Jason Arday reviewed and approved this student's PhD thesis, which portrays black women taking trips to London and attending potlucks as forms of "marronage"—the historical practice of Africans fleeing enslavement. The 70K-word thesis is based on conversations with just 3 black women, which were converted into poems and then, after being infused with the author's own subjective experiences, analyzed via "Critical Poetic Inquiry." The thesis can only be described as a tribute to black women such as herself, channeled through an amalgam of slam poetry and activism. She describes her research project in bizarre terms such as: "a lament, a war cry, a chant and a belly laugh" and "a joyful, painful rupture, a disruption, a deliberate transgression, a riff, and a drum beat… a prayer for all we have lost and for all that we can be." She is also openly hostile to academic rigor, quoting other scholars when admitting that her project "does not align with notions of 'neutral' research or 'objective' researchers." Academic standards, such as "marking criteria, rubrics and journal requirements that favour written knowledge over that which is communicated creatively (i.e. through painting or performance)" and also "notions that knowledge must be scientifically tested and proven to meet coloniality's contorted standards of fact" are deemed by her to be forms of colonial oppression. This raises the question: Why is Cambridge awarding its highest academic credential to a project whose author openly presents accepted academic standards as oppressive constraints to be undermined and resisted? It's clear the problem of academic standards at Cambridge wasn't isolated to the case of Jason Arday, but appears to be a form of systemic rot. Because the thesis was suddenly embargoed for the next 5 years immediately when the Arday scandal broke, we are legally unable to share it in its entirety. So we have performed a very long and thorough exegesis of it, which you can read at the link below. 🔗benryan.substack.com/p/cambr…