The scandal has given succour to the same old rightwing attacks on D&I, but companies that do it properly raise standards rather than lowering them

This has not been a good fortnight for the concept of diversity and inclusion. The fallout from the Jason Arday affair has been an all-out attack, by the rightwing media and political classes, on institutional efforts to reduce inequality.

Arday was the Black academic who, in a fanfare of publicity, had been appointed a professor at Cambridge University in 2023. At the time, British institutions were still struggling to address the widespread issues of systemic racism thrown up by the murder of George Floyd three years earlier.

Joseph Harker is the Guardian’s senior editor, diversity and development

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