The Peter Thiel-Linked Race Science Network that Penetrated Cambridge University and Targeted Jason Arday

Read our Monthly Magazine And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system Jason Arday, a 41-year-old academic who resigned as Cambridge’s Professor of Sociology of Education, was found dead on Friday following intense scrutiny of many aspects of his qualifications and personal life by the majority of the established press. His coordinated targeting by an explicitly anti-black race science network did not come out of nowhere, Byline Times can reveal. Backed by the pro-Trump Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, this network has spent a decade penetrating Cambridge University before reaching Reform UK, Restore Britain, and the pan-European far-right. This phase of the campaign against Jason Arday began when academic and anti-black racist Nathan Cofnas raised claims of plagiarism in Arday’s work in a Substack post last month. The story it fuelled was then dissected in more than 200 articles across the majority of the British press in the weeks that followed, both in print and online. It was striking that many of these articles did not acknowledge that the central accusations were being made by a man who believes that inherited racial differences make black people less intelligent and would leave black people absent from virtually every elite position in public life outside of sport and entertainment. They also did not mention that Cofnas had used the terms “retarded”, “illiterate”, and “mentally disabled” to describe Jason Arday, while noting that he was “black”. Cofnas said that an unidentified male Cambridge faculty member had supplied him with information about Arday. Before even examining Arday’s PhD thesis, completed at Liverpool John Moores University, Cofnas had dismissed him as “just another DEI hire”, referring to ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ schemes. At the ideological centre of the network is Aporia, an online magazine which serves as the public-facing arm of the Human Diversity Foundation – now known as Polygenic Scores. The Human Diversity Foundation was a rebranded and relaunched version of the Nazi-era Pioneer Fund, which sought to mainstream its eugenics doctrines through Aporia. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel has cultivated ties to key actors in this network: to Cambridge Professor James Orr, through whom he channelled a donation to Cambridge; to Orr’s Cambridge circle; to online magazine Quillette which published attacks on Arday; and directly to Nathan Cofnas and Aporia senior editor Noah Carl. Orr linked this infrastructure to politics. Reform UK’s Head of Policy, and an advisor to the Free Speech Union organisation, he invited Aporia into national conservatism. At The Sanctuary, a right wing hub in Westminster, Aporia and the Orr-backed Cambridge Scrutonian Society have separate offices provided by cryptobillionaire Ben Delo. Delo gave Reform £4 million in early 2026. He has also sponsored the Free Speech Union. By understanding this network and its ideology, a more accurate picture can be developed of the motivations behind the disproportionate attacks on Jason Arday that continued even after his resignation from Cambridge University. A vigil in Trafalgar Square was held for Jason Arday on 17 August 2026. Photo: Getty ‘A Random Black Person’ On 21 July, Nathan Cofnas published the article which launched the campaign against Jason Arday. Titled ‘DEI Fraud and Cover-Up at Cambridge’, he portrayed Arday’s appointment to Cambridge University in 2023 as evidence that it had “grabbed a random black person” and abandoned academic standards in pursuit of diversity. On 9 August, Cofnas said that a male faculty member at Cambridge University – who he said he was not allowed to name – had contacted him on 13 June with information about Jason Arday. He referred to this person as a whistleblower who feared professional retaliation. Cofnas then examined Arday’s PhD thesis and published his allegations about alleged plagiarism. Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) had already formally tested the central allegation about Arday’s PhD the previous year, following claims by The Times and The Telegraph. Its inquiry found citation defects but did not uphold plagiarism, concluding that the problems were caused by “honest and reasonable error”, compounded by inadequate supervision regarding Arday’s learning disabilities. Arday told The Times that his autism affected how he processed information and that his early academic work relied heavily on mimicry to make sense of material. He accepted responsibility for mistakes but denied dishonesty. LJMU reached its finding independently of this explanation. It is plausible that these issues may explain questions around some of Arday’s other papers. The allegations drove a national news cycle of more than 200 articles across The Times and The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, the Daily Mail, The Independent, the Spectator, the Guardian, the Daily Express, The Sun, and Novara Media. That volume cemented disputed or unproven claims about Jason Arday’s scholarship and biography far beyond the anti-black race science network that launched them. The Book that Wasn’t Published A ‘double standard’ was applied to scrutiny of Jason Arday’s work. One example of this was on the subject of Arday’s supposedly “phantom” book, Being Young, Black and Male. It was initially described as a forthcoming Palgrave Macmillan title. But later academic and public biographies listed Arday simply as its “author”, alongside already published books. Palgrave Macmillan nevertheless confirmed that it had accepted the proposal, Durham University recorded it as a “manuscript in preparation”, and it was still being described in 2022 as an upcoming book. Compare this to James Orr, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University. For at least six years, from 2019-20 through 2023 and 2025, public biographies repeatedly listed Orr’s apparently unpublished Being and Eternity: Phenomenology and Thomism in Edith Stein among his existing “publications and policy papers” – without describing it as unfinished or forthcoming. In 2024, a podcast went further, introducing Orr as a “published author” who had “written” Being and Eternity (Orr did not dispute the characterisation). Yet, Orr’s Cambridge University biography page still lists the unpublished title as “forthcoming, 2022”. These repeated presentations of an apparently unpublished book as an established part of Orr’s publication record has not attracted anything approaching the scrutiny directed at Jason Arday. Neither case proves dishonesty. Stalled books and recycled biographies are mundane features of academic publishing. But Arday’s discrepancy became national ‘evidence’ of fraud. In January 2026, Peter Thiel delivered four private ‘Antichrist’ Lectures at Cambridge University – hosted by James Orr. Photo: James Orr/X Charity Runs and ‘Seven Up’ The portrayal of Jason Arday as a dishonest fantasist extended to his charity running. His claim to have completed 30 marathons in 35 days – ridiculed across dozens of articles (even after his death, for instance, in The Times by Sarah Ditum) – is supported by contemporaneous records. A January 2010 JustGiving page announced the dates and route before it began. The Times Higher Educational Supplement reported on the challenge while it was underway. The Richmond and Twickenham Times reported its completion on 25 August. Arday’s claim to have raised or helped raise £5 million for charity was also widely ridiculed by newspapers. When asked by the Guardian if his general figure of charity fundraising of £5 million was accurate, Arday said that the money had been raised through “many fundraising collectives over a two-decade period”, and that the other people who had taken part had signed NDAs to stop them from being identified. A Byline Times analysis of the publicly identifiable charities Arday was associated with for two decades found that they had a combined gross income of approximately £1.4 billion to £1.5 billion – putting his £5 million collective fundraising claim at well under 1% of their overall income. Arday had, for the most part, repeatedly described his fundraising in collective terms – referring as early as 2009 to what “we” had raised, and later to being “part of” fundraising initiatives and to “our fundraising projects”. It is also clear that Arday did play semi-professional football, despite speculation in the press that he did not. Another supposedly ‘impossible lie’ that the press accused Jason Arday of is notable when considered in a different context. In a discussion at the University of Bath in 2022, Arday was asked to “take us back to the beginning” of his journey. He recounted his childhood developmental difficulties – including his diagnosis aged three of autism and global development delay, and the years he spent with behavioural psychologists and speech therapists. He said: “I was part of a programme which doesn’t really exist any more, but was called Seven Up at the time. Seven Up is basically when they follow you over the duration of your life, so they follow you at seven, 14, 21. I was pulled out of the project when I was 14.” The television programme Seven Up was first broadcast in 1964. The Telegraph claimed that Arday had said he “appeared” in Michael Apted’s famous series – but Arday himself had not said this. His comment that the “programme” no longer existed also sits uneasily with that interpretation: 63 Up – presented by ITV as part of its continuing 7 Up Collection – aired in 2019. Arday later told The Times that he had been referring to an informal community initiative supporting black mothers raising children with complex learning needs. His wording was plainly confusing. But the claim on which the story rested – that he had said that he appeared in the television series – is not what he actually said. Reporting also repeatedly blurred the quality of the evidence against Arday.