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https://thecritic.co.uk/cambridges-arday-reckoning-is-already-going-wrong/

So far the university has come out appallingly. In hiring Arday it appointed to a senior chair a man clearly neither up to the job nor cut out for academia. Basic due diligence was missed, or maybe quietly omitted; the matter strongly suggested an appointment swayed less by commitment to intellectual excellence than by a desire to trumpet Cambridge’s embrace of diversity, equity and inclusion. And when people in the know started publicly asking awkward questions, the best it could manage was mindless corporate PR-speak referring to “a vile campaign to undermine his credibility, which must stop.” Having since been forced to admit that serious errors were indeed made, the university has now announced a two-part inquiry. First, it has signed up lawyer and ex-prosecutor Nazir Afzal to ask whether it did enough to support Jason Arday. Secondly, it has set up an independently-chaired expert panel will look at the recruitment process for senior academic staff and at the processes for dealing with alleged academic misconduct. A problem contained and house being put in order? Don’t be so sure. Even at this stage there are worrying signs that comes out will be not so much an academic reset as fine words aimed at shoring up what is left of Cambridge’s reputation, and otherwise business very much as usual.

In short, there are worrying indications what will appear from this review and inquiry is a combination of breast-beating over racism and demands to double down on anti-racist initiatives, coupled with a progressive HR-friendly word soup of fairly impenetrable management-speak concerning robust processes and the like. All of which would allow the university to go on very much as at present, in a combination of social progressivism, gentle intellectual decline and a Panglossian insistence that it is going from strength to strength.

I hope I’m wrong. But don’t bet on it.