Thankfully James O’Brien says he doesn’t feel any personal guilt for standing up for Arday publicly. Well that’s a relief…
He implied this is because only a racist would doubt Arday’s credentials. He said on LBC today:
“What’s your takeaway here? Because mine is very very personal. I can’t separate the personal from the public. I feel like a mug actually is the short answer. I don’t feel guilt. I don’t feel, oh you should have done differently or you should have done better because I mean who would who would meet a Cambridge professor and immediately start thinking ‘God I wonder whether you actually deserve to be there, I certainly wouldn’t do that.’
If I was a racist and I met a black Cambridge professor, then I probably would find myself thinking, ‘Yeah, really a black guy, professor, I don’t think…’ but I’m not a racist, so it didn’t cross my mind. But it’s more the personal contact that I’ve had with him subsequently that makes me feel like a mug. The fact that he thought I was someone that he might be able to persuade to stick up for him when he knew he knew that he’d done.”
O’Brien described Arday as a “remarkable & brilliant man” in 2023 and last month attacked the Times and the Telegraph for “studied & deliberate ignominy. If there is any case to answer here, it is about Liverpool John Moore’s supervisory failure of an obviously unique PhD student. Something, I imagine, their own exhaustive investigation concluded…” Is an apology in order?
More names have dropped off Jolyon’s letter in support of Arday, namely:
Lord Simon Woolley is still on there but his job title has been stripped. To begin with he was “Principal, Homerton College, University of Cambridge” – in list two he is just “Lord Simon Woolley.” Cambridge wipeout…
There is now an effort to launch an investigation into how Arday was ever appointed in the first place. Goodo…
Burnham confirms he spoke to Trump last night about drilling in the North Sea:
“I indicated in the phone call that we had a week last Monday that I would take a pragmatic approach when it comes to the North Sea, and that is my intention as we go forward from here. There is a resource there. When people are struggling, we can’t ignore that. Hence, me indicating that to the president…”