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Notes -
31 years ago was 1995. It's easy to notice how much the norms and standards of academia, journalism, and general discourse around intellectual pursuits has noticeably changed in that time. Would a Jason Arday in 1995 have made it as far into Cambridge? I think a reasonable guess is No, he would not have made it as far and, in fact, there's a high likelihood that he wouldn't even have made it to the interview step in applying for the job.
Take that trajectory and extend out another 31 years, with the rock-hard belief that you are on the Right Side of History, that the moral arc of justice will ever bend in your direction. And consider that he was hired in, IIRC, 2022, when there was a lot more optimism on the part of these true believers that their true beliefs were true. It wouldn't be surprising for someone in that mindset to believe that, whenever this does get uncovered, the intellectual environment will be such that such plagiarism and fraud for the sake of uplifting an oppressed black disabled man is actually seen as virtuous or even obligatory. And we can see by how things are playing out they wouldn't have been wrong by much, despite having been found out within 5 years, and with the skepticism to their belief system actually going up in that time.
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