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.

When applying for jobs you generally tick a box/ sign to say that you have been honest before you submit. What he did was fraudelent. The university vetting system was lacking not to pick it up. But JA is ultimatly responsible for his own actions.

And I don't think 'many' people embellish their CVs, they might reframe things to empasises areas of their career/ experience that meet the job spec for that specific role, but that is what is expected.

If you lie on your CV expect to be caught out and take the consequences.

If you look up the definition of grandiose narcissism it perfectly matches Ardey. Was he autistic? I believe that was just another lie from him. Also look up narcissistic collapse and you will see that suicide is a textbook outcome.
Identity politics and its associated virtue signaling provided the perfect climate for Ardey to feed his narcissism. As a teacher I am horrified by the toxic state of academia that identity politics has created. Whatever happened to safeguarding? Whatever happened to due diligence? Students and children, especially vulnerable children and their parents, deserve protection from this type of character defect, regardless of their skin colour.
Those in positions of authority who worship at the altar of protected characteristics need to be flushed out.

We have loads of unlawful positive action taking place across the UK. And when you say not fairly represented in academia, what point are you measuring the population from? At non-professorial level black peopke are not unrepresentive of the current population. At senior levels they are representative of the black population of Britain that existed at the start of their careers.

On the other hand, white people are under represented in academia.

Sums it up perfectly.
Kindness and compassion for such a tragedy.
RIP Jason Arday

What level of scrutiny would be kind to his students? Those he was incapable of properly supervising? What level of media scrutiny would be kind and compassionate to the two much better qualified women of colour who missed out on the professorship because of his lies? What level of kindness would be appropriate for the journalist JA tried to give a criminal record to? What is the correct level of scrutiny that shows kindness to the public being fed his activism as rigorous research?

We call it EDI and its the same crap as in America only they obviscate the positive discrimination and in some cases straight out anti white discrimination is illegal here but it doesn't stop it from happening

I’m curious as you seem heavily invested in this to the point of spending a lot of time on this Thread responding to people, do you spend this amount of time calling out other people too? Why JA?

Yep every job contract that I've ever signed says in legalease that if I lied to get the job my job is at risk

Agree.

Are we to start treating criminals who subsequently die as victims too?

JA was a fantasist, a liar and a manipulator. If he had accepted his time was up when the first journalist made it clear that he had been caught out, then he would have spared himself the public scrutiny, he 'chose' this route, he could have resigned early, sighting health or family reasons and gone quietly and 99.9% of the UK polulation would be none the wiser to who JA was or what he did. He didn't because he was used to getting what he wanted, by well practiced methods.

Now a good proportion of that 99.9% of the UK population who would never of heard of him have probably already pre ordered his book on Amazon! Which is ironic because it seems that he always was excellent at self promotion.

Your the one who started a thread about it!!!

Yes, but I’m actually not on here writing comments as often as a handful of other posters and they all seem to be very anti-JA. And many of the comments they are responding too were responding to other people, so it’s not like they are getting notifications about it like I am. It’s surely a lot of effort to keep coming on a Thread like this and reading all the comments, even I haven’t managed to do that.

Surely she's not as heavily invested as the person who started the thread (eg, you)?

What a strange thing to critique someone over anyway. Usually posters complain when no-one contributes to their thread, not the opposite!

I thought that anyone who posted on a thread got notifications whenever another post was added to that thread. I do; I didn't start this thread, but it is in my notifications.

And if someone replies to a post of mine, or mentions me in a post, I get told that as well. The only way to prevent this from happening is to "unwatch" a thread, once you have posted on it at all.

So basically u wanted a thread full of replies from ppl who agree with you?

We need a thread about this 😂😂😂

Where did I say that? In fact I’ve ‘liked’ multiple posts that disagree with me if I think their argument is good. I’m asking because it’s a lot of time for anyone to invest to continuously keep coming back, especially to make the same points repeatedly.

@Schoolshirtshopping are you getting ready for the school runs?

Yes but when it’s the same points being made again and again to various different people, that’s simply a lot of time. It’s no judgment I’m just curious whether they spend the same amount of time commenting on other issues and why JA has sparked so much interest in them.

I prefer proper data to biased opinions, so I went and counted 😂.

I have posted 26 times (this is 27).

You have posted 92 times.

Counting her is easy; see all is your friend.

Counting you is a little harder.

Chapeau!

He put himself in this situation, by lying. He also put his family in the situation of growing up without a father/husband. It’s desperately sad but in my opinion, only he is to blame with the bad choices he made, repeatedly.

I've concluded that for me it seems it was a folie à deux of sorts with both Cambridge & Arday equally at fault. Cambridge guilty of tokenism for taking Arday and lowering their academic standards. When fellow academics delved into his work and questioned it, they were shut down and told that they were being racist (excluding Cofnas, who may have been); the same with Students who were dissatisfied with his teaching.

I did come across something that I found quite interesting in the 2023 Guardian profile introducing Arday as Cambridge's youngest, black professor... and that was this:
"He only started speaking publicly about being autistic in recent years; before then, it felt as though the stakes were too high."

I wonder if this was because he knew the work wasn't up to scratch for Cambridge? Not that Cambridge cared as they were only interested in his poster boy potential. A form of inverted racism in itself. One of the academics on the interview panel had written a paper about, Academia being too white.

I also read an excerpt from his biography and the language is very basic. You'd think a Cambridge Professor would show a little more erudition and flair.

I wonder if he felt he had to lie because of the pressure - A case of I'd better make myself special in some way - especially for someone being touted so publicly as 'Cambridge's Youngest Black Professor.'

Had Jason Arday been white, would he have got the job? Probably not.

Yes, I agree with all of that @Charlize43.

I read today that a group of Jason's supporters, incl. Simon Woolley and Diane Abbott, visited him Monday last and found him to be in a terrible way, very emaciated (he was thin to begin with) and very distraught. I do find it quite sad that this guy was clearly unravelling in front of witnesses and friends and presumably family, and no-one thought to call a doctor. He said he felt 'hounded to death'. He needed inpatient treatment in a mental health setting, not to be left alone in a flat.

I’m really concerned that people on various social media channels are calling for a media crackdown over this. Do people really believe we should stifle the freedom of the press? I am genuinely fearful if so. These are very chilling times.

Simon and Schuster's write-up says the book is by Jason Arday with Eve Claxton. Claxton is an editor and ghost writer. JA may not have written even his own autobiographical account.

Their UK page is still not updated to reflect the fact that JA has died, or even that he no longer held a Cambridge chair. You wonder who if anyone was actually effectively involved in looking out for him.