Jason Arday dead

[ThisWiseRobin]

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

David Starkey did a podcast on YouTube about JA

The well known racist David Starkey?

He lost his job when the lies and plagiarism had been exposed. There was something in his character that made him feel he had to exaggerate his achievements. A psychiatrist is much better qualified to explain why he felt the need to do this.

He was punished. The media scrutiny was excessive bullying. It is equivalent to medieval stocks where a person was shamed by the community he lived in. But this was not just the community he lived in, this was the whole world who was shaming him.

I really dislike people portraying suicide as inevitable. It is a choice, and as is often stated, often a permanent solution to a temporary problem. It wasn’t his only option. There is help available for people who feel suicidal (samaritans, GP, A&E) as well no doubt for JA, family and friends.

Please do not present suicide as a rational and inevitable act. It isn’t and we should be doing whatever we can to help people in distress and difficult circumstances see that.

The problem is the obvious racist targeting. Had JA been a white working class, possibly autistic lad, who fooled the esteemed Dons of Cambridge, this would have been a different story altogether

This is demonstrably untrue. Rachel Dolezal was a white working class girl and she got exposed by the press and hounded by international media. She was a bigger international story than JA.

It's due to no understanding of the mechanism of academia, that's as fallible as any other establishment. It's far easier to say old white man gets off scot free while black man is hounded. Closet thinking.

someone will be quoting David Irving next 😆

I don’t, however, think that journalists have to stop investigating. Their jobs are to shine a light on the truth. Shutting that work down would be very dangerous

I agree but I think the issue is how the news has changed. So in the past you will have been headline news on papers for a few days etc now it’s constant stories on news sites, social media, 24 hr news channels etc

Maybe this needs addressing the person who put him in that position... where are they in the media now?

So David Starkey's a racist now; racist Historian. Isn't there a Scottish historian, who attracts the same lazy label?

there is a plague of keyboard warriors and armchair commentators who all feel emboldened to express their views and opinions, often on half baked understanding of all sort of matters, however simple or complex - this is not desirable, and it rarely leads to a nuanced debate or conversation.

Public accountability matters, but so do proportionality, due process and basic intellectual humility. A person’s professional conduct can be investigated without turning their entire life story into material for public denunciation.

@Marasme agree

I had the radio on all day in the office, TV on Sky News when WFH in the background, news alerts on phone and ipad etc and saw and heard nothing like the hounding and tearing apart that people are mentioning. Think I heard maybe 2 quick stories about it in more of a "ooh bit naughty" way.

Its sad for his family. I also hope the people he bullied via the police, and those that would have lost out on opportunities due to him are ok.

He didn’t lose his job when the lies and plagiarism were exposed. Cambridge defended him, attacked those exposing him and he threatened legal action.

it was the fact the new exposures kept on coming that meant Cambridge were forced to announce an ‘investigation’.

If Cambridge had done due diligence on this man, he would never have been in a position he needed to exposed in. If they had investigated the exposures when they were first made, the story would have shut down more quickly.

Things happened the way they did because of JA’s actions and Cambridge’s actions.

His actions were not victimless. He was damaging students who complained about him. He was supervising students he was not capable of supervising. He took a job someone competent could have had.

The only people who acted correctly here were those who investigated the facts about him, and published them. That is, those who exposed him. He needed to be exposed.

I’m not surprised at all. Poor man. His poor mother. I only saw headings in the news of plagiarism and skipped past. I saw threads upon threads on here but never read any.
I knew deep down that he would be judged more harshly because we live in a country with a lot of racists.

I was really inspired by his ( I think it was a) Tech talk about how he was non verbal and how his mum worked so hard to help him develop.
May all those who contributed to his death answer to his blood.

That could have happened if Cambridge had acted on the initial exposures about JA but they chose not to, and instead defended him. Cambridge have responsibility here.

I totally agree here, the right wing press were relentless but The Guardian were no better.

I won’t directly quote Starkey because I suspect the thread would be taken down, but it’s easy to google. He has at least apologised for some of it.

So you haven’t read any details about the case but you have made up your mind about it. You have come to an opinion without knowing most of the facts. What a silly post.

Unless the person in question is hitler or jeffrey epstein, suicide is incredibly sad. So yes I feel for him and his family. Man was unwell.

The fact that you feel qualified to do so is quite telling. Scrutiny implies a knowledge and understanding of both content and context - there is no place for a partly informed public fed daily by sensationalist DM articles to determine whether complex academic research is being conducted properly.

There are many more people in the public than me, as you know. But yes, I am qualified to recognise lies and plagiarism. It’s not that complicated. If someone has copied other people’s work and made up research results they are not credible. You don’t need a sociology doctorate to know that.

You’re another poster who is ignoring all the in-depth coverage and investigation by the Guardian and others. Why, I wonder? I myself have read zero articles in the DM.

Credible scrutiny must be informed, evidence-based, and undertaken by people with the relevant expertise.

As it has been. Have you not been reading the coverage?

I am not in this discipline or that specific university, I am no ND or EDI expert, so i stay in my lane and within the boundaries of what i am qualified to speak about.

Good for you. The ND is a claim not a verified fact. EDI affects us all, we are all entitled to examine and discuss these issues. Do you really believe only academics within the particular discipline should be able to do so?

Articles did not flag the societal implications of dodgy research (and downstream policies) you allude to in your post. That would have made for very dull front pages.

I have been very surprised and disappointed how little commentary there has been on the societal implications of JA’s work. On the contrary, I don’t think it would be dull. The holder of one of the most senior academic positions in the sociology of race relations has been lying about, amongst other things, racial harassment and making up accounts of his and other people’s experiences of racism. So essentially defaming white people. This is a person in a highly influential position, who was often called upon to speak in the media about race-based issues. I don’t think the press (including the DM) are ready to open that particular can of worms just yet.

It isn’t a “lazy Label” it’s fact.

Here is an example of what he actually said

“Slavery was not genocide, otherwise there wouldn't be so many damn Blacks in Africa or in Britain, would there?"

Pure racism!!

"The problem is the obvious racist targeting"

Too many people dismiss the whole affair as pure racism. Even in this country people are realising that you have to call people out regardless of race. Case in point the Rochdale gangs and Henry Nowak.

JA got away with plagiarism using his (supposedly extreme ) autism by claiming "mimicry" was his coping mechanism.

He obviously researched racism via lived experience ( his own and others ) and has his work lauded as " world class" by Cambridge when even laypersons can tell it wasn't - but Cambridge dropped him like a stone when the claims of harassment and racism and legal threats failed. Cambridge bear a lot of responsibility for this as they brought him into the public eye and abandoned him pretty quickly.

I don't think it's helpful to reduce this whole affair to "it's obvious racism!"

So what you are saying here was that ypu haven’t bothered to read or look into the story, but you still feel you know enough to decide who is to blame for his death.

You were ‘inspired’ by a Ted talk given by a proven liar and fantasist. So why do you believe it, let alone feel inspired by it?

The people responsible for JA’s death are himself and Cambridge and all those who rewarded his fantasies. Not those who protected future victims of JA by exposing his lies.

He wasnt non verbal according to his ex class mates ; he wss a bit of a joker and a lot of desperate parents will have been inspired by his claims he wss non verbal untill 11
As the parent of a non verbal teen i found this the hardest thing
I dont think it was racism
Some of his claims were outrageous
I do think cambridge and all the ither universities who promoted him well beyond his capabilitis have an awful lot of explaining to do.