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Exploiting Tragedy to Silence Truth
You’ve likely already heard the shocking story of Jason Arday, the Cambridge academic who resigned and suddenly died after investigative journalists uncovered evidence that he committed plagiarism and fabricated details about his life. Arday’s death has sparked debate on both the left and the right, with many of the latter pointing to the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) efforts that elevated someone to a position he should never have occupied.
But the reaction on the left has a more insidious bent. Writing in UnHerd, Mary Harrington describes [ [link removed] ] British progressives who blame the media for Arday’s death and are using this tragedy to push for censoring journalists. She points to leaders in government and law who have essentially accused media outlets of being the “driving cause” of Arday’s death. Their goal, she argues, is to discourage investigative reporting on certain people whom they believe deserve protection.
Harrington admits that those whose stories become viral sensations, like Arday’s, face intense pressure. Still, she doesn’t believe this means the press should stop investigating and reporting the truth. If these censorship efforts succeed, Harrington warns, journalists could be forced to adopt “two-tier journalistic standards based on identity politics.”
Learn more by reading Harrington’s piece here [ [link removed] ].
Complicity at Cambridge
It’s not surprising that British leftists have sought to blame the media for Arday’s death; tragedy often triggers a desperate search for someone to hold responsible. But in their rush to assign blame elsewhere, they may have overlooked their own role in this unfortunate situation.
That’s the argument Graeme Wood makes in a recent article for The Atlantic. Wood faults [ [link removed] ] the Cambridge professors, administrators, and reviewers who knew Arday for failing to call out his lies until it was too late. As Wood puts it, “some lies are so preposterous that intelligent people who believe them bear some responsibility for being taken in.” He points out that instead of challenging Arday’s deception, many people praised him and encouraged him, ultimately helping him into a position for which he was deeply unqualified.
Wood calls these enablers “cruel and heartless” for setting Arday up to fail. By letting his lies stand, he argues, they opened the door for an intrigued public to dig into every detail of Arday’s life. Wood claims that someone should have caught the plagiarism, fabrication, or lack of high-level academic skill before Arday ended up on the faculty of a school like Cambridge. But no one did—or no one said so out loud. Wood compares that failure to a “human sacrifice.”
What do you think of Wood’s argument? Read his article here [ [link removed] ].
Compendium
Every article we feature here is available to read for free. Articles from paywalled publications are available through gift links.
Daniel Lipinski on the rise of political partisanship as a substitute for religion [ [link removed] ] in First Things.
Theodore Dalrymple on Britain’s overreaching nanny state policies [ [link removed] ] in The American Conservative.
Johann Kurtz on the decline of America’s social trust and interpersonal networks [ [link removed] ] in his Substack.
Conor Fitzgerald on how men cannot graft onto the progressive coalition [ [link removed] ] in his Substack.
Matt Dinan on rediscovering the desire to learn as a professor [ [link removed] ] in The New York Times.
John Ehrett on the difficulty of tech and social conservatives remaining allies [ [link removed] ] in The New Atlantis.
Olga Khazan on how ideology shapes the decision to have a family [ [link removed] ] in The Atlantic.
Frederick M. Hess on if the K-12 techlash will persist despite parenting habits [ [link removed] ] in Law & Liberty.
Evan Zimmerman on how humans fear their own inventions [ [link removed] ] in Palladium Magazine.
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Great Men and the Great War
One of the least well-known periods of European history is the gap between the Napoleonic Era and the First World War. In this country, we tend to think far more about our own Civil War than any contemporaneous events across the Atlantic—except maybe for the barricade scene in Les Misérables. But those decades in the Old World mattered greatly to the more familiar events of the twentieth century.
This week’s article from Modern Age is Casey Chalk’s review [ [link removed] ] of a 2026 book by David Art of Tufts University: The Resilience of the Old Regime: Paths Around Democracy in Europe, 1832-1919. Art’s book describes how Europe’s ruling class maintained power even as democratic pressure from lower classes steadily increased. Chalk notes some leftist tendencies in Art’s approach but praises his “attention to detail” and “impressive” account of the era.
Chalk highlights Art’s analysis of Otto von Bismarck and Napoleon III, the leaders of the German and French Empires, who used carefully designed tactics to preserve non-democratic rule. But World War I upended that system. According to Chalk, Art shows how the war encouraged nations to extend voting rights to both men who had fought on bloody battlefields for their homelands and women who had helped the war effort from home.
Read Chalk’s review here [ [link removed] ] on the Modern Age website.
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“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”—John Milton, Areopagitica

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