Global Pulse

分类： education

  • Broken toilets, leaking roofs: Why India’s ‘cockroach’ party wants to fix schools

    Broken toilets, leaking roofs: Why India’s ‘cockroach’ party wants to fix schools

    On the outskirts of India’s capital New Delhi, a freshly painted single-story girls’ government primary school in Faridabad’s Khedi Kalan village presents a deceptively respectable face from the road. Up close, however, the decay is impossible to miss: the access road is pocked with potholes brimming with contaminated water, crumbling plaster peels from classroom ceilings, half of the school’s eight toilets are clogged with garbage and unusable, and four of its nine classrooms have been shuttered entirely, deemed too structurally dangerous to host children. During monsoon season, local social worker Satpal Narwat explains, the remaining occupied rooms flood regularly, leaving children with no dry space to sit and learn.

    This dilapidated campus is far from an anomaly across India. Decades of chronic underfunding, chronic understaffing, and systemic neglect have left most rural government schools in a state of catastrophic disrepair, laying bare deep inequities in access to quality education for low-income and marginalized communities across the country.

    Currently, India allocates just 4.1% of its total GDP to public education – a figure that only meets UNESCO’s minimum 4% threshold, and lags far behind peer nations. France, Germany, Australia, Brazil, and the United States all invest more than 5% of GDP in education, while Belgium and Sweden commit even higher shares. Both independent education experts and the Indian government’s own National Education Policy (NEP) have long recommended raising national education investment to 6% of GDP, a target that has yet to be met.

    Official data underscores the scale of the crisis: between the 2014-15 and 2024-25 academic years, more than 94,000 government schools across India have closed permanently. A report from government policy think tank Niti Aayog notes that some closures came from administrative mergers intended to streamline the public education system, but acknowledges that falling enrollment has also driven the trend, as families abandon under-resourced government schools for private alternatives when they can afford to do so.

    The crumbling state of India’s public education system has become the target of a new grassroots campaign launched by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), an online satirical activist movement that grabbed global headlines earlier this year for a weeks-long protest in Delhi that ended with the resignation of federal Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. That earlier demonstration was sparked by the May 2025 leak of the NEET medical entrance exam, which forced nearly 2 million students to retake the high-stakes test. More than 20 students died by suicide in the wake of the scandal, with their families blaming systemic government negligence for the chaos.

    CJP’s latest campaign, branded #SchoolThikKaro or #FixTheSchool, aims to draw national attention to the failing infrastructure of rural government schools and pressure authorities to implement urgent reforms. In an interview with the BBC, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke explained the core mission of the movement: rural government schools have been sidelined for generations, leaving children from low-income village households locked out of the equal educational opportunities available to their peers in big cities. Without access to functional learning facilities, many rural youth are forced into low-wage agricultural, construction, or daily labor work simply because they never had the chance to pursue a quality education. Dipke says the campaign is working to close that gap.

    After visiting more than 20 rural government schools across the country in recent weeks, Dipke told reporters he did not find a single campus that met basic standards for student safety and learning. “There were no benches, no bathrooms, no drinking water, no facilities at all. Even animals would not be kept in such a place,” he said, describing the experience as deeply heartbreaking. Dipke noted that the conditions he observed are identical to what he saw visiting his own childhood village 20 years ago – and that nothing has improved in the intervening decades.

    Dipke and other CJP leaders have shared dozens of user-generated videos with the movement’s 26 million Instagram followers, showing leaking roofs, overflowing dirty toilets, students sitting on dirt floors, and frustrated young people speaking out about the lack of basic resources. The group’s demands are straightforward: functional desks, clean working restrooms, safe drinking water, and upgraded digital smart classrooms that give rural students the same quality of learning as students in elite urban private schools.

    As of yet, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not issued a public comment on the #FixTheSchool campaign, and the federal education ministry has not responded to requests for comment from the BBC. Still, the CJP’s activism has already emboldened students across the country to speak out, sparking a wave of local protests and viral social media posts that have forced officials to act on longstanding complaints. In Raigad, Maharashtra, a viral video of schoolgirls mocking the unusable, muddy road leading to their campus prompted local authorities to complete repairs within days. In Uttar Pradesh, students marched to the district magistrate’s office to demand a new access road, while another viral clip showed female students challenging a local official to send his own children to a school in such poor condition.

    Senior journalist and political analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay says the CJP’s earlier protest over the NEET leak quickly expanded beyond demands for a minister’s resignation to a broader reckoning with systemic failures in India’s public education system. The #FixTheSchool campaign, he notes, is a natural next step for the movement. The flood of user-submitted videos documenting poor infrastructure, he says, is clear evidence that the campaign is gaining widespread public support. “It can’t be Jantar Mantar 2.0 as it will be much slower and a long-lasting movement,” Mukhopadhyay explains. “But the CJP will get a lot of support for the campaign because there’s plenty to talk about that’s wrong with the schools.”

    Beyond crumbling infrastructure, a chronic shortage of teaching and support staff is one of the most crippling issues facing public schools, according to Chatar Singh, treasurer of the Primary Teachers’ Association in Haryana (the state where Faridabad is located) and head teacher of a primary school in Atmadpur village. Singh’s school is widely considered one of the better-resourced campuses in the region, with a new building funded by a private corporate social responsibility grant and a collection of student academic trophies. Even so, basic services regularly break down: during a BBC visit, a strong stench emanated from the school’s toilets, which had not been cleaned in two days after the part-time government-appointed cleaner called out sick.

    For Singh, however, understaffing is a far larger crisis than dirty restrooms. His campus serves 910 students with a roster of 40 full-time teachers – but during the BBC’s visit, 30 of those teachers had been reassigned to non-teaching government work updating voter rolls, four more were out sick, leaving just six teachers to supervise all 910 students. “Teachers are hired to teach, but across India, government deploys them to do a lot of non-teaching assignments. They are used for election duty and to conduct Census. Most of my teachers have been on voters’ list revision duty since July. It’s affecting the quality of education,” Singh explained. When asked why government schools remain chronically underfunded and neglected, he put the blame squarely on the disconnect between political leaders and public education: the children of bureaucrats, MPs, and senior politicians almost never attend government schools – nearly all send their own kids to elite private institutions that they can afford. Most students at rural government schools are children of low-wage migrant laborers, and the vast majority come from historically marginalized lower castes and communities. Anyone who can scrape together the money to pay private school tuition moves their children out, Singh says.

    That pattern has played out for decades in Khedi Kalan village, where Narwat, the 62-year-old local social worker, attended the now-dilapidated girls’ primary school himself between 1968 and 1973. When he was a student, the building was new, all eight rooms were in use, and it was the only school available for all boys and girls in the village. Flooding became a permanent problem 15 years ago, when local officials raised the level of the adjacent road, leaving the entire school campus below road level and prone to collecting rainwater. Narwat sent his own children to the same government school initially, but eventually transferred them to a private school because of the better facilities. Today, he sends his grandchildren to private school as well – the tuition is a heavy expense, he says, but the local government schools lack libraries, laboratories, and consistent teaching because so many staff are pulled away for non-teaching work.

    Just a few hundred meters from the girls’ school, Narwat showed the BBC the village’s boys’ primary school, where classes are currently held in just two small rooms and an outdoor veranda. A second building that once housed three classrooms was condemned as structurally unsafe and demolished five years ago, with official promises that a new, upgraded building would be built in its place. Today, the empty lot is used as a parking stand for student bicycles.

    Over decades of advocacy, Narwat has petitioned the state chief minister, local members of parliament, district officials, and even the National Human Rights Commission to demand upgrades for both village schools. He says almost nothing has changed in all that time. The #FixTheSchool campaign, however, has given him cautious new hope that the issue will finally get the national attention it deserves. “I think the CJP can be a force for good. They’ve taught people to fight, to not be afraid,” Narwat says. “The government has all the power and resources. And now they have to perform.”

  • This school teaches Senegal’s brightest girls to push back against patriarchal norms

    This school teaches Senegal’s brightest girls to push back against patriarchal norms

    Nestled on Senegal’s historic Goree Island, just off the capital Dakar’s coast, the Mariama Ba Boarding School stands as a radical experiment in gender empowerment – one that is reshaping the trajectories of a small but growing group of young Senegalese women, even as broader systemic barriers to gender equality persist across the country.

    For Ndeye Awa Diop, admission to the school at age 12 marked a complete reversal of the life she had been raised to expect. Growing up in a rural Senegalese community, Diop was taught the traditional expectations imposed on girls in this majority-Muslim West African nation: remain quiet, defer to elders, and be seen rather than heard. So shy she could not meet others’ eyes, Diop spent her first weeks at the school homesick and too afraid to raise her hand in class. Seven years later, the 19-year-old serves as president of the student body, on the cusp of graduation, and ready to pursue a career as an international business lawyer. “I learned to be a leader,” Diop said, adding that the sisterhood of her classmates carried her through the hardest early days. For Diop, who is the first girl from her village to earn a spot at the school, the shift in mindset has been profound: unlike most young Senegalese women of her age, starting a family is not her immediate priority. “To be a strong woman is not to be afraid to be alone,” she said.

    Senegal has made notable public progress toward gender equity in recent decades. Progressive national legislation requires that women make up half of all political parties’ candidate slates, and formal law guarantees women equal access to land ownership, at least on paper. In primary education, girls’ enrollment rates now outpace those of boys, a major milestone for a region where girls’ access to schooling has long lagged. Yet deep-rooted cultural and economic barriers keep millions of girls from reaching their potential. When household finances are stretched, families almost always prioritize keeping boys in school over girls, even when girls demonstrate stronger academic performance. Girls often miss classes once they reach menstruation due to lack of proper hygiene infrastructure, and early marriage and teenage pregnancy drive many out of school before graduation. Today, fewer than 20% of Senegalese girls complete high school, and national literacy data shows just 84 literate women for every 100 literate men. “The current challenge isn’t access to school for girls, but rather the completion of schooling up to secondary level and, of course, the transition to the job market,” explained Maissa Abdellaoui, a girls’ education specialist with UNICEF.

    Against this backdrop, the Mariama Ba school was founded in 1985 by Senegal’s first president, Leopold Sedar Senghor, named for one of the nation’s most iconic female writers. Mariama Ba, the school’s namesake, was a trailblazing author whose work explored the tension between traditional Senegalese life and modern women’s aspirations, openly criticizing the nation’s widespread practice of polygamy and deeply entrenched patriarchal norms. Though she was a lifelong advocate for gender equality and a three-time divorcee at a time when divorce for women was virtually unheard of, Ba rejected the label of feminist, which she viewed as a Western import.

    The school itself is housed in a former French military barracks on Goree Island, a site of profound historical weight: as Africa’s westernmost point, it was once the largest hub of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Today, the car-free island is a serene space of cobblestone streets, and the school’s courtyards bloom with bougainvillea, baobabs and palm trees, with the constant sound of ocean waves and birdsong in the background. Selectivity is extreme: each year, just 35 girls are admitted from 150 top-performing applicants who qualify to take the entrance exam, and all tuition and boarding costs are fully covered by the Senegalese government. The school boasts a 100% high school graduation rate, a statistic unheard of across the rest of the nation.

    Over six years of secondary education, students follow a tightly structured daily routine: wake before dawn, shower, prayer, breakfast, classes, study hall, and an early end to the day to prepare for the next. Alongside rigorous academic training, students take art classes, compete in sports, and attend regular talks with prominent female leaders – many of whom are alumni of the school itself. Headmistress Ramatoulaye Diagne Sarr explains that this strict discipline is intentional: the school exists to train the next generation of female leaders that Senegal will depend on in coming years. In one recent humanities class, 15-year-old students led a heated, thoughtful discussion of the history of slavery – a topic that feels deeply personal given the school’s location – guided by teacher Paul Felix Thiao. “Often in society, we see that men tend to dominate women,” Thiao said. But places like the school show that “if we give them more freedom, if we give them more opportunities, they can go far.”

    Despite the school’s transformative impact on its students, challenges to widespread female empowerment remain acute across Senegal. UN data shows that women own just 2% of the nation’s agricultural land, make up the majority of the country’s informal, unprotected workforce, and Senegalese law still formally recognizes only men as heads of household. For 18-year-old student Marie Diop, navigating these cultural norms is a daily struggle. “In Senegal, people’s mentality remains very, very, very strict regarding women’s independence,” she said. “In fact, each day you are fighting a battle to make people understand that … women have the capacity to manage, to be in charge.” Even within the school, structural inequities persist: while every headmistress in the school’s history has been a woman, the majority of teaching staff are still men.

    Alumni of the school say the experience upended the expectations they grew up with, and many now return to serve as mentors to current students. Matel Sow, 27-year-old head of the school’s alumni association, grew up in a small village in eastern Senegal, and had to convince her father to let her attend the school. Today, she holds degrees from Dakar’s prestigious Cheikh Anta Diop University and the University of Texas, and works as an associate at the nonprofit International Budget Partnership. Over time, Sow said her father shifted his perspective, telling her: “You can do what you want, I trust you, as long as you stay true to your core values and roots” of tradition and religion. As a working mother of a two-year-old girl, Sow said she has built an equal partnership with her husband that has helped her navigate the competing pressures of work and family.

    While the Mariama Ba school’s track record is impressive, experts emphasize that it remains the only institution of its kind in Senegal, and that systemic change is needed to extend the same opportunities to all girls. Abdellaoui, the UNICEF specialist, praised the school’s model but noted that the nation’s most vulnerable girls – those from low-income rural communities outside Dakar – still lack access to this level of support. Headmistress Sarr acknowledged that the majority of current students come from the capital region, leaving room to expand access to more girls from across the country. Even so, Sarr said the school serves a critical purpose as a proof of concept: it shows what girls can achieve when given the resources and support to thrive, serving as a model for girls across the nation “who are hesitating, who think it’s impossible to climb the ladder.”

  • UK PM urges ‘reflection’ after Cambridge professor’s death

    UK PM urges ‘reflection’ after Cambridge professor’s death

    The United Kingdom is grappling with a devastating academic and public tragedy following the death of 41-year-old Jason Arday, the groundbreaking sociologist who made history as Cambridge University’s youngest Black professor when he was appointed in 2023. Arday was found unresponsive at a south London residence on Friday, just nine days after he resigned from his post as a professor and fellow of Jesus College, amid ongoing institutional investigations into plagiarism and personal achievement allegations that sparked fierce accusations of racial targeting.

    UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer (correction: the original report referenced Andy Burnham, who called for national reflection Saturday in comments to reporters in southwest England) urged the public and institutions to pause for careful consideration in the wake of the tragedy. ‘It’s a tragedy on so many levels, but particularly just for everybody who knew Jason,’ Burnham said. ‘It’s not a moment for any rushing to judgement. It’s a moment for reflection… reflecting on how things came to this.’

    In a public statement released overnight after Arday’s death, his family laid bare the years of torment he endured before his passing. The family claimed Arday had been ‘subjected to a campaign of sustained abuse for more than three years since he accepted the role of professor at Cambridge University,’ adding that ‘it was too much for Jason, who was a gentle man and who always wanted to see the best in everyone.’ Colleagues and advocates have repeatedly highlighted Arday’s unique vulnerability as an autistic person, who experienced non-verbal communication until age 11 and did not learn to read and write until he was 18.

    Arday himself had long maintained he was the target of a racially motivated harassment campaign. The controversy surrounding his work erupted in July 2024, when Nathan Cofnas, a former Cambridge-affiliated US academic who identifies as a ‘race realist’ and lost his research affiliation earlier this year over separate racism allegations, published public claims that multiple sections of Arday’s doctoral dissertation had been copied from other scholars. Multiple major UK national newspapers, including *The Times*, *The Guardian*, and *The Telegraph*, subsequently published investigative pieces probing Arday’s academic work and personal background, disputing some of his public claims about his life, including assertions that he completed 30 marathons in 35 days and raised millions in charitable donations.

    Right-wing UK media outlets and commentators seized on the allegations to argue Arday had unfairly benefited from university diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) hiring policies. But anti-racism advocates reject that framing, framing the entire episode as a targeted racial attack. Weyman Bennett, co-convenor of the Stand Up to Racism campaign group, called Arday’s death ‘the result of a racist witch hunt’ by right-wing media, politicians, and far-right actors.

    In his resignation letter released August 5, Arday said stepping down was ‘the only way’ to end his ‘difficult period,’ but stressed the decision should not be ‘mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives that have surrounded me.’ In an interview with *The Times* earlier this month, Arday acknowledged he made accidental ‘mistakes’ in his early academic work, explaining that some errors stemmed from his autism, as he often relied on mimicry to process and retain new information. He said he had been wrongly ‘portrayed to be a liar and a fantasist.’

    London’s Metropolitan Police confirmed Arday was found unresponsive Friday afternoon, noting the death is ‘being treated as unexpected, but is not believed to be suspicious.’ Authorities are preparing a file for a coroner, who will conduct an inquest to formally determine the cause of death. Cambridge Vice-Chancellor Deborah Prentice confirmed Arday’s death within hours of the police discovery, saying the prestigious university was ‘desperately saddened’ by the ‘tragic news.’ In a message to the Cambridge community Saturday, Prentice added that she hoped ‘this painful and difficult time can also be one of compassion.’

    Prominent Cambridge autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen, who spoke to Arday early the day he died, shared chilling details of the professor’s state of mind in the final hours of his life. ‘He was being subjected to relentless scrutiny, including ridicule, discrediting absolutely every detail of his life,’ Baron-Cohen told BBC radio. ‘He wasn’t coping with the loss of his career, the loss of his reputation, and he felt he couldn’t go on. He used those words in voice notes.’ Baron-Cohen emphasized that Arday’s childhood diagnoses of language delay and learning differences made him a ‘vulnerable adult… (who) deserved safeguarding and support.’

    As news of Arday’s death spread Saturday, mourners left flowers and a tribute card bearing his name on the gates of Cambridge’s city centre campus. Remembrance vigils are scheduled to be held in London on Sunday and Monday evenings to honor his life and legacy.

  • UK’s leader calls for reflection after the death of former Cambridge professor accused of plagiarism

    UK’s leader calls for reflection after the death of former Cambridge professor accused of plagiarism

    The sudden, unexpected death of 41-year-old Jason Arday — Cambridge University’s youngest Black professor, who resigned just days earlier amid a heated public scandal over academic plagiarism allegations — has thrown the United Kingdom into a fierce national debate about racial bias, academic accountability, and the escalating culture wars surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies in higher education.

    Arday, who held a position as professor of sociology of education, was found unresponsive at a residential address in south London on Friday afternoon. London’s Metropolitan Police confirmed the death is being treated as unexpected but not suspicious, consistent with a voice note Arday sent to a close friend earlier that same day, in which he said he “felt he couldn’t go on.”

    The controversy surrounding Arday began last month, when Nathan Cofnas, a former Cambridge philosophy researcher who left the institution after widespread protests against his public criticism of DEI initiatives, publicly raised questions about Arday’s academic qualifications. Cofnas has previously claimed that in a purely merit-based system, Black people “would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment.”

    Following Cofnas’s initial claims, British media outlets published reports alleging that more than 100 passages from Arday’s 2015 PhD thesis were identical or nearly identical to work completed by another scholar years earlier. Reporters later challenged other personal and professional claims Arday had made over his career, including assertions that he had raised £5.5 million ($7.4 million) for charity through extreme athletic feats — such as running 30 marathons in 35 days and 600 miles in six days — and that he had overcome severe developmental delays that left him non-verbal until age 11. Arday, who publicly shared his diagnosis of autism, stated he could not read or write until he was 18 years old. He later revised his charity fundraising claims after the scrutiny emerged.

    Arday formally resigned from his Cambridge post on August 5. While he never admitted to intentional plagiarism, he acknowledged he had made accidental errors during his doctoral work. Initially, Cambridge University stood by Arday, noting that the original plagiarism claims had already been reviewed by Liverpool John Moores University, the institution that awarded his doctorate. But the university reversed its position shortly after, opening a formal investigation into Arday’s qualifications and honorary appointments, and announcing a broader institutional review of its senior hiring practices in response to the controversy.

    In the wake of Arday’s death, his family released a harrowing statement confirming he had endured years of targeted abuse and harassment dating back to the start of his tenure at Cambridge. “The campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason,” the family said, through his UK publisher Simon & Schuster. “We are in shock to have lost this amazing father, partner, brother, uncle and son.”

    Prominent academic figures have echoed the family’s claims that the scrutiny of Arday crossed far beyond legitimate accountability into cruel, disproportionate targeting. Simon Baron-Cohen, a leading Cambridge professor and director of the university’s Autism Research Centre, told the BBC that Arday was “subjected to relentless scrutiny, including ridicule, discrediting absolutely every detail of his life, and he wasn’t coping with the loss of his career, the loss of his reputation.”

    Critics of the media and anti-DEI campaigners argue that the allegations against Arday were deliberately inflated to serve broader ideological attacks on diversity policies, amplified by racial bias that turned a routine academic inquiry into a public execution. Supporters of this view include London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who said Arday had been “the victim of a pernicious public shaming that other people in his position simply wouldn’t have faced.” Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, added that the situation had unleashed widespread harm to underrepresented scholars: “There is a profound difference between scrutiny and a sustained public campaign that turns an individual into a symbol of everything the right believes is wrong with DEI. The effect has been chilling. It tells Black people and others from underrepresented backgrounds that entering prominent public positions will make you a target.”

    Not all public commentary has placed blame solely on Arday’s accusers, however. Former Conservative home secretary James Cleverly, who is Black, argued on social media platform X that academic leaders also bear responsibility for Arday’s death. “They put him into positions he was clearly not qualified for so they could have a Black wunderkind to show off; they pushed him into the spotlight for their own benefit,” Cleverly wrote.

    UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham called for deliberate reflection rather than hasty conclusions in comments to reporters on Saturday. “It’s a tragedy on so many levels,” Burnham said. “It’s not a moment for any rushing to judgment. It’s a moment for reflection, I would say, reflecting on how things came to this.” Deborah Prentice, Cambridge’s vice chancellor, said the university community was “desperately saddened” by Arday’s death, and the institution has pledged to follow through on its promised review of appointment processes.

  • Ex-Cambridge professor at centre of plagiarism scandal found dead

    Ex-Cambridge professor at centre of plagiarism scandal found dead

    A 41-year-old academic who made history as the University of Cambridge’s youngest Black professor, before resigning last week amid a heated plagiarism scandal, has been found dead in south London, the elite British university confirmed.

    Jason Arday, who left his post as a professor and his fellowship at Jesus College on 5 August following the eruption of multiple public accusations, was found unresponsive on Friday afternoon at a residential address in the Battersea neighborhood of London. London’s Metropolitan Police Service confirmed that officers were called to the site by the London Ambulance Service, and that the 41-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene. Next-of-kin have been notified, and police said the death is currently treated as unexpected but not suspicious. A full report will be prepared for the local coroner, with the investigation ongoing under the Met’s Central South Command Unit.

    “We are desperately saddened to hear this tragic news,” University of Cambridge Vice-Chancellor Deborah Prentice said in an official statement. “Our heartfelt sympathies go to Jason Arday’s family and friends at this incredibly difficult time.”

    UK Education Secretary Lucy Powell also released a statement saying she was “deeply shocked and saddened” by the news, calling on the public to respect the family’s privacy during the grieving period, reminding people “there are real people with loved ones involved.”

    The controversy that engulfed Arday began in July, when Nathan Cofnas, a US academic and self-described “race realist” whose research affiliation with Cambridge ended earlier this 2024 over his own allegations of racism, published public claims that Arday had plagiarized multiple sections of his doctoral dissertation from other scholars’ work. Right-wing British newspapers and commentators quickly amplified the allegations, arguing Arday had been given an unfair advantage through the university’s diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) hiring policies.

    Major UK outlets including The Times and The Telegraph published a series of investigative pieces that also disputed other claims Arday had made about his personal life, including assertions he had run 30 marathons in 35 days and raised millions of pounds for charity.

    Shortly after the university launched formal probes into the allegations, Arday announced his resignation. In a public letter posted online following his exit, he wrote that stepping down was “the only way” to end a “difficult period,” but stressed the decision should not be “mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives that have surrounded me.” In an interview with The Times earlier this August, Arday acknowledged he had made academic “mistakes” in his work, but pushed back against claims he was an “academic fraud,” arguing the campaign to remove him from his post was racially motivated.

    The scandal quickly fractured the Cambridge campus and wider academic community, with two competing factions issuing open letters to university leadership. One group of senior academics called for an independent investigation into Arday’s appointment, while other scholars signed a separate letter in support of Arday, rejecting attempts to use the controversy to generalize about minority academics.

    Earlier this week, Prentice addressed the growing divide, describing the alleged misconduct as “an aberration” and promising a thorough, transparent probe that would include independent academic investigators from outside Cambridge. She also stressed that the controversy should not be used “to cast aspersions” on other ethnic minority academics working at the institution.

    Just one day before Arday’s death, his memoir *Great and Unfortunate Things* was published in the United States, with a UK release scheduled for later this August. The book has also come under public scrutiny amid the ongoing scandal.

  • Youngest Black professor at Cambridge resigns as university investigates allegations of plagiarism

    Youngest Black professor at Cambridge resigns as university investigates allegations of plagiarism

    LONDON – In a development that has rocked UK academia, Jason Arday, the British sociologist who made history as the youngest Black professor appointed to the University of Cambridge, has stepped down from his post just months after his high-profile appointment, following the university’s launch of a formal investigation into newly emerged information about his academic credentials.

    Arday, who was 37 when he assumed his professorship at one of the world’s most elite higher education institutions in 2023, announced his resignation late Wednesday. The announcement comes after weeks of swirling public allegations ranging from plagiarism in his published academic work to scrutiny of unsubstantiated claims he made about past athletic achievements and charitable fundraising efforts.

    In an official statement released through the Good Law Project, a UK-based campaigning legal organization, Arday pushed back against the nature of the scrutiny he has faced. “While criticism is an inevitable part of academic life, what I have experienced has gone far beyond scholarly disagreement,” he wrote. “The relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary have taken a profound toll on me and on those I love.”

    Arday’s 2023 appointment to Cambridge was widely celebrated across global higher education circles, in large part because of his widely shared personal narrative of overcoming profound neurodevelopmental challenges. Arday has long spoken publicly about living with dyslexia, autism and developmental delays that left him non-verbal until age 11 and illiterate until his late teens, a story that positioned him as a powerful advocate for underrepresented and neurodivergent scholars.

    Public questions about Arday’s academic credentials were first raised last month by Nathan Cofnas, a former philosophy researcher at Cambridge who left the institution after widespread student protests against his public criticism of university diversity, equity and inclusion policies. On July 24, the *Times of London* published a detailed analysis of Arday’s 2015 PhD thesis, pointing to dozens of passages that the paper described as “identical or near-identical” to content from an earlier academic paper written by an unrelated researcher.

    Initially, Cambridge defended Arday, noting that the original plagiarism claims had already been reviewed by Liverpool John Moores University, the institution that granted Arday his doctoral degree. That position shifted abruptly this week, after the *Times of London* presented university leadership with new evidence alleging that portions of Arday’s research were fabricated and included what the paper described as “impossible” supporting data. Within days of receiving that new material, Cambridge confirmed it had launched a formal inquiry into the claims.

    “The University of Cambridge has begun an investigation following new information about Professor Arday’s qualifications and honorary appointments,” the university said in a brief official statement Wednesday. “In order to ensure a fair process, we will not comment further until this has concluded.”

    In an interview with the *Times of London* published last week, Arday outright denied intentional plagiarism, but acknowledged he made minor errors in his doctoral work. He attributed those mistakes to insufficient academic supervision during his PhD studies, a common challenge for early-career researchers at smaller institutions.

    In his resignation statement this week, Arday continued to defend his academic record, stressing that his choice to step down should not be misinterpreted.

    “My decision should not be interpreted as a loss of faith in scholarship,” he said. “Nor should it be mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives that have surrounded me. It is simply the decision of someone who has reached the limits of what any person should reasonably be expected to endure.”

  • Exclusive: Cambridge University backtracks on divesting from arms companies

    Exclusive: Cambridge University backtracks on divesting from arms companies

    Exclusive reporting from Middle East Eye has uncovered that the University of Cambridge has reversed a planned policy that would have paved the way for full divestment from weapons manufacturers, a step that came in direct response to widespread student and faculty campaigning over the institution’s investments linked to Israeli human rights violations.

    Internal documents reviewed by MEE show that on April 16, Cambridge’s top governing body, the University Council, signed off on a new monitoring framework for endowment investments in conventional weapons producers. The framework was developed by the Cambridge University Endowment Trustee Body (CUETB), the body tasked with overseeing the university’s £4.2 billion ($5.74 billion) endowment fund, which is managed day-to-day by University of Cambridge Investment Management Limited (UCIM).

    Under the original policy, the framework was designed to track the endowment’s total exposure to firms that primarily manufacture conventional weapons. If that exposure crossed a pre-set threshold as a share of total fund assets, mandatory discussions would be launched with UCIM to outline a timeline for reducing those holdings. In July 2026, CUETB went a step further, setting the threshold for arms investments at zero percent — a historic decision that would have required divestment talks for any level of investment in weapons companies, effectively committing the institution to full divestment.

    This policy was developed by a 2024 university working group convened after student activists with Cambridge for Palestine set up on-campus encampments to demand the university cut financial ties with firms enabling Israeli occupation and human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank. The policy reaffirmed commitments the university made to academic staff just one month ago, when the Council publicly stated it would move to reduce arms investments that crossed the established threshold.

    However, multiple anonymous sources with direct knowledge of the internal decision-making process told MEE that CUETB has quietly scrapped the original plan, replacing it with a new policy that removes any requirement to reduce holdings even if the zero percent threshold is breached. While the zero percent threshold remains on paper, the revised policy no longer mandates action to cut exposure to weapons manufacturers.

    Critically, the non-public policy change was made by CUETB without bringing the decision to a vote before the full University Council, and multiple sitting Council members confirmed to MEE they were never notified of the revision. It remains unclear when the reversal was approved, and the University of Cambridge has not responded to multiple repeated requests for comment from MEE on the policy shift.

    This is not the first time Cambridge has faced scrutiny over its endowment investments. In February 2025, MEE revealed that UCIM had allocated more than £140 million ($189 million) to an S&P 500 fund that holds stakes in multiple companies linked to Israeli human rights violations, including Palantir Technologies, Caterpillar, and GE Aerospace. The university has repeatedly refused to disclose the full list of firms in its endowment portfolio, citing legal confidentiality requirements. Earlier this year, dozens of senior Cambridge academics accused the institution of “maximal obfuscation” over its investments, arguing that the lack of transparency prevents faculty from conducting proper oversight of the endowment’s ties to arms manufacturers.

    A spokesperson for Cambridge for Palestine told MEE that the activist group was “shocked, but not surprised” by the university’s reversal of its public commitments. “The notice in April issued by the University Council made clear that if arms investments were to exceed a yet-to-be-decided threshold of overall investments, then exposure to such investments would be reduced as part of a new monitoring scheme,” the spokesperson said. “Now that this threshold has been set at zero percent, we are hearing that the university has chosen to ignore and sideline its own statements and commitments by removing any process of investment exposure reduction.”

    The spokesperson added that the decision is particularly problematic because it was made unilaterally by the trustee body, rather than going through the university’s formal governance processes. The original divestment motion that launched the working group process has still not been put to a vote before Regent House, Cambridge’s democratic governing body made up of faculty and staff. “The University can backtrack all it likes, and obfuscate language to avoid scrutiny and accountability,” the spokesperson said. “But Cambridge for Palestine re-emphasises that students, staff and local activists will never stop campaigning until the University’s money is used for education as it should be, not for funding war and occupation.”

  • Cambridge professor at centre of plagiarism furore quits

    Cambridge professor at centre of plagiarism furore quits

    A high-profile University of Cambridge academic, who entered the spotlight two years ago as the institution’s youngest Black professor, has stepped down from his posts with immediate effect, bringing a dramatic new turn to a rapidly escalating plagiarism and academic misconduct controversy. Jason Arday, who held a chair in the sociology of education and was a fellow at Jesus College, announced his resignation Wednesday, mere hours after Cambridge University confirmed it had launched a formal investigation into fresh allegations concerning his academic credentials and honorary appointments.

    The scandal first gained public traction when U.S.-based academic Nathan Cofnas, whose research affiliation with Cambridge ended in 2024 following accusations of racism, levied claims that multiple sections of Arday’s doctoral dissertation were copied from other scholars’ work. Beyond the plagiarism allegations, scrutiny has also spread to several personal and professional achievements Arday has cited publicly, including claims that he completed 30 marathons in 35 days and raised millions of dollars for charity, claims that have since been disputed.

    In an open resignation letter posted online, Arday framed his departure as the only viable path forward after an extended period of intense public and institutional pressure. “Quitting is the only way to end a difficult period,” he wrote, adding that his decision should not “be mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives that have surrounded me.” He noted that he had reached the breaking point of what any person could reasonably be expected to endure, while vowing that his departure would be temporary: “This is not the end of my work. I need time to heal… and be myself again. I will return.”

    Arday has long maintained that much of the scrutiny targeting him is rooted in anti-Black racism, a claim he repeated in a recent interview with The Times. During that interview, he acknowledged making unintentional academic “mistakes” but pushed back against efforts to paint him as “a liar, a fantasist and an academic fraud.”

    Cambridge’s decision to open a new investigation marks a notable shift from its position in June, when university officials forcefully defended Arday, describing the criticism against him as a “vile campaign to undermine his credibility.” At that time, the institution stated that prior allegations of plagiarism in Arday’s thesis and journal publications had already been investigated and dismissed by relevant academic bodies and publishing journals. On Wednesday, the university did not elaborate on what new information had prompted the fresh probe, and Jesus College separately confirmed it would launch its own independent inquiry into the matter.

    The controversy has quickly become a polarizing cultural flash point in the United Kingdom, with right-wing media and commentators seizing on the scandal to criticize higher education diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) policies, framing Arday as a prominent example of what they argue are compromised academic standards stemming from DEI initiatives. On the other side of the debate, an open letter in support of Arday, which accuses critics of orchestrating a coordinated attempt to undermine Black academics in positions of influence, has collected more than 15,000 signatures from prominent Black academics, senior Cambridge leaders and other supporters across the higher education sector.

    Arday’s remarkable personal backstory, which he details in an upcoming memoir set for publication this month by U.K. imprint Simon & Schuster UK, has been a core part of his public profile. Diagnosed with autism, Arday has said he remained non-verbal until age 11 and did not learn to read and write until he was 18, rising through academia to become a full professor at Cambridge by 37. Simon & Schuster reaffirmed its support for Arday this week, stating it remains “proud to publish” his story, and noted that no plagiarism allegations have been made against the memoir itself.

  • Oprah Winfrey says she will close her school for girls in South Africa next year

    Oprah Winfrey says she will close her school for girls in South Africa next year

    Nearly two decades after opening a transformative boarding school for disadvantaged young women outside Johannesburg, media mogul and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey has announced that the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls will cease operations at its current campus at the end of 2025, with full ownership transferred to South Africa’s Gauteng provincial education department. The landmark institution, first opened in 2007, grew out of a conversation with anti-apartheid icon and former South African President Nelson Mandela, who emphasized how investing in girls’ education could unlock widespread, lasting change across the continent. Mandela was in attendance at the academy’s grand opening to mark the launch of the project.

    From its inception, the handover of the 52-acre campus to local educational authorities was always part of the core agreement, academy representatives confirmed. The facility, which boasts 21 classrooms, six specialized science and computer labs, a 10,000-volume library, and a 600-seat performance theater, will now be taken over by the Gauteng provincial government, which has not yet announced its long-term plans for the property.

    Winfrey emphasized in a formal statement released Wednesday that the end of operations at the current campus does not mark the end of her commitment to empowering young South African women through education. “The dream was never simply to build a school,” Winfrey said. “It was to invest in the limitless potential of young women. That mission doesn’t end with one campus. It continues in every girl whose future can be transformed through education.”

    Moving forward, Winfrey’s philanthropic organization, the Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation, will expand its national scholarship program to support academically gifted girls at top-performing schools across South Africa. To date, more than 500 students have graduated from the Leadership Academy, with many going on to pursue higher education at leading universities in South Africa, the United States, and across Europe.

    Gauteng’s Provincial Minister for Education Lebogang Maile confirmed that current students enrolled at the academy will be able to complete their secondary education without disruption, with full financial support remaining in place through their graduation.

    The academy made global headlines shortly after its opening, when multiple students made accusations of physical and sexual abuse against a residential dormitory matron. Winfrey traveled immediately to South Africa to meet with affected students and their families, issued a public apology for the failure to protect students, and commissioned an independent probe into the allegations. The matron was ultimately acquitted of all criminal charges in a 2010 court ruling.

  • Oprah Winfrey to close her school for girls in South Africa

    Oprah Winfrey to close her school for girls in South Africa

    Nearly two decades after breaking ground on a transformative educational initiative for disadvantaged young women in South Africa, media icon Oprah Winfrey has announced that the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls (OWLAG) will close its current boarding campus at the end of the 2027 academic year, aligning with the original founding agreement for the site. The sprawling campus, located in Henley-on-Klip south of Johannesburg, will then be transferred to local Gauteng provincial education authorities.

    Winfrey’s plan for transitioning the academy ensures no currently enrolled student will face disruption to their studies: any girl who has not completed her degree by the 2027 handover will receive full scholarships to continue their education at other top institutions across the country. Moving forward, Winfrey’s foundation will shift its model from operating a single campus to running a national scholarship program that supports academically gifted girls from low-income communities to attend leading South African schools.

    The idea for OWLAG was first sparked in 2002, when Winfrey met with anti-apartheid icon and former South African president Nelson Mandela. Launched in 2007 at a total cost of $40 million, the boarding school was designed to unlock leadership potential for girls from underserved backgrounds. To date, more than 1,000 students have graduated from the academy, with alumni going on to build successful careers as doctors, lawyers, engineers, corporate executives, entrepreneurs and artists. One 2012 graduate, Andronica Klaas, now serves as a senior engineering lead at global tech giant Meta, who credits the academy with reshaping her worldview. “Every corner of the campus was filled with so much love and care and detail,” Klaas said in comments shared on Winfrey’s Oprah Daily platform. “OWLAG convinced me that preparation, character and purpose mattered more than where I came from.”

    Long circulating online speculation has linked the campus closure to mismanagement, but Nico Olwagen, a public relations consultant for the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy Foundation, has denied these claims. For Winfrey, the transition is not an end to her mission, but an expansion of it. “The dream was never simply to build a school,” the 72-year-old media mogul explained in an official statement. “It was to invest in the limitless potential of young women. That mission doesn’t end with one campus. It continues in every girl whose future can be transformed through education. I’m excited that this next chapter will allow us to reach even more young women across South Africa and continue the promise that began more than 20 years ago.”

    While the future use of the OWLAG campus remains undecided following the handover, Gauteng’s education department has pledged to uphold the institution’s founding legacy. “We will ensure that this exceptional institution continues to serve the people of Gauteng while honouring the vision upon which it was established,” the department said in a statement.

    Throughout its 20-year history, OWLAG has not been without controversy. When the academy first opened, some critics questioned its lavish facilities, which included two theaters, a yoga studio and a beauty salon, arguing that the $40 million investment could have served a larger number of students if distributed across existing public institutions. Just months after opening, the academy also faced scandal when a group of students accused a former staff member of abuse; the staff member was ultimately cleared of all charges. Currently, 281 students are enrolled at the campus.