Jason Arday dead

[ThisWiseRobin]

Just putting this out there, but just heared.A sad end to a whole sorry mess.

Every time I saw yet another headline about him - and it has been going on for weeks - I said to myself I hope he has people looking out for him. Whatever about what he did, that was beyond anything I have seen for a long time. And all newspapers were at it. I read the Guardian (but won't be again) and I was stunned that they were reporting on it incessantly too, way beyond the public interest.

An inquest will and should talk about whether the media have contributed to his death, and if that is the case, there should be accountability. I doubt there will be though. I am pretty disgusted by the whole thing and posters on here going, "well if he hadn't," have a word with yourself, seriously.

He wasn’t the first academic to have been accused of plagiarism - or even to have plagiarised. He wasn’t the first to have exaggerated his background. He wasn’t the first mediocre academic to have been over-promoted. But because he was allegedly a ‘diversity hire’ at an elite uni he was subject to trial by Social Media. His circumstances may have been exceptional, but a white academic with similar circumstances would not have found himself the subject of such a hate campaign - SM doesn’t generally really care about academia, unless to spout bollocks about Forrin Shtoodents. Genuinely tragic.

I wonder why it wasn't possible for JA to just duck out of the limelight for a bit. Chill etc.

Oh. You don’t think the public, who fund academia, have the right to know what is going on and question whether academics are acting properly? When published research and the influence of academia on policy affects all our lives? My goodness. I do.

i think they’ve been taken down when I searched them

Exaggerated his background to the extent he did. No, that's not comparable to white lies and riding on the coat tails of other academics. He was in a position of authority, power and influence. Jason Arday made his choices, facilitated by institutions who now will face questions. His death is tragic nonetheless.

I feel bad for him and I wasn’t aware he had two children. How sad 😔

He was allegedly paid 1.4M for a memoir that was supposed to come out this week. So there may have been serious legal repercussions on the horizon and not just a matter of losing your job and laying low for a bit.

Give it a rest

Or whether you acknowledge his students could have benefited from being taught by a qualified professor, or benefited from not being accused of racism if they queried their essay marks.

Oh come on. If only life was that simple.

Agree one hundred percent. This is just completely heartbreaking and it is a terrible indictment on our humanity and civility in this country. Nothing excuses the way the press have vilified this poor man. I feel utterly repelled and horrified by their actions. Shame on them. Jason may have been less than fully truthful, however he was set up from day one to serve an inclusion and diversity agenda for the big knobs at Cambridge. When the hounds were released they let the poor man be viciously attacked. Our basic humanity has just gone completely out of the window

Again none of the apparent claims by students have been proven.

They published a letter of support signed by various Cambridge senior leaders and other notables. They then allowed signers to quietly delete their signatures as more was revealed. After a while they put out a statement along the lines of they just published it.
The GLP should never have allowed signers to remove their signatures, the reports of who was the latest to quietly withdraw their signature must have been humiliating. They used Arday for their own publicity and they will absolutely capitalise on his death for their own benefit.

I hope the man finds peace and meaning in death that he couldn't find in life. 💐

I find this thread very conflicting because in all honesty it doesn’t feel quite right to me to be discussing these issues at this point when JA’s sad death has just been announced. But on the other hand if people are going to post inaccuracies or apportion blame where it doesn’t belong, or use his death to score political points, it seems important to challenge these as these are important issues.

Personally I think MN should remove this thread along with the others. But if it doesn’t, I may still feel the need to post.

Going to bed now. 🥱

Clearly we're all adults and you can all do what you like, but... this has been s really interesting discussion and I'm learning a lot. I'd really like to be able to get up in the morning and continue. So if we want to be allowed to discuss this topic here, we need to make sure we refrain from finger pointing, blaming, and making assumptions. Hopefully if we can keep the conversation/ debate respectful, we won't get zapped.

I'm not the thread police though. Just someone with an interest in academia, social issues autism and mental health.

I don’t remember hearing about other academics with such preposterous claims that couldn’t be substantiated. The half a mil raised for charity that he had claimed he’d signed an nda for at least part of that when he was asked for proof. Running 6 marathons on a broken leg..

Cambridge is revered as an elite academic institution, that coupled with the bizarre stories around a professor they were championing drew attention.

For what it’s worth I think Cambridge University let him down badly by accepting his stories on faith and promoting him. They wanted to look good and used him to that end. If they’d any interest in him as a person someone would have said ‘hang on a minute..’

As others have said, had he been been from a different background this would have been a non-story.

Well, exactly. His background, who he was, was important because he was USED by Cambridge as a token, a get out of jail free card against accusations of racism. He was their adored mascot, not for what he knew but for what he represented. Cambridge is at fault for raising him to such heights based on nothing at all, he was at fault for the lies he told to get there.

This

Please can we stop with trying to blame JA, or a particular newspaper, or Cambridge University? Respectfully, the cause of death has not even been announced. People are going to have opinions, but ultimately (as per my first post) I think public and media pile-ons are so, so destructive.

OK. Actually going to bed now!

It should have been a given. If JA was white, very, very few people would have given a shit. Memoir or not. It would have been minor, local, news left for the Uni to deal with.

I dare say a few media outlets would have put a positive, humorous spin on it.

But that's not what happened.
And now he is dead.

I can’t help noticing that this thread is not in MN trending list despite the number of posts..