The most egregious is Cambridge, which used him to repair its reputation for being white and elitist. He did not deserve the glittering prize of a professorship there. His peers had for some time privately fretted that he lacked the credentials to support his public profile. Journalists at the Telegraph later found over 100 passages from his PhD thesis that had been copied, some with small changes, from someone else’s. Others uncovered evidence in his published research of made-up quotes, data and funding claims. Perhaps the university was hoodwinked by a conman. Yet Mr Arday’s words paint him as a guileless fabulist. He spoke of visiting professorships at Glasgow and Ohio State Universities; both denied it. He said he had raised £5m ($7m) for charity, then that this had been in conjunction with others whose identities were protected by non-disclosure agreements. He described how he had run 30 marathons in 35 days, nine with a broken leg. When asked about his extraordinary feats by the Guardian, he said: “I thought you’d just believe me.” Cambridge seems to have been blinded by its eagerness to claim Mr Arday as proof of its inclusiveness. Here was a star professor who was not only black but had also overcome staggering disadvantage. Until he was 11, he claimed, he could not speak; until the age of 18 he was illiterate. He was also autistic. He was, in short, a walking, talking bundle of traits glamorised by people who want to promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Those who appointed him glossed over whether he was up to the job, or to the scrutiny that would surely come with it. The man was subordinate to the symbol. Few emerge from this affair unsullied. Nathan Cofnas, a former Cambridge academic who describes himself as a “race realist”, was early to accuse Mr Arday of plagiarism. He has been proved right, but his motivation was hardly pure. Mr Cofnas was fired by his college after writing in a blog that, in a meritocracy, “Blacks would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment.” Mr Arday lied on a grand scale and, though vulnerable, dealt aggressively with any who questioned him. A journalist who asked about plagiarism was reported to the police for harassment. Mr Arday enlisted ferocious libel
lawyers to help squash the story. Those now blaming newspapers for his death and calling for more curbs on press freedom are continuing to treat his life as a morality tale. In fact, today’s laws helped Mr Arday suppress legitimate questions of public interest. For Cambridge, hiring Mr Arday was a handy substitute for years of sustained hard work. The share of black professors at the university remains a tiny 0.4%. Cambridge says it offered Mr Arday support after he resigned. Given how things turned out, it should have taken its duty of care more seriously. And just as Mr Arday’s supporters dehumanised him during his rise, so his detractors rushed to use him as he fell. His case has delighted those who argue that all efforts to diversify institutions like Cambridge are wrong. The irony is that doubt may now fall unjustly on other academics from minority groups—precisely those whom activists supporting people such as Mr Arday say they want to help. The fervour for DEI had already begun to pass by the time of Mr Arday’s appointment. Since his death, pundits have debated what, exactly, he was a symbol of: peak woke, or the rise of digital lynch mobs? He should be remembered as neither, but as a human being. And the institutions that failed him should try harder to look at people as individuals, with their own virtues and flaws, rather than as emblems of anything. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/08/19/jason-arday-was-treated-as-a-symbol- not-a-man
Fewer contrails would be good for the climate It could take care of at least a little global warming Aug 20th 2026 Good news on global warming is thin on the ground. But there may be some up in the air. Operation Blue Skies, announced on August 18th, is a scientific study being undertaken by Britain’s air-traffic-control service, NATS, and various organisations where people study the effects on climate of the streaks of cloud created by aircraft—known as contrails. Over the next two winters the consortium aims to see if it is possible to reduce the number of persistent contrails—the class with the largest such effects—over a swathe of the North Atlantic, thereby measurably reducing the climate impact of civil aviation. If this experiment works, a worldwide application of the same techniques might cut the climate effects of air travel by as much as half.
On a sunny day the wispy cirrus clouds into which some contrails are transformed can look as if they might be cooling the planet in the manner of a delicate parasol. And some contrails do indeed cool things down beneath them a bit. But they also warm things up by trapping some of the upwelling infrared radiation that would otherwise escape into space. On average, that warming effect, found in all contrails (and the cirrus clouds they turn into), handsomely outweighs the cooling provided by some. In the climate scheme of things, contrails are a liability. Happily, it appears that much harm can be avoided by small changes to flight paths. Persistent contrails appear only in what are known as “ice- supersaturated regions” (ISSRs). Often planes can avoid such regions just by flying a little bit lower. The purpose of Operation Blue Skies is to find out how well the presence of ISSRs can be predicted, how effective such little shifts in altitude can be in avoiding persistent contrails, and how easily and safely the changes in flight path needed to bring them about can be integrated into routines for airlines and air-traffic control. The cut of up to half in the climate-effects of air travel would come at a very small cost. The number of flights at lowered altitude might be small—as little as 5% of the total. Because altitude buys efficiency, those flights would consume more jet fuel, but less than 2% more. Burning even that little extra fuel would be anathema to airlines. So some suggest the costs of action might be minimised, and the airlines incentivised, by setting up a market which somehow links contrail cooling to carbon prices. The European Union, which has had some success and plenty of experience with carbon markets, recently took a small step towards something along these lines. It is also the sort of idea to which economists— and The Economist—tend to be partial. But it would be a mistake nonetheless. Markets for pollutants have worked best when both the aim and the remedy are fairly simple—most famously, reducing sulphur-dioxide emissions from power stations in America. Contrails, by contrast, are complicated. Though there is no doubt that their net effect is warming, saying how much warming a particular contrail might produce is often difficult and sometimes next to impossible.
The difficulties are made yet worse when the contrail being assessed is a purely notional one—as would be the case for the contrails avoided by changing flight paths. Valuing counterfactuals is always hard. If contrail-avoidance turns out to be as useful as it looks, it would be much simpler to simply have air-traffic controllers assign routes that limit persistent contrails when it is possible and safe to do so. If some airlines choose to avoid the affected routes, others will surely be happy to take their place. And if such a scheme were also to show the benefits of innovations in air-traffic control (quite a few have been suggested) the industry would end up better off, as well as less polluting. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/08/20/fewer-contrails-would-be-good-for-the- climate
Employment tribunals v AI Also this week, AI and Hollywood, scientific papers, oil pipelines, restaurants, postcards, Richard Wagner Aug 20th 2026 Letters are welcome via email to letters@economist.comFind out more about how we process your letter The record backlog of 64,000 claims against employers in Britain is troubling (“A tragedy of the commons”, August 8th). But it is misguided to blame the backlog on a system that enables “too much access” because there are no fees on bringing a case to an employment tribunal and there are no punitive costs to make people think hard about making a claim. What is extraordinary is not the volume of new claims, but the historically low rate of resolved cases.
Several changes could expedite resolutions. Simple tweaks to the forms used to submit and respond to claims could limit the word-soup generated by AI and help overstretched tribunals process them. Changes to case management, notoriously permissive in tribunals, would also make a world of difference. Imposing deposit orders on claims with low prospects of success would dissuade unmeritorious cases without slapping all workers with fees. Mandating early mediation for some cases and penalising either party for non-engagement would have the same effect. Similarly, communicating directions to the parties in writing at the start of the process, and not at preliminary hearings, could save precious judicial resources. Then there is the matter of legal advice. It is no surprise that workers turn to AI for support. Employment is usually excluded from legal aid, so the poorest workers and the non-unionised have no one else to turn to. Before entertaining a radical imposition of costs we owe it to ourselves to engage with the solutions that preserve access to justice. Dr Dora-Olivia VicolChief executive officerWork Rights CentreLondon Yes, lots of AI-written claims are a hassle for bureaucrats. But isn’t it better for those who feel disenfranchised and want to be able to “exercise their lawful rights as successfully as the sharp-elbowed middle classes” do so through AI rather than turn to the promises of the nearest populist? Elinor Ostrom, a Nobel prizewinner in economics, pointed out that humanity has a good track record of dealing with tragedies of the commons. An extensive dataset at the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University tracks how groups of people have governed commonly pooled resources, and uses that knowledge to change how differently empowered citizens engage with a different governance structures. Perhaps AI could be trained on that. Nick Wills-JohnsonPerth, Australia I recently successfully challenged a parking ticket. AI showed me useful phrases such as contra proferentem. But that ticket would never have been issued 20 years ago. We have an excess of regulation, government and