their acceptance of a charlatan in a position of such importance and influence. Was it the piercing black eyes, the intricate dreadlocks, or his beatific complexion? Or was he so indelibly ‘woke,’ and ‘ethnically desirable’?
Cambridge’s duty of care to Arday is not diminished by his demise; their failure is more pointed: All's Well That Ends Well, as Helena says, “Oft expectation fails, and most often, where it promises.” Thus, Cambridge’s, like Romeo’s disappointment at their, “reputation stain’d,” a carbuncle on every thesis, a betrayal of every scholar, an interrogation of every ailment or special need, and the cynical scrutiny of every curriculum vitae, it is not only in academia that Cambridge faces ridicule and disrespect, but throughout academia and society, as in Hamlet, “Use every man after his desert, and who should ‘scape whipping.”
Maybe, as an unattributed source has said, “sometimes we need fantasy to survive the reality,” and maybe this was Arday’s justification, but it is millions of student’s scholarly ambitions that have most unfairly suffered, and Shakespeare again proves apt, in Comedy of Errors, “A wretched soul, bruised with adversity, we bid be quiet when we hear it cry, but were we burden’d with like weight of pain, as much, or more, would ourselves complain.”
All this from one man’s opus, greedily grasped by an institution with so little integrity as to perfectly deny, or at least mitigate, their role within scholarly ambition. From Richard III, Queen Margaret’s: “Foul shame upon you, you have (all) moved mine.” Maybe that’s just how the bard would see Cambridge University today.
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