Police Investigated Journalist Who Tried to Expose Cambridge Professor

Scotland Yard spent four months investigating a journalist who tried to expose the plagiarism row that has engulfed Cambridge University.

Jack Grove, a reporter for Times Higher Education (THE), was accused of harassment after he emailed a series of questions to Prof Jason Arday about his academic record.

Prof Arday also hired the law firm Carter-Ruck, which suggested in a letter to THE that its “apparent attack” on him “may be… racially motivated”.

The Metropolitan Police spent four months looking into the claim of harassment before deciding in February to close the case.

The police did not interview Mr Grove, who only found out about the investigation when the Met contacted him to inform him that they would not be taking action.

The Met also reportedly passed on a complaint to another force about an academic who was also looking into the academic record of Prof Arday, but the other force refused to investigate.

The Met is among forces that have been accused in recent months of wasting time on pointless investigations while insisting that they do not have the manpower to routinely attend burglaries and other crimes.

Mr Grove told The Telegraph that he had been “stunned” to receive a phone call from the police to be told he had been investigated simply for doing his job.

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Mr Grove had started looking into Prof Arday’s background after being tipped off by academics who had found apparent evidence of plagiarism in his work.

He emailed Prof Arday and Cambridge University, as well as Liverpool John Moores University – which had awarded him his PhD – to ask questions about the apparent overlap with another student’s PhD. He also asked questions about Prof Arday’s claims of raising £5.5m for charity through seemingly improbable feats of ultra-distance running.

That prompted the letter from Carter-Ruck in September last year, and in November last year a formal complaint of harassment was made to the police. Mr Grove has never been told who made the complaint.

The university denied it was them.

Separately, The Guardian reported that the Met passed on a complaint of harassment to Devon and Cornwall Police that had been made about a professor at Plymouth Marjon University.

Prof David Harris had contacted Cambridge with his own concerns about Prof Arday’s work, which triggered the complaint to the Met. Devon and Cornwall Police refused to investigate, The Guardian reported.

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