Charlatans in academe: when Jason Arday went too far

There are other symptoms of academic charlatanry. Tedious specialisation is treasured over polymathic and omnivorous reading. Those with a credible grasp of various fields are viewed with suspicion as dilettantes and gadflies by cyclopean specialists. Interdisciplinary studies may be promoted as a sound pursuit, but it is eschewed in practice.

The specialist is, by definition, limited to a narrow strip of desperately defended territory, often crowded with colleagues equally hermetic in disposition. Beyond that stale territory, the individual wilts in sheer terror, incapable of reading, let alone understanding a world that is not solipsistic and interiorised. It is therefore important to exaggerate the significance of that territory out of all proportion to its relevance, to insist that the sociological study of, say, lavatories in Paris between 1918 and 1939, commands equal footing to peace studies or projects dealing with the prosecution of war crimes.

While this is by no means always the case, one finds that the tinier the field, the louder its occupants tend to be. The charlatan emerges in full plumage.

The mechanisation and bureaucratisation of the academy also offer instances for the charlatan to shine. There is the workplan, a nonsense document typical of the management university that encourages fictitious targets about papers and books that will never be written, and projects that will never be realised. The catch is that the academic not exaggerating achievements yet unattained will be disadvantaged by honesty and punished with a heavier complement of teaching.

The cultic obsession with such corporate terms as "key performance indicators", the expectation that academics will "generate income", the reduction of university departments to competitive centres of production and entrepreneurial hubs for grant funding rather than arenas of actual learning and scholarship, creates a fuzzy picture easily exploited by those with street cunning.

One is encouraged to advertise in the gaudiest way, to concoct projects to tie in with the grant scheme, to narrow the focus to necessary "targets" and "areas of alignment". Little wonder that the modish and the trendy do well there, with Arday-styled self-advertising going a long way.

There has been much in the way of sorrow and utterances of tragedy regarding Arday. This is no doubt true for his family and friends. It is disingenuous for others to claim a share of it, reeking, as it does, of the Diana-effect. There is, however, an element of pity in it all. He could have gotten away with it. The university, and no doubt many of his colleagues, would have been more than happy to collude in his deceptions. He simply went too far.