Plagiarism is the highest form of academic misconduct and the lowest level of academic practice; it undermines integrity in the processes of knowledge production and dissemination. It destroys the conditions necessary for the growth of integrity and critical scholarship that questions dominant narratives of power during the processes of learning and teaching within and outside the classroom. All forms of plagiarism are academic and professional stigmas. However, some forms are not a form of academic dishonesty. Inadvertent plagiarism takes place accidentally, under work pressure, due to a lack of academic training, or owing to a lack of awareness about plagiarism itself. Self-plagiarism, casualness in putting proper citations and references, paraphrasing, and patchwriting are often products of bad academic and professional practice, whereas direct or indirect forms of plagiarism are absolutely unacceptable and should be treated as academic misconduct. All forms of plagiarism must end to uphold academic integrity, thereby producing unbiased knowledge for the greater good of academics in particular and society in general. Plagiarism free environment creates a dependable culture of knowledge production and dissemination based on public trust that empowers researchers, students and writers.
All universities and research institutions have strong policies on research ethics, research integrity and plagiarism. Yet most universities are lenient on plagiarism when considering a student’s academic background and personal circumstances. For example, allowances are often made for students with autism or other neurodevelopmental differences, abilities, disabilities or differently able students or for students coming from an academic culture where they have not previously been exposed to plagiarism as a concept. Thus, before blanket application of plagiarism policies and practices, universities and institutions of higher education try to understand the context and do not punish the student for ignorance beyond their own control.
Academic leniency on plagiarism is neither a defence of plagiarism nor a celebration of it; rather, it is a compassionate learning process that creates conditions in which campuses and classrooms become ‘safe places for not knowing’. Punishment-free academic practice is good practice, enabling students, researchers and practitioners of higher education to learn about plagiarism as an academic misconduct that undermines their own practice, integrity and outcomes. Knowledge production is a collective activity; acknowledging each other’s ideas and work through citations and references is a way of celebrating one another in the process of knowledge production and in its collective foundation of both its production and dissemination.
White supremacists and their inherent racist behaviour have been on public display across the UK, Europe and the US following the resignation of Prof. Jason Arday from Cambridge University due to allegations of plagiarism. Prof. Arday was the youngest black professor of sociology of education. He has not only acknowledged his mistakes publicly but also clarified the reasons behind them, without seeking to justify them. This is the mark of a reflective scholar with integrity. Autism can create conditions for inadvertent plagiarism. This may well have been the case for Prof. Jason Arday; neither he nor his supporters defend plagiarism by him or by anyone else. Yet one witnesses a relentless, coordinated and well-organised campaign that is directed not merely against Prof. Arday personally but operates as a racist smear campaign against people of colour, aiming to undermine their creative abilities within and outside the university. Such a colonial racist campaign must be exposed and opposed before it does further damage to race relations in Britain.
Double standards are practised by universities like Cambridge, both in the application of policies and in the principles surrounding plagiarism. One white professor at Cambridge copied his undergraduate student’s work and published it as his own. The student complained, and the university tribunal upheld the complaint, yet allowed the professor to continue in his job and later promoted him to the post of associate professor. The tribunal concluded that the white professor’s plagiarism was a “product of negligent acts but was not deliberate.” This case was widely reported; details can be found here (https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/26105). There was no coordinated campaign against this professor. The professor’s solicitor threatened journalists and others with legal action if the matter was reported, despite the plagiaristic practice. The same university, the same policy, but double standards in practice – this defines Cambridge University, which used Prof. Jason Arday as their poster boy to hide rampant racism and the lack of representation of people of colour within its academic structure and operations.
Prof. Arday not only acknowledged his mistakes and the limitations of his work in public but also resigned from his post after the allegation; he did not threaten anyone. By contrast, here is a white professor who plagiarised, threatened legal action with the help of a solicitor, and did not even apologise to the student whose work he copied. This is not merely about black plagiarism versus white plagiarism. It is about double standards in the application of policies and institutional practices. White supremacist arrogance and its institutional practice at Cambridge and beyond are products of racialised knowledge traditions in the UK and Europe that continue to undermine people of colour, functioning as an invisible hand that promotes colonial Eurocentric racist knowledge traditions as science. This is the foundation on which white supremacists stand, coordinate and campaign against Prof. Arday.
British, European and American universities are bastions of racism; they continue to perpetuate colonial, racist and Eurocentric knowledge traditions as the dominant ones based on racialised and colonial perceptions. As a result, there are only 270 black professors out of more than 26,000 professors in UK universities – less than 1%. At Cambridge University itself, there are only 75 Black academics out of 6,180 academics. These are not accidental outcomes but products of systemic racial discrimination. People of colour are marginalised without any defence, even when it comes to addressing racial pay gaps in UK universities and other workplaces across the country.
Prof. Arday is more qualified than many white Vice-Chancellors, Deputy Vice-Chancellors, Pro Vice-Chancellors, Deans, Deputy Deans and other white management and leadership figures who are underqualified yet get themselves the title of professor without producing a single page of published work and have never taught in their lifetime. These unqualified and underqualified white leaders cannot even write an email without copying it from generative AI, yet they continue to lead universities, schools and departments across the UK universities. The so-called British meritocracy is mere white arrogance and ignorance based on white supremacist ideology and colonial, biased knowledge traditions – conditions that breed situations like the one Prof. Arday faced, while underqualified white managers and academic leaders get away with their plum salaries without any academic scrutiny and managerial accountability. Network is more important than talent in Britain. British meritocracy is a myth.
Prof. Arday’s issue is not an individual one; rather, it reveals racialised institutions, processes and systems that actively discriminate against people of colour and campaign publicly to undermine, humiliate, disgrace and destroy their lives. Such a white supremacist culture and its racist campaign, conducted in the name of research integrity and plagiarism, is fraudulent and hypocritical; the normalisation of racism is the real intention.
Silence in the face of such a racist onslaught is complicity with white plagiarism, which is always deemed accidental, whereas black plagiarism is treated as a crime. Such double standards reveal the wider systemic racism in the UK. The white supremacists and their racialised capitalist system want to perpetuate standardised knowledge and skills for compliant minds and a compliant society, whereas radical knowledge traditions liberate people and their societies from the narrow silos of patriarchal, feudal, colonial and capitalist system. Thus, the anti-racist campaign is a collective campaign to liberate ourselves from colonial, racist, biased Eurocentric knowledge traditions that undermine the emancipatory logic of education and the emancipation of human beings.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect (North London News) editorial policy.
