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.

He did nothing wrong? Seriously? 🙄 He put the police onto a journalist for having the temerity to investigate, which is straight out of the Reform playbook. The irony of your comment is amazing!

What I can’t get my head around is where the people who knew and loved JA were when he was making such exaggerated claims about distances run, money raised, illnesses overcome etc. There must have been people in his life who knew he was stretching the truth; weren’t they concerned about why he was saying this stuff in interviews and what the consequences might be?

I wondered about this. I wonder what his wife was thinking about it all.

I think having worked with someone who was a fantasist and pathological liar and also an ex who was a narcisist who would argue black was white. It can really mess with your own perception of reality and mental health, you literally doubt your own sanity at times. I think in years to come some of those closest to him, may have very different accounts of him to what they are giving today.

Oh come off it - you're the one who started the thread!!!

So what professional help did you have in mind?

Since you mentioned Cofnas "may be racist", here is some more about Nathan Cofnas.

In ft.com yesterday: "In 2024, Emmanuel College, another Cambridge college, cut ties with Cofnas after he suggested Black people would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment” under a system of meritocracy."

Cofnas's blog:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcHLBPosdpH/?igsh=bjR3Mnl2Y3k0ZHdn
https://nathancofnas.com/popular-articles/

His arguments about racial hierarchy with Ashkenazi Jews in top and how, if there was meritocracy, black people would be gone from all top positions, excluding sports, are worth reading.

Story of his dismissal from a postdoc at Cambridge : https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/nathan-cofnas-the-man-at-the-centre-of-arday-plagiarism-row-was-dismissed-for-views-on-race

His latest interview he says: ".... the revolution will make it possible for him to become the "head of the department of eugenics and race science at Harvard" and that there "must be some barriers set up between the races."

Sorry to derail the thread, I just think this context helps because of this guy's personal vendetta against J, as they were both at Cambridge for a short period of time.

I said this at the start of the thread but people are just choosing to blame the media and the university and ignore how his family and friends should have gotten him help.

I did wonder about the counterfactual: what is the journalist JA unleashed the hounds on had been a disabled, highly anxious person with a number of ACEs and vulnerabilities? What if the stress of spending four months being investigated by the Met Police for asking legitimate journalistic questions had tipped him over the edge?

What if he spent those months working himself up into a frenzy over the prospect of being arrested, charged, publicly branded a racist, losing his job and his career?

Arday couldn't possibly have known the psychological profile of that journalist when he decided to complain to the Met Police and start issuing bulldog lawyers' letters to the journalist's employers. Would it have been all Arday's fault if the journalist had done something desperate to himself as a result of these malicious complaints?

Recognising his racism then, how does that change the lies JA told or the fact JA was no way qualified for his position?

I don't dispute the lies and J's own failings. As mentioned earlier he should never have been appointed. Just want to raise awareness of people like Cofnas, and the role they have played in this case.

I think Cofnas is a distraction. Yes, he’s racist and he’s leapt on this to promote his own agenda, but a) he was not the initiator of the questions (despite what a few commenters have said in this thread); b) the lies still stand.

Remove Cofnas and the lies are still there and the public interest is still there - not because of the plagiarism but because of the sheer volume of outrageous claims, which JA shouldn’t have been allowed to get away with for so long without questioning.

Jason Arday tried to shut down a journalist by threatening to sue him and complaining to the police about harassment. If you try to stop reporters doing their job they’re going to probe even more.

I feel it matters in the context of OPs question (was he a victim). The question implies he has been hounded, more than a regular white male academic would have been. That for me is absolutely true. Should he not have been made into a diversity poster boy perhaps he wouldn't have been politicised and hounded so much.

But was he a victim? the fact is also that he pathalogically lied, exaggerated achievements, plaigirised and fabricated data (contrary to what is being said here it's not common, and when it happens this is a huge issue and not something universities take lightly. It's not just about stealing ideas, it is about misleading the scientific community. Imagine if the data fabrication was on drug trials!). He was under pressure to perform and he knew he didn't have the capability which probably contributed to severe mh issues. There's no clear cut answer to the victim question.

It's just a really sad case. My hope is that lots of people and institutions hopefully will have to answer some tough questions. And that Cofnas looks himself in the mirror.

@CupboardCop
That's a good point, about drug trials. Sociology may not cause as much re real-world harm as an academic falsifying medical or scientific data.

However Arday, by virtue of his academic positions, sat on various boards and organisations, and thus potentially had influence on policy etc far beyond his Cambridge job.

I disagree that education (he was in the faculty of education) and sociology cannot cause as much harm as a drug trial. Nor are they always unlinked - look at the pushing of the use of powerful drugs on children who have been indoctrinated into gender ideology including through schools. Or the high levels of deaths from illegal drugs in Scotland driven by sociology-lead policies. Or the ongoing failure in education to meet the needs of white boys from deprived coastal towns.

It was sociology that caused JAs death.

His wife and children, he just left them because he didn’t like repercussions, I guess. It’s puzzling to me.. his wife surely knew he was a pathological liar? His parents must have known he was a conman? Hard to fathom how it went on for so long.

There's no clear cut answer to the victim question

I agree @CupboardCop In a general sense, JA is a victim simply because pressure and stress has probably caused his death. That’s extremely sad. If he had additional issues (and I use ‘issues’ in a broad sense there) and didn’t receive the appropriate support, then yes, he’s a victim in that sense too.

However, in some part he seems to have contributed to his troubles by the decisions he made when questioned. Getting the police and Carter Ruck involved is what I find hard to reconcile with him being a victim. Not only was that unwise and unnecessary, it’s quite an ‘aggressive’ response, which contradicts the idea of him as an otherworldly fantasist. It seems a very knowing response, and, to me, implies he was aware of the fact he’d lied. So, not a victim in regard to this.

The question implies he has been hounded, more than a regular white male academic would have been. That for me is absolutely true. Should he not have been made into a diversity poster boy perhaps he wouldn't have been politicised and hounded so much

Some of the people involved are no doubt motivated by racism, eg Cofnas, and I’m sure that JA had been subject to racism during his life. Was he hounded more than a white male academic would have been? I don’t know, is the honest answer. I think that what mainly caused the media interest was the overblown lies. There was a whole list of them, ripe to investigate and disprove. Each day they seemed to dig up more proof: for example, JA had apparently said his leg had ballooned to twice its normal size by the time he’d finished his races. However, a photo was found of him crossing the finish line with his leg a perfectly normal size. I think the media would have dug up things like that for anyone who’d lied so prolifically, no matter whether they were black or not.

As you say, the fact that he was a poster boy for diversity complicated things because it made it also about race, when it wouldn’t really have been so much otherwise.

I also think that maybe JA was dealt with differently by others because of his race. Maybe they were over-enthusiastic or not wanting to make any negative comments or question him. This did him no favours, even if it was well-intentioned.

He told lie after lie after lie. That’s not just his autism is it? Plagiarism is only part of it. Yes, the universities have questions to answer about why they appointed him, but he knew he wasn’t being honest.

No, not autism

My diagnosed friend finds it almost impossible to lie; she is very literal-minded. But I know that one person is not a trend.... I just happen not to have met anyone with an autistic diagnosis who is also a pathological liar, and I think the sheer volume of falsehood in Arday's case does make it seem pathological. Or maybe compulsive?

The tricky thing is not everything he said is a lie. He was athletic and ran marathons to raise money for charities. He did come from a disadvantaged background. It would’ve been much easier to identify had everything been a lie. However, he did lie about many things. I don’t even disagree with the statement that he was a liar. I just don’t think the media attention was justified. Just the extend of it was relentless. And it prosecuted him before a full investigation could be carried out.

At the risk of stating the obvious, not everyone diagnosed with autism in early childhood is going to be autistic. The clinicians are not infallible.

We don't know the full facts about Arday or if his account is true, or whether another diagnosis might have been more applicable in time in his case, such as NPD.

He managed, by his own admission, to lose his family's savings through gambling, which suggests very impulsive (not to mention criminal) behaviour, and I wonder if there was a lasting rift. They don't seem to have rushed to be with him and keep a vigil with him during his crisis last week.

Which just makes it even more incomprehensible and sadder. He was able and did lots of things. He didn’t need to make up ridiculous stuff like a brain tumour, testicular cancer, hours a day of speech therapy (yet a primary school friend said he was “a chatty patty” not mute), meeting mysterious women who told him he was special, installing water pumps in Africa, surviving a non-survivable car accident, having locked-in syndrome, etc.

He lied about many things, there’s no question about that. My issue is primarily three things:

• Cambridge and the other institutions he previously worked with should’ve picked up on it and dealt with it privately before it got blown up.
• The media attention was relentless. Even before a full investigation had took place there were hundreds of articles with his face slapped on them. I’ve never seen anything like it.
• Cambridge had a duty of care for him. They knew the state of his mental health and did nothing. They could’ve rejected his resignation and said to him that they will provide support while they carry out an investigation. JA’s colleague said he was crying out for help before he took his own life. They were quite happy to use him as a poster boy for diversity when they employed him and then they threw him to the wolves when he got media attention that they didn’t like.