The Trojan Horse Affair · Serial Productions & The New York Times

Part 2: The Case of the Four Resignations

February 3, 2022·55 min·5 clips

Hamza and Brian transform his parents' bedroom into a detective HQ with whiteboards and string to hunt for the Trojan Horse letter's author.

Four pages did real damage. Sitting at children's desks in the covert classroom at Tahir Alam's house, the reporters go back to the Trojan Horse letter and the question of who wrote it. Tahir has his own theory about motive. The letter made him the ringleader of an extremist plot, though the episode says the plot was not real. The fallout was real enough. Authorities investigated, an education movement was dismantled, and the national government tightened counter-extremism policy afterward. Then the focus narrows. The reporting moves to Adderley, Parkview connections, and the four TAs at the center of the dispute. Dave Hughes remembers the office. With Jackie Hughes beside him, he describes Rizvana Dar's space as personal, professional, and strangely possessive all at once. One word starts doing a lot of work. Fiefdom is not just color here. It explains how Dave and Jackie understood power, control, and what someone might do to hold onto it. The court files make the conflict harder to wave away. Mrs. Dar's witness statements describe the TAs as unhappy at work, constantly fighting her, and threatening her job. Parents added pressure too. Some complaints came from more orthodox Muslim parents, described in the litigation as Salafi Muslims, who challenged how the school was being run. She suspected coordination. The statements suggest Mrs. Dar thought the Muslim TAs were connected to the nearby Salafi community and were pushing parents to act. Then personal rumor enters the record. The reporting spends time on accusations about her unmarried status and not wearing a hijab, because those details show how workplace conflict, religion, reputation, and school authority got tangled together. Nothing lands neatly. The episode works because documents, memories, and uncomfortable descriptions slowly turn a simple scandal into a much messier question about motive.

As heard by us

A patient investigation that turns school politics and the Trojan Horse letter into a sharper mystery.

This episode treats a school dispute as a story about paperwork, power, and the damage a Trojan Horse letter can do. It stays close to Tahir Alam in a covert classroom, follows the logic of the accusation, and keeps circling back to who wrote the letter and why it was taken so…

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Why you'd press play

Follow a letter from a schoolroom at the front of Tahir Alam's house into a national scandal.

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