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White Guilt Politics Hung Jason Arday Out to Dry · Strictly Education

0:00
SPEAKER_04: In this entire affair, Cambridge has cared about one thing: looking good so that they can escape responsibility.
0:09
SPEAKER_04: Cambridge put A Day forward, and then when the tide turned, they hung him out to dry.
0:15
SPEAKER_04: I think that's a tragedy, to be honest.
0:17
SPEAKER_04: And I think it's racist.
0:25
SPEAKER_04: Hello, and welcome to Strictly Education.
0:28
SPEAKER_04: With me, Casen Bierbel Singh, Britain's strictest headmistress.
0:31
SPEAKER_04: So this episode is about a whole bunch of things.
0:35
SPEAKER_04: I'm going to begin with the tragic story of the Cambridge professor Jason R.
0:39
SPEAKER_04: Day, who is now sadly dead.
0:41
SPEAKER_04: This is a real tragedy, and my heart goes out to his children.
0:45
SPEAKER_04: And then we're going to follow with how white guilt leads to a form of racism, a racism that exists mainly on the political left.
0:53
SPEAKER_04: For example, organizations like Cambridge University or the BBC are so desperate to prove that they're not racist that they stop viewing black people like Jason A.
1:04
SPEAKER_04: Day as actual people and treat them as pawns in a game.
1:09
SPEAKER_04: Now, see, I think this is a form of racism.
1:12
SPEAKER_04: That's the bulk of what I want to talk to you about today.
1:15
SPEAKER_04: And next week, I'm going to do a part two, which will look at how some people are now so angry about the world of DEI, anti-racism, and identity politics.
1:26
SPEAKER_04: And I think that's understandable, that they're now defending arguments that delve into race science.
1:32
SPEAKER_04: And I'm afraid I don't think that's understandable at all.
1:36
SPEAKER_04: We now have a situation where the anger of the left feeds the anger of the right, and vice versa, and then this cycle just continues to rage.
1:43
SPEAKER_04: And my worry is that slowly but surely the conversation moves from being, how do we make sure everyone, whatever their race or religion, lives a fulfilling life?
1:52
SPEAKER_04: And it becomes on the left, surely our positions in society are fixed because of racism, or on the right, it becomes, surely our positions in society are fixed because of biology.
2:06
SPEAKER_04: See, I think the extremes on the left and the right have much more in common than we often think.
2:12
SPEAKER_04: But let's leave that till later.
2:14
SPEAKER_04: So, about Jason Ade.
2:16
SPEAKER_04: You'll almost certainly have heard how Jason Arde, who became a professor at 37, was the youngest black professor and actually one of the youngest professors of all time at Cambridge University.
2:26
SPEAKER_04: He was in headlines starting in 2023, and it wasn't just for his position at Cambridge.
2:31
SPEAKER_04: He had five honorary degrees from five different universities.
2:35
SPEAKER_04: He won an Inspirational Person of the Year award.
2:39
SPEAKER_04: There were many documentaries about him.
2:42
SPEAKER_04: And the thing that everyone talked about wasn't a book he'd written or some pioneering research.
2:47
SPEAKER_04: It was his incredible backstory, his identity.
2:51
SPEAKER_04: So both Cambridge and the BBC pushed him forward into the TV screens in a way that I haven't seen with any professor or academic ever before.
3:01
SPEAKER_04: Here's one example.
3:15
SPEAKER_01: Professor Jason Arday was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the age of three.
3:20
SPEAKER_01: He couldn't speak until he was 11, and read or write until he was 18.
3:25
SPEAKER_04: He couldn't speak until 11, and he couldn't read or write until 18.
3:29
SPEAKER_04: Yet he's a professor at Cambridge, one of the highest academic institutions in the world.
3:36
SPEAKER_04: How extraordinary.
3:39
SPEAKER_04: Actually, there were a lot of incredible claims in his backstory.
3:43
SPEAKER_04: Jason Ade once ran 600 miles in six days.
3:47
SPEAKER_04: He ran 30 marathons in 35 days, breaking his leg part way through, and running the last nine of these marathons with his leg swollen to double its normal size.
3:58
SPEAKER_04: He also had a semi-professional football career.
4:01
SPEAKER_04: He had a brain tumor operation right before finishing his PhD, and then a mini stroke.
4:06
SPEAKER_04: So he had to relearn everything just before his final examination.
4:11
SPEAKER_04: Separately, he was hit by a car and developed locked-in syndrome where he couldn't move, and so he nearly had his life support turned off.
4:20
SPEAKER_04: He claimed to have experienced threats, racism, and had a pig's head sent to his home, but he kept on going.
4:27
SPEAKER_04: He also claimed to have raised five million pounds for charity.
4:31
SPEAKER_04: He said he traveled to America and Africa to install water pumps for water aid.
4:37
SPEAKER_04: He claimed to have been in the TV show Seven Up as a child.
4:40
SPEAKER_04: These are just some of the claims that were made.
4:43
SPEAKER_04: Jason R.
4:43
SPEAKER_04: Day's biography included a lot of stuff that should make most of us pause and think, could all of this really be true?
4:52
SPEAKER_04: And yet, the BBC and Cambridge University not only never questioned any of these claims, but they highlighted them and told the entire world about them.
5:03
SPEAKER_04: Everything in his story fit the pattern that makes a progressive white middle class person feel warm and fuzzy.
5:12
SPEAKER_04: So the reason things changed was because of allegations that Ade's PhD was plagiarized.
5:19
SPEAKER_04: It's suggested that his PhD allegedly had something like a hundred passages taken from another scholar.
5:26
SPEAKER_04: And then an academic called Nathan Kaufness went public about him.
5:31
SPEAKER_09: This is a story of corruption, uh, of people who knew the truth and cover and covered it up.
5:39
SPEAKER_09: Look, there are uh pages and pages of pages of verbatim copied text.
5:44
SPEAKER_09: That's not uh there's no norm uh in academia uh according to which this is remotely acceptable.
5:51
SPEAKER_09: And even if uh you uh ignored the plagiarism, there's still a scandal here because the work that isn't plagiarized is uh uh of such abysmal quality that uh it really raises questions about um why he was hired and protected up to this point.
6:14
SPEAKER_04: Now, what makes the story so complicated is that Nathan Kaufnas himself isn't just a normal academic.
6:20
SPEAKER_04: He was an academic formally sacked from Cambridge for expressing views that they considered racist.
6:26
SPEAKER_04: Here he is back in 2024.
6:29
SPEAKER_10: So there are um uh population differences um in the uh means and distributions of uh scores on intelligence tests.
6:41
SPEAKER_07: So you're you're really saying your research prompts you to believe that in a meritocratic world, black people would only excel in sport and entertainment?
6:51
SPEAKER_10: Well, that that was not my quote.
6:52
SPEAKER_10: Uh and in fact, that's that's a false claim obviously a false claim.
6:57
SPEAKER_10: Well, I have the blog here.
6:58
SPEAKER_07: I'm in a meritocracy, Harvard referring to Harvard, the university will be recruited from the best of the best students, which means the number of black professors would approach 0%.
7:07
SPEAKER_07: Blacks would disappear from all whole profile positions outside of sports and entertainment.
7:11
SPEAKER_07: Doctor, I can read on.
7:13
SPEAKER_07: I've got it in front of me.
7:14
SPEAKER_10: Right.
7:14
SPEAKER_10: Okay, so you I I think you left out an almost there.
7:18
SPEAKER_07: Blacks would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment.
7:22
SPEAKER_04: This is what people call race science or being a race realist.
7:26
SPEAKER_04: Nathan Kafnas calls himself a race realist, and so for some, that makes him, well, a bit of a racist.
7:34
SPEAKER_04: And to be frank, I don't think those people are wrong.
7:37
SPEAKER_04: And it was Kafnas who broke the Jason A.
7:40
SPEAKER_04: Day plagiarism story.
7:43
SPEAKER_04: Now, this is when the story exploded into two different directions, okay?
7:47
SPEAKER_04: Some left-leaning people said the only reason anyone is questioning Jason A.
7:51
SPEAKER_04: Day is because they're racist.
7:52
SPEAKER_04: I mean, just look at Nathan Kafnas and his views on race.
7:56
SPEAKER_04: Then you had some more right-leaning people, but not exclusively right-leaning people, saying, Well, hang on, hang on.
8:03
SPEAKER_04: Well, there's actually a lot more evidence uh that suggests that, well, perhaps there was something dodgy about some of R.
8:10
SPEAKER_04: Day's claims.
8:11
SPEAKER_04: But from the point of view of some people, asking questions about R.
8:15
SPEAKER_04: Day was evidence of racism.
8:17
SPEAKER_04: Simple.
8:18
SPEAKER_04: Here's Black Studies Professor Kehende Andrews.
8:21
SPEAKER_11: This is a smear because underlying this, it's not, oh, we found someone who may be cheated.
8:28
SPEAKER_11: The underlying argument here is he proves that DEI hires are happening and undermining education.
8:35
SPEAKER_11: This is true because he's black, because the actual underlying thing here is that he's not supposed to be there.
8:39
SPEAKER_11: He can't have black people at Cambridge.
8:40
SPEAKER_11: It's only news because he's black because they don't think we should be there.
8:44
SPEAKER_04: He's saying that white people just can't handle black excellence.
8:49
SPEAKER_04: They have to find an excuse to delegitimize a successful black guy like Jason Arde.
8:55
SPEAKER_04: There was this momentum of people saying, look, they're only criticizing Jason Arde because they're racist.
9:02
SPEAKER_04: This was spearheaded by both white and black progressive commentators.
9:06
SPEAKER_04: The Good Law Project also put out a statement to defend Jason Arde against the racism of the media.
9:13
SPEAKER_04: Stand in solidarity with Jason Arde.
9:15
SPEAKER_04: Right-wing newspapers are trying to smear him with fake accusations.
9:19
SPEAKER_04: And then there was the other side of the argument that slowly grew.
9:24
SPEAKER_04: This side was saying, hold on, there's more to this than just the PhD plagiarism.
9:29
SPEAKER_04: This man has told a lot of lies, and we're pretending that these lies are real.
9:34
SPEAKER_04: When it's obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense, these claims can't all be true.
9:41
SPEAKER_04: Him being mute, people from his primary school said he seemed like a normal kid who made jokes and spoke like everyone else.
9:47
SPEAKER_04: His semi-miraculous athletic feats, experts said his running achievements would make him close to a world record-holding athlete.
9:55
SPEAKER_04: His charity stuff, well, it turns out that was all a bit sketchy too.
9:59
SPEAKER_04: Charities like WaterAid, well, they say they don't send volunteers abroad to install pumps, and no one could find records that matched the millions raised for charity.
10:09
SPEAKER_04: And as for receiving a pig's head and having experienced all this racist abuse, the police said the account he gave to the press was categorically incorrect.
10:18
SPEAKER_04: The TV show he was in, it started decades before he was born and never included him.
10:23
SPEAKER_04: This was culminated in the same people who had been pushing Jason Ade onto the TV screens, slowly withdrawing their unwavering support.
10:32
SPEAKER_04: Because at this point, it was pretty obvious that these claims couldn't all be true.
10:37
SPEAKER_04: First, Cambridge announced an investigation.
10:39
SPEAKER_04: Then, Arde resigned.
10:41
SPEAKER_04: Shortly after, tragically and awfully, he was found dead, with the assumption being that he had taken his own life.
10:49
SPEAKER_04: We should be clear that this is genuinely devastating.
10:52
SPEAKER_04: Jason Arde's children have to grow up without their father.
10:56
SPEAKER_04: But this story really isn't about Jason Arday.
10:58
SPEAKER_04: It's more about Cambridge and about some of our elite institutions.
11:02
SPEAKER_04: You can make up your own mind, of course.
11:04
SPEAKER_04: For me, it's clear he was a bit of a fantasist.
11:08
SPEAKER_04: But it's also true that there are a lot of people who make up stuff or who try to appear a certain way to look good.
11:14
SPEAKER_04: People of all races and of all backgrounds.
11:17
SPEAKER_04: It's just that normally fantasists are not professors at one of the top universities in the world.
11:23
SPEAKER_04: That is the issue.
11:24
SPEAKER_04: A good question is why Jason A.
11:27
SPEAKER_04: Day was elevated to this position in the first place.
11:29
SPEAKER_04: Now, if you listen to Cambridge academics in recent weeks, that's not a question we should be looking at at all.
11:35
SPEAKER_04: For example, we've had headlines like this: Cambridge Chancellor criticizes racist feeding frenzy.
11:43
SPEAKER_04: Even Impermex Kendi, all the way from America, said, this was a lynching, a murder.
11:49
SPEAKER_04: He said, when white academics are accused of plagiarism, there's only one article on them.
11:54
SPEAKER_04: When it's a black scholar, there are over 200.
11:57
SPEAKER_04: His explanation is simple: this is racism.
12:01
SPEAKER_04: The conversation then evolved, with some saying we need to restrict the press, take away journalistic freedom.
12:07
SPEAKER_04: The press was to blame.
12:09
SPEAKER_04: And more importantly, they said that the media focus was because of racism.
12:13
SPEAKER_04: Let's listen to Lord Woolley, an equalities campaigner and principal of a Cambridge College.
12:18
SPEAKER_11: When he arrived at Cambridge, I was the happiest man in the world.
12:24
SPEAKER_11: But from that moment on, the dogs of hell started on Jason Arday.
12:32
SPEAKER_11: Because they couldn't handle a black man.
12:38
SPEAKER_08: A loving man.
12:40
SPEAKER_08: A decent human being.
12:45
SPEAKER_08: To be in a place like that.
12:49
SPEAKER_04: So you can see that sign.
12:50
SPEAKER_04: The media is responsible for the death of Jason Arde.
12:53
SPEAKER_04: Lord Woolley ends by saying there needs to be some reckoning.
12:56
SPEAKER_04: Diane Abbott, a Labour MP, says we need to fight for justice.
13:01
SPEAKER_04: Later Woolley says that this was a public assassination.
13:04
SPEAKER_04: This has led to some politicians suggesting we need an inquiry into the press.
13:09
SPEAKER_04: There are open letters signed by leaders of political parties, MPs, and academics demanding a government-funded investigation.
13:17
SPEAKER_04: Here's what they said.
13:18
SPEAKER_04: There cannot be any doubt that Dr.
13:20
SPEAKER_04: Arde's tragic death was the direct, foreseeable, and foreseen result of press harassment.
13:27
SPEAKER_04: A significant element in that harassment was the color of his skin.
13:31
SPEAKER_04: Self-regulation of the press has comprehensively failed.
13:36
SPEAKER_04: Here's Jolian Mom, the barrister who founded the Good Law Project, repeating the accusation that the press is basically guilty of murder and saying people should support his petition to regulate the press.
14:23
SPEAKER_03: My friends, I am asking you, I am begging you to sign the open letter.
14:29
SPEAKER_03: The link is in my bio to the Prime Minister.
14:32
SPEAKER_03: The letter asks the Prime Minister to hold an immediate public inquiry into the role that the press played in the tragic, tragic death of our friend Professor Arde.
14:44
SPEAKER_04: There have also been calls for Arde's law with suggestions we should legally limit how many articles can be written about someone.
14:53
SPEAKER_04: No one has ever explained how the British government might stop international news outlets, or indeed independent international podcasters, from commenting on British issues, as they did many times in this case.
15:07
SPEAKER_04: Or if we need to restrict people discussing news stories on social media, too.
15:13
SPEAKER_04: But more importantly, I want to come back to the statement made by the Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.
15:19
SPEAKER_04: He said that the real issue is the racism of the media and a story, nothing to see here.
15:26
SPEAKER_04: But that's just not true.
15:28
SPEAKER_04: There are two forms of racism in this story, and neither of them has anything to do with the press.
15:33
SPEAKER_04: One form of racism is the very small minority of people whose interest in this story is because they think certain races are less capable than others.
15:43
SPEAKER_04: The other form of racism is demonstrated by progressive, guilty, mostly white elites who think in exactly the same way because black people aren't capable.
15:54
SPEAKER_04: We all have to lie and pretend that black people might be capable.
16:00
SPEAKER_04: This is the racism of white guilt.
16:04
SPEAKER_04: Here is academic writer Shelby Steele, a great man who first introduced me to the concept many years ago.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: White guilt is not real guilt at all.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: White guilt is the anxiety that whites carry in American life because they know they are being prejudged on the basis of their race as whites.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: And as whites, they're automatically, reflexively seen as racist.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: And so whites are driven when the race problem comes up, they're not driven to fix the problem.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: They're driven to get that anxiety out of their life.
16:53
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, exactly.
16:55
SPEAKER_04: So what Shelby Steele is saying is that white guilt means white people feel privileged.
17:01
SPEAKER_04: And that anxiety about being privileged means that they don't look to be honest or look to fix problems.
17:08
SPEAKER_04: Instead, white people ask, What do I need to do to get rid of this anxiety?
17:13
SPEAKER_04: Right?
17:13
SPEAKER_04: This creates a politics of performance for some liberal white people where they appear to care about minorities, but it's actually more about being self-centered.
17:24
SPEAKER_04: Here's one example.
17:26
SPEAKER_03: Today of all days is very much a day for white people to listen and not to speak.
17:35
SPEAKER_04: White people need to listen and not speak.
17:37
SPEAKER_04: I mean, this is ridiculous.
17:39
SPEAKER_04: And then not only that, but he goes on to speak.
17:41
SPEAKER_04: So this is Jolion Mom, the same guy saying we should restrict the freedom of the press.
17:48
SPEAKER_04: So let's talk about Cambridge, currently leading the charge in telling the press and the country how racist we all are.
17:56
SPEAKER_04: I suggest they look at themselves and do the work.
18:00
SPEAKER_04: In this entire affair, Cambridge has cared about one thing looking good so that they can escape responsibility.
18:10
SPEAKER_04: Cambridge put R.
18:11
SPEAKER_04: Day forward, and then when the tide turned, they hung him out to dry.
18:16
SPEAKER_04: We got stories like this.
18:18
SPEAKER_04: Cambridge University describes appointment of plagiarism Professor Jason R.
18:23
SPEAKER_04: Day as an aberration and launches full investigation.
18:28
SPEAKER_04: So that implies that this is only about one guy who let down everyone else by lying.
18:34
SPEAKER_04: But that's simply not true.
18:36
SPEAKER_04: Cambridge used Ar Day as a scapegoat to avoid looking at the DEI culture that they have at their university.
18:43
SPEAKER_04: Again, Jason R.
18:45
SPEAKER_04: Day is just a guy who hasn't told the truth.
18:48
SPEAKER_04: There are loads of people like that.
18:50
SPEAKER_04: Some people are fantasists.
18:52
SPEAKER_04: The issue is that they're not normally appointed to professorships at Cambridge.
18:57
SPEAKER_04: They aren't normally put forward for interviews for television channels all over the world to talk about how much Cambridge has changed.
19:05
SPEAKER_04: Cambridge did this to Ade because all they care about is looking good.
19:11
SPEAKER_04: When The Guardian asked Arde about some of this, his response was, to be honest with you, I just thought you'd believe me.
19:20
SPEAKER_04: He thought this because everyone did just believe him.
19:24
SPEAKER_04: And when people say this only happened to this poor man because he's black, they're right.
19:30
SPEAKER_04: He was put forward because Cambridge wanted to present this image of a black neurodivergent man.
19:37
SPEAKER_04: Why was he so high profile?
19:39
SPEAKER_04: Cambridge made him high profile because that was the point.
19:43
SPEAKER_04: For years, Cambridge was criticized for not having enough black students.
19:48
SPEAKER_04: This is a Guardian headline.
19:50
SPEAKER_04: Cambridge University's poor diversity record, highlighted by report.
19:56
SPEAKER_04: Here's another.
20:24
SPEAKER_04: How do we help disadvantaged kids access equal opportunity?
20:27
SPEAKER_04: Make the tough but necessary changes on the ground in schools and at home to enable better social mobility.
20:35
SPEAKER_04: That might have been, well, I don't know, what the Faculty of Education at Cambridge could have focused on.
20:42
SPEAKER_04: Looked at high-performing schools and given support to spreading their methods?
20:47
SPEAKER_04: But no, that's hard.
20:49
SPEAKER_04: What's much easier to do is to just patronize black people by saying, don't worry, we're diverse now.
20:58
SPEAKER_04: If you don't believe me, go and read what Cambridge put out when they appointed him.
21:02
SPEAKER_04: Youngest ever black person, autism, neurodivergent, lower socioeconomic background, inclusivity.
21:13
SPEAKER_04: One of the academics appointing Jason Ade literally said Ade would help with addressing the underrepresentation of people from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, especially those from black, Asian, and other minority ethnic communities.
21:30
SPEAKER_04: So that's strange to me.
21:32
SPEAKER_04: That is very strange because normally a professor is there for high-level research.
21:38
SPEAKER_04: They aren't there to help with your recruitment drives.
21:41
SPEAKER_04: Why was this pressure being put on Ade's shoulders?
21:45
SPEAKER_04: If you compare Ade's announcement to Cambridge's announcements for other academics, most don't have any press release.
21:53
SPEAKER_04: Apparently, there were five other black professors at Cambridge.
21:56
SPEAKER_04: Do we even know who they are?
21:59
SPEAKER_04: No.
22:00
SPEAKER_04: That's because they were appointed for expertise and achievement in their respective fields, like all the other professors.
22:07
SPEAKER_04: What Cambridge will have posted about them is a lot of dry information about their academic work.
22:13
SPEAKER_04: Because they're academics.
22:15
SPEAKER_04: The truth is, is that there was a condescending approach which saw Arde's role as different precisely because he was black, neurodiverse, and working class.
22:24
SPEAKER_04: Here's Professor Hilary Kremen, head of the Faculty of Education at Cambridge.
22:30
SPEAKER_05: The Board of Electors on your interview day were absolutely unanimous.
22:35
SPEAKER_05: We are so lucky to have you.
22:38
SPEAKER_05: You are the best in the world in terms of the research that you do.
22:43
SPEAKER_04: The best in the world.
22:44
SPEAKER_04: That was his boss, the head of faculty in one of the most famous education departments in the entire world.
22:53
SPEAKER_04: Does she know what she's doing in that moment?
22:56
SPEAKER_04: It's like he's an object to her.
22:59
SPEAKER_04: Jason R.
23:00
SPEAKER_04: Day was a spiritual atonement project for her own white guilt and for Cambridge's white guilt.
23:05
SPEAKER_04: Even the specifics of his personal story, which he was hammered over, loads of it was basically a vulnerable guy embellishing his story to make it fit the narrative that appeals to white, progressive liberals.
23:19
SPEAKER_04: Jason Ade was not, as so many people assume, this calculating, twisted individual rubbing his hands together to fool us all.
23:29
SPEAKER_04: He did as he was told by his Cambridge bosses, as he was encouraged to do, and rewarded for doing it.
23:37
SPEAKER_04: Lots of critical theorists write about how white people fetishize exotic foreign cultures in ways which are dehumanizing.
23:46
SPEAKER_04: The Jason A.
23:48
SPEAKER_04: Day tragedy is an example of just this.
23:51
SPEAKER_04: Way back in the 1920s, the African-American actress and dancer Josephine Baker had a dance that involved her performing with just bananas for her skirt.
24:01
SPEAKER_04: That's what the critical theorists are talking about.
24:03
SPEAKER_04: The idea is that she's doing a dance designed to appeal to a certain type of white desire and white perception of African culture.
24:13
SPEAKER_04: So what I'm saying here is that there is a similar, disgusting, and patronizing thing that happens with white guilt in the modern world.
24:21
SPEAKER_04: And that's what happened to Jason Ade.
24:23
SPEAKER_04: You have liberal-leaning white people who believe they are privileged and want to show that they aren't the oppressor.
24:32
SPEAKER_04: The single easiest way to do that is to demonstrate that you are a patron or supporter of the oppressed or downtrodden.
24:41
SPEAKER_04: That kind of white liberal doesn't like independent-minded or conservative-leaning black people.
24:46
SPEAKER_04: Those white liberals want black people whose story fits the mold of the downtrodden because that way they can feel like they're a bit of a savior.
24:56
SPEAKER_04: They're a good person.
24:57
SPEAKER_04: They're like Jesus going to the lepers.
25:00
SPEAKER_04: That is what those academics were doing in Cambridge.
25:04
SPEAKER_04: They liked Arde's story because it ticked all of the boxes.
25:08
SPEAKER_04: It was the right type of dance that they needed to feel good about themselves.
25:14
SPEAKER_04: In the U.S., Glenn Lowry, Thomas Sowell, and Roland Fryer all have backstories of coming from poverty as black men before rising to the highest levels of academia.
25:26
SPEAKER_04: Not one of them is celebrated by white liberals.
25:29
SPEAKER_04: This is because none of them expresses the opinion that fits the white liberal sensitivities.
25:36
SPEAKER_04: Roland Fryer produced research which suggests that police aren't actually more likely to shoot black people.
25:42
SPEAKER_04: Glenn Lowry is conservative-leaning and highly critical of race identity politics.
25:48
SPEAKER_04: Thomas Sowell argues that affirmative action is bad for black people and criticizes the left for obsessing over discrimination rather than addressing culture or personal agency.
25:59
SPEAKER_04: It's because these men have those views that they aren't celebrated by the progressives in the same way.
26:05
SPEAKER_04: The reason these men are known is because their scholarship in the domain of race politics speaks for itself.
26:13
SPEAKER_04: Now, of course, there are other black professors, both in the US and in the UK, but they aren't being held up by the progressive establishment.
26:21
SPEAKER_04: Why?
26:22
SPEAKER_04: Because they're just simply scholars getting on with academic excellence.
26:26
SPEAKER_04: Let's take one example.
26:27
SPEAKER_04: Professor Franklin Iberio.
26:30
SPEAKER_04: He's a chemistry professor.
26:32
SPEAKER_04: Why is he not the subject of documentaries?
26:34
SPEAKER_04: Well, I would suggest it's because his main thing is chemistry.
26:39
SPEAKER_04: The more a black academic talks about black things, the more palatable they are within white guilt politics.
26:45
SPEAKER_04: The less they talk about black things, the less interested we all are.
26:51
SPEAKER_04: And this isn't just one university.
26:53
SPEAKER_04: This is the BBC too.
26:55
SPEAKER_04: Public institutions.
26:56
SPEAKER_04: It's a lot of people, a lot of white people.
26:59
SPEAKER_04: The truth is that white guilt undermines black people in a lot of ways.
27:04
SPEAKER_04: Let's listen to Kaisen Assiedou.
27:08
SPEAKER_02: And you know who suffers?
27:09
SPEAKER_02: The black people who are the best.
27:12
SPEAKER_02: Not just Met the Bar, the best.
27:14
SPEAKER_02: Because now there's an asterisk on their achievement.
27:18
SPEAKER_02: Now, a suspicion that would have been irrational under a merit-based system becomes rational under the new system.
27:26
SPEAKER_02: And in Jason Arde's case, black academics had private concerns about his competence.
27:31
SPEAKER_02: To quote Afuya Hirsch from The Guardian, the fact is that many of Arde's black peers in academic sociology have been voicing concerns about him for a while.
27:41
SPEAKER_02: He seemed to them to have come out of nowhere.
27:44
SPEAKER_02: His performance at high-profile academic events did not match the credentials that were being touted.
27:50
SPEAKER_02: They did not voice them publicly because we all know that, whatever the truth or the outcome, he would be unlikely to be treated fairly and we would all be damaged in the process.
28:01
SPEAKER_04: So what's being said there is that legitimate racists exist who want to say that black people just aren't very clever.
28:08
SPEAKER_04: And what White Guilt in Cambridge have done is create a situation where top black academics cannot speak out because they know it'll be seized upon.
28:18
SPEAKER_04: And that's because Cambridge has been so keen to show that they are diverse.
28:23
SPEAKER_04: Cambridge has put forward academics specifically to prove how diverse the university is.
28:29
SPEAKER_04: The result?
28:31
SPEAKER_04: There's now a question mark over the head of any black academic that wouldn't have been there otherwise.
28:38
SPEAKER_04: There's a bunch of other ways that white guilt hurts black people.
28:42
SPEAKER_04: When I tell the children at Michaela to apply to Cambridge and they get in, that should signpost to them and to the other kids at school that they're excellent scholars.
28:53
SPEAKER_04: But now, maybe it isn't a sign of their excellence.
28:57
SPEAKER_04: It might be instead that Cambridge is shoehorning inner city black and brown kids into the university.
29:03
SPEAKER_04: That uncertainty?
29:05
SPEAKER_04: Cambridge did that.
29:07
SPEAKER_04: But there's also a harm caused, which damages everyone.
29:12
SPEAKER_04: Once it becomes more important for a university to prove that they're not oppressors over being academically brilliant, once it becomes more important that they be seen to be fighting white privilege over publishing articles and books, they devalue education in general and stop doing what they're meant to be doing, which is pursuing academic excellence.
29:37
SPEAKER_04: This hurts all of us.
29:38
SPEAKER_04: Here's Max Klinger, a young man who studied sociology at Cambridge.
29:44
SPEAKER_06: For one more jewel, I wrote a lengthy essay about how cultural products like kids' cartoons and jazz songs serve as instruments of capitalist oppression.
29:51
SPEAKER_06: I got top mark on that paper despite knowing at the time I was essentially writing complete bollocks.
29:55
SPEAKER_06: While studying for another paper, I had a debate with an eminent anthropologist because she argued we should believe and shouldn't question native tribes' beliefs that they could perform magic and do other things like fly through the trees.
30:06
SPEAKER_06: For a different course, I read long research papers which argued that the fact that black kids are excluded from schools more than white kids proves systemic racism exists in education.
30:15
SPEAKER_06: Crucially, they ignored the fact that white kids are excluded more than certain East Asian groups like Japanese kids, a statistic which, applying the exact same logic, would suggest that the education system is systemically biased in favor of Japanese kids, which it obviously isn't.
30:28
SPEAKER_06: Something that was held up as proof of the existence of this largely imaginary racism was that teachers tell kids not to use booming voices in the classroom, not to put their heads up, and not to wear their trousers down below their pants.
30:39
SPEAKER_04: Okay, so you might think he's exaggerating, but he isn't.
30:43
SPEAKER_04: I speak to new teachers all the time, and their stories match his.
30:46
SPEAKER_04: This guy, Max, is just coming out and publicly saying what he learned at university because he's fed up.
30:53
SPEAKER_04: But I want to go into some of the specifics of what Max Klinger said.
30:57
SPEAKER_04: So, at Cambridge University, Max was told that racism is when schools tell children to take their hoods down or tell boys to pull their trousers up.
31:10
SPEAKER_04: Now, to be clear, I tell my staff to tell the kids that they should put their hoods down and pull their trousers up.
31:19
SPEAKER_04: Why hoods down?
31:20
SPEAKER_04: So they look polite and not intimidating.
31:23
SPEAKER_04: Why not show your underwear?
31:24
SPEAKER_04: Well, because I want my kids to have self-respect.
31:28
SPEAKER_04: Do the lecturers at Cambridge walk with their underwear showing and their trousers down?
31:35
SPEAKER_04: No.
31:36
SPEAKER_04: My school Michaela is pretty good at getting black and brown kids to get the top grades, the sort of grades required to actually get in to the top academic institutions.
31:47
SPEAKER_04: We're also good at teaching them to take responsibility, including for their appearance, so that they might actually go to somewhere like Cambridge one day.
31:56
SPEAKER_04: It's almost as if having high standards for all kids, by the way, this isn't just an inner city thing, might actually be part of what would help them get into Cambridge.
32:08
SPEAKER_04: Yet, Cambridge pushes the idea that lowering standards is the way to go, because raising standards is somehow racist.
32:17
SPEAKER_04: It's racist to tell someone not to shout or to put their hood down.
32:22
SPEAKER_04: Now, if you ask Cambridge, why is it that white working class kids who are statistically more likely to fail their exams and be excluded in this country than black or brown kids, why don't they seem to be a priority at all?
32:38
SPEAKER_04: There's no obvious answer from Cambridge.
32:41
SPEAKER_04: I'll give you the answer.
32:43
SPEAKER_04: It's white guilt.
32:45
SPEAKER_04: So now let's look at the opinions and positions that Cambridge seemed to be far more comfortable with.
32:51
SPEAKER_04: Take Dr.
32:52
SPEAKER_04: Farah Ahmed, also a professor at Cambridge in education, responsible for training our teachers.
32:59
SPEAKER_04: So here's some investigative reporting from Andrew Gilligan in The Spectator on her academic output and views.
33:07
SPEAKER_04: She's a former supporter of a prescribed terrorist group.
33:11
SPEAKER_04: She has condemned democracy and integration.
33:15
SPEAKER_04: A pamphlet she co-authored talks about plans for a fully Islamic education system.
33:21
SPEAKER_04: And I quote, nothing will be contained within the curriculum that contradicts Islam, such as the teaching of the ideas of freedom, nationalism, democracy, or evolution in a positive light.
33:36
SPEAKER_04: In another section, co-written by her, it reportedly says, the motivation for studying computer technology would be to elevate the Islamic society and to produce advanced weaponry for jihad in order that the deen, Islam, may dominate over all other deans as commanded by the creator.
34:01
SPEAKER_04: Now, I should say she co-wrote this some time ago.
34:05
SPEAKER_04: Maybe she'll tell me that she doesn't think this way now.
34:09
SPEAKER_04: The point isn't her.
34:10
SPEAKER_04: The point is that that stuff isn't concerning to Cambridge.
34:15
SPEAKER_04: Telling boys to pull up their trousers, that is concerning to Cambridge.
34:20
SPEAKER_04: So what's going on here?
34:22
SPEAKER_04: Are you seeing the pattern?
34:24
SPEAKER_04: Farah Ahmed's views are fine because she's non-Western and is criticizing the Imperial West.
34:30
SPEAKER_04: When Cambridge supports this, they stop looking like nasty imperialists.
34:35
SPEAKER_04: And that's what they care about.
34:37
SPEAKER_04: They care about what they look like.
34:38
SPEAKER_04: They want to solve their problem of white guilt.
34:41
SPEAKER_04: They want to show that they're standing with the oppressed, the non-Western group.
34:47
SPEAKER_04: The idea that you should correct children's behavior or tell them to put their hood down and pull their trousers up, well, if you allow that, it'll mean that some white teachers, who are the oppressors, of course, will tell some black and brown kids who are the oppressed that they're being naughty.
35:07
SPEAKER_04: That doesn't make Cambridge feel good.
35:09
SPEAKER_04: That doesn't sort out Cambridge's white guilt, nor does it deal with their anxiety.
35:15
SPEAKER_04: White guilt is a genuine problem.
35:18
SPEAKER_04: Look, it isn't the only problem here.
35:21
SPEAKER_04: In a future episode, I want to address the problems that exist on the far right: race science and race realism.
35:27
SPEAKER_04: There just isn't room for that today, I'm afraid.
35:30
SPEAKER_04: But what I don't think many people understand is that white guilt is also a form of racism, which keeps children from non-white backgrounds and white backgrounds poorer and worse educated than they should be.
35:43
SPEAKER_04: And it is way more influential than race science.
35:46
SPEAKER_04: Way more influential.
35:48
SPEAKER_04: It has a much bigger impact on our universities and how our politicians think.
35:53
SPEAKER_04: And yes, it also hurts white kids, by the way, because universities, the civil service, all sorts of institutions don't care so much about white working class underachiev.
36:03
SPEAKER_04: That isn't a priority because it doesn't fit with white guilt.
36:07
SPEAKER_04: Now, earlier we saw Professor Hilary Krimin, the head of the Faculty of Education at Cambridge.
36:13
SPEAKER_04: What opinions does she have for how we should transform young lives?
36:17
SPEAKER_04: One of them is that we should have every teacher trained in restorative justice.
36:23
SPEAKER_04: Restorative justice basically means don't punish children, have them talk about their feelings instead.
36:29
SPEAKER_04: Here she is.
36:38
SPEAKER_05: Schools are uh expelling uh pupils who don't make them look good in uh league tables.
36:47
SPEAKER_04: She's worried about some institutions doing things to look good.
36:52
SPEAKER_04: Fancy that.
36:53
SPEAKER_04: She doesn't like that schools do things like expelling pupils, which she thinks they do in order to make their results and therefore the school look good.
37:02
SPEAKER_04: So, setting aside whether that is actually true, it is interesting that at no point has she wondered whether she might look closer to home for when people or organizations prioritize looking good.
37:17
SPEAKER_04: Now, that was her about 10 years ago.
37:19
SPEAKER_04: And actually, a lot of schools have listened to this sort of thing, in part because that's how we train our teachers now.
37:25
SPEAKER_04: We should have restorative approaches, no punishments if one boy punches another.
37:31
SPEAKER_04: Well, you don't punish him.
37:33
SPEAKER_04: Just get him to talk about his feelings and what made him hit someone else.
37:38
SPEAKER_04: To take one example, Scotland adopted restorative justice approaches, the exact philosophy Hillary Cremen has been advocating for years now.
37:47
SPEAKER_04: And then Scotland started getting headlines like this: Teachers constantly on alert as violence soars.
37:55
SPEAKER_04: Here's one teacher.
37:57
SPEAKER_04: Two boys marched into my classroom and basically squared up to me.
38:01
SPEAKER_04: I told them to get out of my classroom.
38:03
SPEAKER_04: They did, and I closed my door.
38:05
SPEAKER_04: They then proceeded to kick my door down.
38:08
SPEAKER_04: We've had instances where we've had fireworks fired at teachers inside the school building.
38:14
SPEAKER_04: Now you'll notice that what Hilary Kremen has been arguing for, and plenty of schools have done, fits the same logic as white guilt.
38:23
SPEAKER_04: Telling kids off?
38:24
SPEAKER_04: It makes you feel bad, like you're the oppressor.
38:28
SPEAKER_04: When classrooms then become violent and children aren't safe, that doesn't matter so much.
38:34
SPEAKER_04: What matters is being able to look good and to feel good.
38:38
SPEAKER_04: What's she been saying recently?
38:40
SPEAKER_04: Her latest project is about rewilding education, where we have kids doing more mindfulness and walking through trees.
38:50
SPEAKER_04: I wonder how much time she spent studying the schools in the inner city that actually turned things around.
38:56
SPEAKER_04: Not so much.
39:00
SPEAKER_04: Instead, Kremen has recently done rebellious research using dance as part of training with graduate students.
39:09
SPEAKER_04: In one passage, she says that with a research student, we danced our academic trajectories in a form of embodied conversation, circling around each other, moving in and away, connecting and disconnecting, as we expressed our hopes and fears for the future of academia.
39:30
SPEAKER_04: This stuff is published in academic journals.
39:33
SPEAKER_04: This is what we're getting from the leading people in charge of training the next generation to transform the lives of our children.
39:42
SPEAKER_04: Someone who has never run a school or delivered anything, but wants to tell us about their dancing?
39:48
SPEAKER_04: Have you ever heard that black people are the best dancers?
39:52
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
39:53
SPEAKER_04: Well, at my school, Michaela, we do lots of maths and science.
39:57
SPEAKER_04: Do you know what black mums who come to visit my school say?
40:00
SPEAKER_04: How can you help me get my boy to stay out of trouble?
40:03
SPEAKER_04: How can you help me get him to be polite?
40:07
SPEAKER_04: How can you help him get good grades and work hard so that he can look after our family?
40:12
SPEAKER_04: Do you know what they don't say?
40:15
SPEAKER_04: I want him dancing his academic trajectory and walking through the woods to meditate on how to stay out of a gang.
40:23
SPEAKER_04: Now I know this because this is what I've done my whole life.
40:27
SPEAKER_04: But these professors aren't interested in the ordinary mums like that.
40:31
SPEAKER_04: They aren't interested because they're prioritizing at every turn whatever makes guilty white liberal progressives feel good about themselves.
40:41
SPEAKER_04: And when someone like me comes along and says, I've spent my whole life working in the inner city with these kids and training teachers so that we can give these kids the same opportunities as privileged private school kids, these institutions aren't interested.
40:56
SPEAKER_04: If anything, they despise us.
40:58
SPEAKER_04: They don't like what I have to say.
41:00
SPEAKER_04: And that's because what I have to say doesn't fit with their white guilt.
41:04
SPEAKER_04: And white guilt is what matters most to our political elites.
41:09
SPEAKER_04: I think that's a tragedy, to be honest.
41:11
SPEAKER_04: And I think it's racist.
41:13
SPEAKER_04: I think it's a tragedy that in the case of Jason Ade, he was pushed into an exposed position in order for an institution to atone for their white guilt.
41:24
SPEAKER_04: That poor man became a lightning rod for frustrations, which a lot of people have felt, with the culture of DEI and appointing people in order to satisfy political demands, with anti-racism and calling anyone and everyone racist who questions it, with universities and the way they have betrayed their original purpose.
41:45
SPEAKER_04: It simply isn't the case that anyone and everyone commenting on the Jason A.
41:49
SPEAKER_04: Day story was racist within the British press.
41:52
SPEAKER_04: You had black journalists who covered the story, and they and the white ones were just doing their jobs.
41:58
SPEAKER_04: You had international journalists commenting on this who revere Cambridge, and well, they assume that it's a bastion of global academic achievement.
42:06
SPEAKER_04: Jason A.
42:07
SPEAKER_04: Day was exposed because Cambridge put him in that position.
42:12
SPEAKER_04: Say what you like.
42:13
SPEAKER_04: He was just one person, and when it all fell apart, all that anger fell on him.
42:18
SPEAKER_04: He didn't deserve it.
42:19
SPEAKER_04: The University of Cambridge did, and it's a disgrace.
42:22
SPEAKER_04: It does not need to be this way.
42:25
SPEAKER_04: We don't need white guilt.
42:26
SPEAKER_04: We need the courage to do what's right for our kids, even when it doesn't look good.
42:31
SPEAKER_04: And that's why I'm doing this podcast.
42:33
SPEAKER_04: And that's what Strictly Education is all about.
42:40
SPEAKER_04: Right.
42:40
SPEAKER_04: Well, now I get to answer some questions from all of you.
42:44
SPEAKER_04: Um, if you have a question you want answered, put it in the comments below.
42:48
SPEAKER_04: Subscribe to the channel.
42:49
SPEAKER_04: Main thing you have to subscribe to the channel while you're here.
42:53
SPEAKER_04: And you can find me, of course, on X at miss underscore Snuffy.
42:58
SPEAKER_04: Okay, so first question is from Sean MJC, who asks, I would like to hear how you deal with kids who are misbehaving and causing trouble at school because their own home lives are full of abuse and suffering.
43:11
SPEAKER_04: Well, you just keep your standards high for them like you would for anyone else, to be honest.
43:15
SPEAKER_04: I mean, the thing is, is that what often happens in schools is that when you hear the backstory of a child and you think it's quite harrowing in some way, you don't keep your standards high for them.
43:28
SPEAKER_04: And then you allow them off when they don't do their homework, when they're late and so on, and you think to yourself, well, it's difficult for them at home.
43:36
SPEAKER_04: It feels compassionate in that moment, right?
43:39
SPEAKER_04: It feels good to allow them off.
43:41
SPEAKER_04: But in fact, you're just hurting them.
43:43
SPEAKER_04: It's a it's it's in fact the whole the Jason Auddy story that we've just spoken about, it's very similar to that.
43:48
SPEAKER_04: You have got to keep your standards high and you've got to hold them responsible for their own behavior.
43:53
SPEAKER_04: And in the end, they learn.
43:54
SPEAKER_04: That's what you do.
43:55
SPEAKER_04: Um, it's not easy.
43:57
SPEAKER_04: I'm not saying it's fair, I'm not saying it's easy, but that's The way in which you make a difference to those kids.
44:03
SPEAKER_04: So Nailu asks, I didn't quite catch why white middle class parents are against your whole setup and ethic.
44:10
SPEAKER_04: Well, again, we're speaking quite a lot to the sort of thing I just spoke about.
44:14
SPEAKER_04: Um, white middle class people don't like the order and the structure.
44:18
SPEAKER_04: Um, they have this idea that things should be more fluid and we can talk about dancing and creativity.
44:24
SPEAKER_04: And they don't understand that creativity actually comes from knowledge, um, and that what you want to do is drill kids in their in their times tables.
44:32
SPEAKER_04: It all sounds a bit boring and heartless.
44:34
SPEAKER_04: They don't like that.
44:35
SPEAKER_04: And so that's why they don't choose the school.
44:37
SPEAKER_04: In later episodes, uh strictly episodes, I'll I'll explain a little bit more about both of these questions, the answers to these questions, um, because they really mean, you know, hashing out, and there's a lot there.
44:47
SPEAKER_04: Okay, let's see.
44:48
SPEAKER_04: What's the next question?
44:50
SPEAKER_04: Seek and find truth asks, um, you said you were raised around Christianity, but do not consider yourself a Christian.
44:57
SPEAKER_04: Are you religious?
44:59
SPEAKER_04: Um, please expound.
45:00
SPEAKER_04: So I'm not really religious.
45:03
SPEAKER_04: However, you know, uh an old colleague of mine, he once said, it was as if I'd taken a book out of the Christian library and kept it and I hadn't given it back.
45:14
SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, because those uh Christian values are so kind of instilled in me when I was younger, I suppose I sort of live my life in a really Christian way.
45:24
SPEAKER_04: Lots of people come to the school and they say, mind you, I think a lot of people come to the school from various different religions and they say, This is obviously a Hindu school, this is obviously a Christian school, this is obviously an Islamic school.
45:34
SPEAKER_04: And that's because they see um they see that we believe in something, that we actually have a moral core.
45:43
SPEAKER_04: Um, and you find that that moral core tends to come from a religious background.
45:47
SPEAKER_04: Mine was Christian, and um, I still have my mother praying for me.
45:52
SPEAKER_04: Uh I'm not Christian, but I think in many ways I do live my life by Christian values.
45:59
SPEAKER_04: Okay, and so now the final question is Sam Hadlington asks: Any thoughts on teaching boys versus girls?
46:06
SPEAKER_04: I've heard a bit recently about possibly teaching boys differently.
46:10
SPEAKER_04: So starting them in school a year later.
46:13
SPEAKER_04: That's interesting.
46:14
SPEAKER_04: I haven't heard that one.
46:15
SPEAKER_04: So, I mean, boys and girls are obviously different.
46:17
SPEAKER_04: And in fact, I do plan uh future episodes on masculinity and femininity.
46:22
SPEAKER_04: So look out for those.
46:24
SPEAKER_04: Um the the key thing is to teach them well and to have order.
46:29
SPEAKER_04: So boys will typically like competition.
46:32
SPEAKER_04: Um, they'll like to know where they are, and they'll they'll they'll tell you to give more bite-sized chunks for boys.
46:38
SPEAKER_04: Um I mean, to be honest, that that benefits the girls too.
46:42
SPEAKER_04: So um I think that's just how all schools should be.
46:46
SPEAKER_04: You know, keep keep everything in bite-sized chunks.
46:50
SPEAKER_04: Definitely encourage competition.
46:52
SPEAKER_04: I think that is something that often schools shy away from because they feel it's unfair and so on.
46:57
SPEAKER_04: There needs to be a sense of what am I doing now?
47:00
SPEAKER_04: Where do I need to get to?
47:01
SPEAKER_04: Will I be rewarded?
47:02
SPEAKER_04: Will I be rewarded?
47:03
SPEAKER_04: They like that, right?
47:04
SPEAKER_04: Um, but look, wait until um you see my episodes on masculinity and femininity.
47:10
SPEAKER_04: I'm sure, Sam, you will enjoy them.
47:13
SPEAKER_04: Okay, so I think that's all we've got time for, I'm afraid.
47:17
SPEAKER_04: Reminder I'm gonna do a part two on race science and race realism next week.
47:22
SPEAKER_04: So look out for it.
47:23
SPEAKER_04: But until next time, I'm signing off as Britain's strictest headmistress.
47:27
SPEAKER_04: I have a school to run.
47:28
SPEAKER_04: You have your things to do.
47:30
SPEAKER_04: Hold the line, strength and honor.
47:32
SPEAKER_04: See you next time.