Crumbling… illusions

Your Eyewitness remembers a time when Guyanese parents could tell their children – with swelled chests! – that a Cambridge education was the gold standard!! Think Newton, Bertrand Russel; Stephen Hawking and Oppenheimer!! “Study hard,” they’d say. “Get good grades and get to Cambridge and they’ll teach you to think and run the world”!! How quaint!! Evidently, Cambridge appears to’ve discovered a more sophisticated educational philosophy: before asking whether somebody can think – first establish whether the appointment makes them look progressive!!
Enter Professor Jason Arday, who at 37 was celebrated by Cambridge as the youngest Black person ever appointed to a professorship at the university!! His personal story was presented as an inspirational triumph over adversity – that he’d been unable to read or write until 18, yet went on to obtain a degrees and a doctorate!! His academic work centred on the woke issues of race, inequality, inclusion and the transformation of higher education!! Cambridge itself described his appointment as part of its efforts to “democratise” higher education.
Now there’s nothing wrong with any of that!! The trouble begins when a university whose reputation rests upon centuries of intellectual scrutiny starts looking rather less interested in scrutinising the credentials of the people doing the scrutinizing!! Cambridge has now confirmed massive plagiarism in Arday’s academic record – not to mention not publishing a non-existent book!!
But the question is, how’d the questions arise in the first place? And that’s where we should pay attention!! After all, for generations, British education was one of the principal exports of the Empire and our schools inherited British examinations, British textbooks, British degrees and – above all – the British conviction that standards were standards!! A Cambridge degree meant something because Cambridge was supposed to be exceptionally difficult to fool! With our Guyana Scholars like Rupert Roopnarine, he university’s message was we don’t care who you are – just show us what you know!!
But with Arday as an example, Cambridge’s new academic bureaucracy seems tempted by another formulation: We know who you are – now let’s work out how impressive that is!! It’s the triumph of the Diversity CV where the candidate must not merely be accomplished but must embody a narrative. He must represent resilience; marginalization based on race, ethnicity, gender or whatever; intersectionality; institutional transformation and preferably should arrive accompanied by a press release explaining them all!!
The danger as we’ve seen with Argay is that once the narrative becomes sufficiently attractive, asking awkward questions about the underlying evidence can itself be portrayed as evidence of prejudice!! How dare you!! Ain’t it wonderful?? The old academic question that used to be “Is this true?” is now, “Why are you asking?!!”
And the new standard’s now, “I say; therefore I am!!”

…credentials
Now we in Guyana should be particularly nervous since we are paying several universities – far less reputable than Cambridge! – across the world for degrees in our GOAL program!! British educational standards historically mattered enormously here and our elite schools of Queens and Bishops were patterned explicitly on British models!! Our secondary-school system was then built heavily around British examinations that helped establish the credibility of generations of Guyanese professionals—doctors, lawyers, engineers, academics, civil servants and teachers!!
When a Guyanese student proudly says, “I got a Cambridge qualification,” the implication’s always been that somebody somewhere actually checked!! But if Cambridge allowed ideological fashion, identity politics or institutional embarrassment to interfere with rigorous verification, the damage ain’t gonna stop at the River Cam – it’ll travel!!
The joke of the new Cambridge admissions interview writes itself: “Good morning, candidate. What’s your qualifications?” “I have a first-class degree.” “Excellent. But do you identify as historically marginalised?” “No.” “Hmm. And your intersectionality?”
“I don’t think I have any.”
“Sorry…you’re rejected!!”

…gas tanks
After a spate of exploding cooking gas tanks at customers’ premises – injuring and killing several persons and blowing up the kitchens – the authorities have finally instituted new standards to ensure greater safety!!
About time, don’t you think??