Was Jason Arday just the perfect victim?

[KellyK2026]

Surely I can’t be the only one that feels like Jason Arday was a victim, right? Yesterday he was found dead and I feel bad for him. Here’s the reasons why I think he was a victim:

1. It is absolutely insane to me that Cambridge University would appoint him as a Professor when he was in the early stages of his career. It’s practically unheard of. At any university you typically have to earn your dues (which means working as an academic for many years) OR do something truly special, like a Nobel Prize nomination, to be promoted to Professor. I cannot imagine the amount of pressure he had been under to prove himself and likely had a tremendous amount of imposter syndrome. Cambridge let him down.
2. I’ve worked in academia for many years, and let me tell you, academics are under a tremendous amount of pressure to publish. This pressure can compromise quality. Arday isn’t the first nor will he be the last to publish questionable papers.
3. As I’ve worked in academia for years, I’ve experienced academics make racist and sexist remarks first hand. One white academic I worked with got drunk at a work get together and started a rant about how Black people shouldn't be president (this was when Obama was in power), that Obama was a Muslim and interracial relationships were ‘disgusting’. What made this somewhat even worse was that this particular academic wrote about racism in the public sphere, so he profited from writing about Black struggles while harbouring these personal views. There was no repercussions for him, despite presenting himself as something other than what he was.
4. I’ve also been sexually assaulted at a conference by a male academic. No repercussions for him either and he no doubt pretends to be a feminist in his work.
5. I don’t think it’s in doubt that Arday had autism. Now I don’t know how it affected him personally, but, again, that must’ve been extremely difficult and perhaps even blurred what is and isn’t acceptable in higher education.
6. He was also cleared of plagiarism but, again, so many academics have plagiarised ideas and papers, but they haven’t been strung up like Arday has been.

So, long story short, I feel like Cambridge let him down. And I feel like he was targeted because there’s plenty of other examples but they never get called out and nobody cares. It was a witch hunt. But I’d be interested to hear what others have to say on this matter.

Well considering nobody has lived exactly the same life, there’s nobody exactly like anyone. My point is there has been other academics who have lied and got caught out. Does lying about a house flood to cover up the fact that you made up data better or worse than lying about your sporting achievements? I’d say it’s actually worse, but that’s subjective.

You think coming from a council estate means it’s quite an achievement to get to ph.d level?

because council estates are full of wannabe academics fighting against the odds?!

Agreed - the kinds of people stoking the media fizz couldn’t care less about the kinds of academic dishonesty you’ve described in your other examples, OP. You’re struggling to find a parallel because there really isn’t one. It’s a sad situation, with responsibility to be taken in many quarters, but JA was the one letting JA down the most here - and when push came to shove, he did something many other men sadly do when they are faced with the consequences of their actions.

The reason JA was so focused on and talked about is precisely because his case exposed a wider rot in academia. The initial response of Cambridge university just emphasised that. The fact that ‘other academics do it too’ was the point of the interest and also why Cambridge’s faculty of education shut down their people page. It is clear he was not an ‘aberration’ as Cambridge announced - preempting the results of their investigation before it had even started.

The other cases merely confirm the issue that JA exemplified.

I really do not understand how you can’t see that JA was vulnerable. If you genuinely think he was a compulsive liar, a fantasist, etc., then he needed professional help. That’s the problem with your argument. If he is all the things that you claim he is than, frankly, the whole system let him down. As for him taking his life, his friends who spoke to him prior to his death said JA was desperately wanting to stay alive but he was drowning and there was no help. That to me is desperately sad and speaks to how the system let him down.

NPD is very rare. Bipolar not so much. Bipolar much higher risk of suicide too.

So sick or narcissism being an explanation for everything.

professional help has to be invited in by the client/patient. The very nature of people like this is that they dont want to be called out

So is he going to ask for help for making up stories all the time and being a compulsive liar and conning people?

Do you think thats likely?

What professional help did you have in mind?

No white academic has been found to have lied about every single aspect of his/her life, CV, academic record, personal achievements and used the police and lawyers to shut down legitimate questions whilst promoting a biography full of fantastical claims and had been held up and promoted as the poster boy for EDI.
So your comparing apples and oranges

What symptoms of bipolar disorder do you think he had? Mania doesn’t last for years and it’s impossible to keep functioning the way Arday managed to.

He wasn’t mentally ill or vulnerable. He simply lied for his own gain like all conmen do.

Quite a few people should be taking a hard look at themselves… dead and alive.

I think Cambridge had a duty of care to him both as a current and as a former employee to see that he was ok and provide help.

I’ve managed people who have complex lives, have disabilities, etc. as their manager, I have a duty of care to them and I have absolutely sat people down when I can see that they are struggling and if there’s inconsistencies in what they are telling me. I’ve also offered to get people professional help if I can see that they are struggling. When you work in a professional setting like HE you do learn about safeguarding as well as how to identify if someone is experiencing a mental health crisis.

I know myself that if I went into work and said I’d published a book, I’d ran 600 miles in 6 days on a broken leg, etc. etc. I’d be getting a call from my boss to check in and there would be serious concerns. It shouldn’t have been allowed to get that far. Help isn’t always asked for, that doesn’t mean that you don’t have a duty of care as a manager or employer.

No the person who lied about the flood was lieing to cover up academic fraud.
Arday lied about running 9 marathons on a broken leg and many many other things aswell as his academic and CV fraud for self aggrandment not to cover his fraud.
Academic fraud is despicable and lieing to cover it up shows you to be untrustworthy whereas lieing about everything in your life and history along with being an academic fraud who uses the police and lawyers to cover up your fraud and lies is a whole different level of lies

Are you talking only about the UK?

The US academic Rachel Dolezal (pretended to be black) was absolutely eviscerated for months, YEARS, over what she did. Made up similarly fantastical claims about her life (arguably not quite in the same league as JA). Lost her job, her community standing, her friends. Was reducing to hair styling and food stamps to survive. Became the subject of global derision and debate for an interminable length of time.

She did appear on a few TV shows and even a documentary in an attempt to change the narrative around her subterfuge. Didn't work.

To be honest I don’t know why people are stuck on the running thing. Yes, lying is bad. But running has nothing to do with his ability to do his job. Now a much more interesting argument to me would be saying he lied about being a visiting professor, that did have something to do with his job and that was wrong. But harping on about running is neither here nor there. I can be excellent at my job but make up a lie that I ran the London Marathon and, yeah, that’s a weird thing to do but it wouldn’t put my job at risk.

Also not much incentive to seek help if you are being lauded and rewarded for a pack of lies.

Agree, I'm sick of it being flung about as a catch all term by people who are not psychiatrists or psychologists yet feel they can apply a what is a rare clinical diagnosis to any behaviour that seems self absorbed/arrogant/egocentric. See also the much overused "gaslighting," which is not someone having a different opinion/viewpoint/recollection of events or a denial of a mutual experienced event. It is a sustained campaign of psychological abuse with the aim of making the victim question their whole reality.

Well you brought up the marathons so I used it in my reply.
That plain fact is he lied about EVERYTHING from how many days a week he had speach therapy as a child (he claimed he had therapy 6 days a wewk no child has that level of therapy) and his claimed struggles right through to every single achievement including claiming on a podcast that he was offered an MBE in 2017 but turned it down and then later had the podcast deleted (but the Internet always remembers and it was archived) so even he knew when his lies were to huge.

You keep asking why people won't let it go well there two parts to the answer and the 1st is simple its schockenfoid (sp) the 2nd is more complex but mainly consists of outrage that so many universities failed in their due diligence before hiring him, they way everyone in the uni backed him up when it was clear that he didn't have a leg to stand on and because we want to know that everyone in post is there because of their academic prowess and not because they ticked enough EDI boxes as appears to be the case with Arday especially when their were better qualified applicants with more legitimate experience than he claimed to have and were also black women. Why weren't they given the job what went so wrong that an inexperienced 37 year old guy was given such a high powered role in academia over better quality candidates.
There's so many questions that still need answers and claiming that we're only still looking at it all because he was black is just you trying to cover up for him and every uni, think tank and group who employed him along with everyone who promoted his lies in the press or in his book as facts without questioning them/him

Deleted as double post

Sounds like he was a Walter Mitty character and unfortunately set up for failure by those who appointed him. Whole situation is sad, especially for his loved ones.

You keep asking why people won't let it go well there two parts to the answer....

And also Arday himself escalated things by his own actions. When someone goes so far as to use Carter Ruck and the police to try to shut down investigation, any journalist worth his pay cheque is going to wonder what he's trying to hide, and dig even deeper.

I agree. Whatever his shortcomings were he was definitely put into this position by others. His death is on their hands.

The extent of his delusion/ mental health issues was never explored. It could be possible he actually believed everything he said. It was up to others in the position of power to raise questions regarding his, clearly bonkers, claims.

And you add into the mix that he openly said he had complex needs and was vulnerable. Any responsible employer would make reasonable adjustments based on this information and implement a process that would work for him to help with his disabilities.

I think focusing so heavily on JA risks diverting attention from the much wider systemic issue: Cambridge’s own extraordinary failure. The world is full of people who make questionable, exaggerated or even false claims about themselves; the responsibility of an institution like Cambridge is to have sufficiently robust systems in place to scrutinise those claims before making prestigious appointments.
The surrounding debates about diagnosis, or about race and whether the individual was white or Black, risk distracting from what should be the central question: how did one of the world’s most renowned universities apparently fail to carry out some very basic checks?
That is the part of this story that should seriously concern people. Cambridge’s reputation is built on academic rigour, excellence and exceptionally high standards, yet this episode raises fundamental questions about whether those same standards were applied to its own recruitment and selection processes. For an institution of Cambridge’s stature, the whole debacle is frankly embarrassing and risks making the university itself look remarkably unserious.

It wasn't just the plagiarism though. It was all the lies regarding the rest of his life.