THE GREAT AND UNFORTUNATE THINGS
We live in peculiar times. That is a trivial thing to say: on the surface, all times are unique. Only now it is actually, finally, beginning to look like this. When people unaffiliated with the University of Cambridge feel a sense of relief at their unaffiliation, while those who are affiliated feel they need to explain themselves—that sounds like the mother of all peculiarities.
In a society that treats any piece of news, be it a mass murder or a royal wedding, as entertainment, the explosion of commentary on the downfall of Jason Arday, the Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) darling at the University of Cambridge, is only to be expected. The cruelty of it is also highly predictable. I am not sure whether Arday can stay alive after all this. Simon Baron-Cohen said that he should be left alone because he is autistic and, as an autistic individual, would find it hard to cope. Well, Baron-Cohen must know a lot about autism, which I cannot pretend to match. I know quite a bit about… well… how people, autistic or not, feel when attacked. To hear every little bit of your life analysed, scrutinised, ridiculed and mocked for days and weeks on end is something I would wish only upon a carefully selected group of politicians—and there are not many of them.
It is a release of aggressive energy in a society that has been throttled for some time. It cannot be otherwise. In a culture where every opinion is neutered, every expression carefully policed, and ‘baby talk’ between adults encouraged in the name of not hurting anyone, criticism of complex situations, when finally allowed, turns into an ecological disaster.
In the name of fairness, and on the assumption that Arday’s life is worth living, I will now move on to a different subject: the nature of the people who enabled ‘Arday as a phenomenon’. There are hundreds of Ardays at the University of Cambridge and at other universities in the UK. Perhaps thousands. There are students who have been short-changed by their teaching and supervision. There are stellar researchers who could not get a place at a university despite considerable and remarkable academic output. Meaning nobody in particular, of course. (Too funny…) There are students and countless others who are disheartened by the obviousness and wrongness of all this. Enforcing ‘social justice’ agendas where other criteria—excellence—should matter spares nobody. Whose project are these Ardays? Who created them?
Short answer: DEI, with its Ardays, is an elite project. And if one is inclined to use the term ‘White British elite’, then it is a White British elite project aimed at preserving its own dominance. I should qualify this: not all of the White British elite is behind the DEI project; a certain segment of it is. That segment—Elite Group 1—has held power for several decades now. The White British upper and middle classes also have a counter-elite—Elite Group 2—which has nothing to do with the DEI project. Elite Group 2 has very limited power. The DEI project has been a tool of Elite Group 1 in its struggle with Elite Group 2. It is a clever method of control designed to prevent Elite Group 2 from getting closer to power. How does it work?
The answer is found in elite theory, a large body of work in political science that can genealogically be traced all the way back to Machiavelli but, in today’s intellectual landscape, is perhaps best grasped by invoking the name of Peter Turchin. Many of its foundational thinkers are Italian or German. Today, elite theory in coherent form is not a standard part of the sociology curriculum at universities, for reasons that remain to be explained.
What it says, in a nutshell, is that the masses, no matter where or when, and no matter what the political regime, are led by elites. Mass participation in politics and democracy do not solve the problem, if it is a problem. Moreover, instruments of mass participation are tools used by elites to ‘let off steam’. The existence of universal voting, for example, allows elites to politely suggest to the disaffected of all shades that they should ‘participate in politics’ and ‘elect representatives who will voice their grievances’. The fact that this voicing will lead nowhere is neither here nor there. Tough luck. Maybe the grievances are not grievances after all. Wink, wink… suggests the elite.
In the paragraph above, delete ‘democracy’ and replace it with ‘DEI’, and there you have it. DEI is another mechanism through which existing elites release steam, and a clever one. DEI, in its effects rather than its intentions, promotes mediocrity. It results in utterly unsuitable people occupying prestigious positions. Once in those positions, these people are inadequate; they cause harm, the severity of which depends on many factors, including the field in which they operate, the length of their stay and other circumstances.
Often, the actual work associated with the positions occupied by DEI hires is done by someone else entirely, which may soften the blow of their presence. And when the blow is not softened or offset entirely, it is called ‘the price that society pays’. In the meantime, the elite that enabled a DEI hire stays in power and waves the DEI hire around as proof that the pool of excellence and power extends beyond itself.
Of all the qualities of the DEI hire, the most profitable for the elite is just how comfortable such hires are: because of profound limitations in intellect and other qualities needed to do the job effectively, they cannot do very much. Their usefulness lies not so much in obsessive doing—that may happen, but rarely—as in non-doing, or in doing inconsequential things, which allows the elite to run its own projects.
Placing deserving characters in the midst of academic production in the social sciences and humanities is pregnant with risks. They are unpredictable, daring and innovative. And that is very dangerous because it rocks the boat of the elite project. The presence of real scholars is demanding. By introducing real questions and differences of opinion, it deals a blow to imagined consensus and existing power relations.
Those who think DEI hires make elites ‘feel good’ have got half the story right. ‘Feeling good’ is there, for sure, but that is not enough for Ardays to end up in top academic positions. People are driven by interests, not just emotions. And the interest is to have all sorts of inconsequential pets at the top so that the real competitors never make it there. ‘The position has been filled, dear competitor. Now shove your CV where the sun does not shine, and we wish you luck for the future.’
Now then…
As the canonical Hebrew poet Rachel said: ‘I only know how to speak of myself.’
My career in demography and social statistics started in the Israeli statistical authority. The sheer mass of official demographic statistics, the power of the insights they offered into issues of life and death, the methodological debates—all of that amazed me. I know… I know… all this sounds less than charismatic to the non-quantitatively minded, but that is me; there is no other ‘me’. My employer was good enough to send me to conferences and workshops abroad, and that broadened my horizons further. I became aware of similar issues in demographic contexts outside Israel.
All of that led me to choose a topic for my doctoral research. Colleagues in and outside Israel pointed out a perplexing feature of Israeli demography that nobody could explain. Ordinarily, men’s lives are shorter than women’s. This is a law of nature: the gap in life expectancy, favouring women, is observable everywhere. That gap is smaller in Israel than elsewhere, and that was the great enigma of Israeli demography.
I wrote a PhD proposal, sent it to a British university, got accepted and, three years later, ended up with a PhD that was subsequently published in leading demographic journals in the form of four articles. I chose that topic against the advice of a senior colleague who thought it was ‘too difficult’ and advised me ‘to ask a potential supervisor to give me a topic’. Being someone’s pet—if I translate their advice from English into English. I refused, not out of pride or noble contrariness. I was naively interested in my subject and believed that I could solve the puzzle.
I solved it.
I discovered that Israeli Jewish men have a very atypical, woman-like pattern of mortality, which also means that, by European standards, they have woman-like lifestyles. After all, patterns of death reflect patterns of life. That is why life expectancy, being a summary of the death schedule in a population, is treated as an indicator of the quality of life of that population. Because Israeli Jewish men have a very low component of mortality due to self-destruction and risk-taking—and that is despite the ongoing military hostilities in Israel—their mortality comes close to that of women in their society.
I could show this mathematically. I then extended this research to Jewish Diaspora communities and formulated a general ‘pattern of Jewish mortality’ that comprehensively explained why and how Jews differ in their patterns of death and life from the non-Jews who surround them. That, too, was published in leading demographic journals.
I then moved on to my next puzzle. I did not need a second PhD; I simply remained a curious demographer. My new obsession was the absurdly high fertility of Muslims in Israel. Since the 1950s, fertility has dropped spectacularly everywhere in the Middle East, yet among Israeli Arabs it remained very high, defying expectations. Was it because they did not know about contraception, as some suggested? Was it because they wanted to outbreed Jews demographically, as others claimed?
I sorted through this avalanche of nonsense only to show that their higher-than-expected fertility was an indirect result of the exceptionally good life they had alongside Jews—and specifically because of Jews. It was the Jewish economy of Mandatory Palestine, and later Israel, that fed Israeli minorities well and advanced their fertility by encouraging births in more than one way. I showed this mathematically and, yes, published it in a leading demographic journal.
My journey through demographic puzzles continued. My next puzzle involved a highly controversial set of claims regarding the quality of the British census. It undercounts certain populations, its critics said. We simply have no idea how many people of ‘type X’ are in the country, they said. I smiled under my moustache and said to myself: ‘It sounds like my next project.’
I solved it.
Using a variety of alternative sources, I showed that the British census does indeed undercount certain populations, among them Jews. It is therefore unsuitable for some—not all!—uses when it comes to minority statistics. At the risk of exciting you, I can say that this, too, was published in a leading demographic journal.
I could write another five or ten paragraphs like this to highlight other solved puzzles that led to publications, but why would I? I have given you a taste; do the multiplication yourself.
My next useful point is that, in the more than 20 years between my first encounter with that first—eventually solved—Puzzle and the last—so far—Puzzle Number 10, I received near-zero expressions of interest from that thing called ‘the university’, including but not limited to the University of Cambridge.
Do not get me wrong. They did not reject me. It was never as dramatic as that. I wish. My story would be much more interesting. Simply put: having made inquiries about positions, I was never encouraged to apply and, having learned about the eventual appointments made to the positions I had inquired about, I knew exactly what had been done.
The positions were never designed for problem-solvers, methodologists, doers and movers. It was not about excellence in areas that matter. It was about having the right people in the right places, doing obscure things of doubtful quality at a veeeeeery slooooow pace. In one way or another, the university—and I really do mean all of them—became a place where negative selection is the rule.
And if you look at the salaries of junior and mid-senior staff, you will find it easier to see and impossible to unsee. Do you really think salaries like that are meant to ‘attract talent’? They simply and routinely hire convenient figures who (1) are part of an elite project and (2) have been rejected by the dynamic private market.
If you ask yourself: OK, where do the ‘worthy people’ end up? Where did you, worthy or not, end up? My reply is: do not worry about these ‘worthy people’. They end up in think tanks, in institutes that exist, if not for profit, then at least not for loss. They are, by and large, all right. Somehow, their lives are always easier. Because somebody finds them genuinely useful.
Two things remain to be clarified.
First, the prophecy. Where will Jason Arday end up? In the same magical garden where Claudine Gay is now. Forgotten. On a good salary. In a good academic or administrative position. With a professorial title. That is where.
Let us wait one year. Then prove me wrong.
Second, the way forward. Now that my intellectual journey is public, I expect a flood of interest from the universities. My CV speaks for itself; what can I say? And if that is not enough, then, just like Jason Arday, I am super-sporty too. I have a valid gym membership. I tick other boxes too. Like Arday, I am also a refugee. I was mute in English until the age of 25 and in Hebrew until 17. Perhaps unlike Arday, I am good at writing sarcastic essays. Yeah… anything else, just ask…