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.

They guy is clearly a racist however when it came to arday he was correct and I can see exactly why he latched onto arday, with the intention of using him to prove his racist theories.
However he forgot that we all know the old adage "even a stopped clock is correct twice a day"

You are absolutely correct.
The other thing is what about his students who found themselves labelled racist fir asking for a different tutor or queried his gradings, had their yearly average scores lowered by his lack of guidance and those who were faced with examinations that they hadn't been taught the content.
Thats life destroying level of malice from arday that could have resulted in multiple suicides all while hes showing his own racism by bleating on about white privallige

He was a complex figure, capable of real brilliance and also of mistakes. The scrutiny wasn’t random; there were genuine discrepancies. But the way the story ballooned into a culture‑war narrative was shaped by racism and the politics around Black representation in academia. His achievements were extraordinary, yet something made him feel they weren’t enough. That’s the tragedy, not that he ‘let down’ Black colleagues, but that he lived under pressures that made him believe he had to embellish what was already remarkable

I think he was offered staff councilling and also increased campus security due to his claims on being attacked by a person carrying a knife etc. Yes, the committee should've checked credentials much more and done more due diligence at the hiring stage.What went wrong during this process will be reviewed no doubt. Hiring a prof at any uni is not done lightheartedly. It's a huge investment and a long process.

The thing is though, how could Cambridge have known about the pathological lying issue with increasingly unbelievable stories. Many of those stories came out later. In all likelihood the story the committee heard was autism, disadvantaged background, marathon runner, which sounded like a great success story they could use and get behind.

The hiring committee wouldn't have looked at the detailed stories J came up with surrounding all this, it's not what hiring committees do. They would've discussed research, teaching philosophy and needs in that interview. They also don't plagiarism checks for every single paper and monograph of every CV. Experts read the papers and evaluate future potential and impact, but they wouldn't check for plagiarism unless a committee member has suspicions already. Once a paper is published after peer review at a reputable journal, the paper record is trusted. So in that respect we can say even the journals in question are guilty here.

Then once employed J started pushing forward increasingly incredible stories. Viva two weeks after Brain tumour operation, six day marathons, mutism, locked in syndrome... At this point other Cambridge academics would become suspicious, start to feel embarrassed by the circus but HR rules mean a lengthy inquiry process. They initially supported and defended him from the racist attacks, but at some point, after falsified visits etc they had enough evidence, or suspicion, to open up an investigation. Which they did. Soon after here we are.

You do know that they couldn't refuse his resignation don't you

He did raise money for charities by running marathons, but perhaps not as many as he previously reported. It’s not so simple to say he was an awful teacher and an awful person, he also did many good things and helped a lot of people

Why do you keep minimising his lies? You keep mentioning just the running, and in minimising terms too, saying he just didn’t run quite as far as he’d said blah blah - but what about the 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, the pig head, the knife, etc

No-one is saying he was an awful person.

I guess things have moved on a lot in 18 years. I know unis use it now, as you said.

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.

Where did you learn of this? Is it in the book or an interview?

I did wonder what family support there was since he was one of 4 brothers and very close to his mother Gifty.

The impulsive behaviour again sounds like bipolar. Manic or hypomanic episodes trigger intense impulsivity, risk-taking, and grandiosity.

Bipolar means a risk of gambling much higher than the general population.

It was a YouTube video @Charlize43. The presenter seemed to have a copy of the memoir beside them and was referring to it. I will try to find the link.

Found it - it is Edward Dutton - very controversial figure himself, but he does seem to be referring to the book as he talks. The gambling story is about 19 minutes in.

This is exactly my thoughts. It’s extremely sad. There’s scrutiny and then there’s bullying. I’m all for a formal investigation but the almost 200 news articles that came out would be enough to push anyone over the edge.

They most certainly could’ve had a conversation to get him to stay. They readily accepted it thinking it would be swept under the rug.

Actually they have been saying he’s an awful person. Read this Thread. You’ve got people trying to diagnose him as a narcissist, bi-polar and everything else in between. You have people saying he was a terrible teacher (no nuance). You have people saying he lied about everything (not true). It’s not minimising to also acknowledge the good he did and what he actually achieved. Getting a PhD is no small feat and until he’s found to have plagiarised through a formal process - not just people posting excerpts online - it’s simply not fair to charge him with it. I’m all for an investigation but a man is dead because everyone was judge and jury before anything was formally looked into. Personally I’ve never seen a white person treated like that, and I know plenty have lied, made money off lies and plagiarised.

This is exactly my thoughts. It’s extremely sad. There’s scrutiny and then there’s bullying. I’m all for a formal investigation but the almost 200 news articles that came out would be enough to push anyone over the edge.

Why is someone suggesting he had/was bi polar the same as saying he's awful?

No one has said he's lied avot everything. They've said he lied about an awful lot more than academics, which is true.

Surely by starting this thread aren't you adding to the discourse?

A lot of the more negative comments have been deleted by MNHQ, that’s why you can’t see them.

I was one of the people who said that.And just to clarify, it wasn't meant to be unkind towards him. Quite the contrary, it was more to say he might have had a mental health condition which led him to behaviour ge couldn't help.

Absolutely no clarification needed, you didn't sound unkind:-)

That’s fine. I don’t think you are the wrong to speculate that he had a mental illness. I think he himself said as much. It’s the people saying that he clearly is a narcissist or fantasist, which I think is unhelpful considering that a diagnosis would require a trip to the psychologist’s office, which is impossible now he’s dead. But that’s not the worst of the comments. He’s been compared to a very well known sex offender who took his own life, which me and many others found deplorable. There’s been some really nasty things said which I hope JA’s family never see. Considering there’s multiple Cambridge Professors who are being investigated or found guilty of sexual harassment towards students and THAT isn’t being talked about really says a lot. And I know JA isn’t the first to lie on his CV (if he did) because I’ve seen it before and nothing happened to that academic. That’s why it feels personal.

The man's whole job was telling everyone white people are racist..

His "achievements" were mediocre other than he could run a lot. He's been making a lot of money off his bloviating at gormless liberals. His wife divorced him in 2019 by the way.

Why would they?
He lied to get the job and his contract will have had a clause in it that if hes found to have lied to get the job hes sacked.

Look its obvious that you want to paint Arday as some innocent victim of the evil university and racist press pile on, even after i pointed out that legally the university couldn't do what you wanted them to you change the goalposts just to allow you to keep blaming them. But the clear facts are that he is atleast as much to blame as anyone else involved in promoting and his lies.
The university didn't have any reason or duty to try and talk him out of resigning and tbf they would have been abusive if they had talked him into staying jusr so they could suspend him whilst they investigated him and then fired him and that is what you are blindly advocating for when you try and paint the university as the bad bastards

A man is dead because he was a liar and fraud and to much of a coward to face the consequences of his choices and actions

Saying he had bipolar isn’t saying he’s an awful person. That’s a horrible thing to imply. It’s an MH condition not a character fault!

I didn’t say that you mentioning good things he did was minimising anything. I said that you repeatedly mention the running bit is minimising the extent of his lies. He appears to have lied about a lot of things. You just keep repeating one thing. Every time someone mentions the lies, you answer in a way that suggests he only really lied about the running, and it was minor exaggeration at best.

You keep going on about the plagiarism. It’s the lies that have led to the public interest and the media stories. They’re not the only reason but they’re the main one. Everybody lies - but very few people lie to this extent and so incredibly. With regard to the lies, his skin colour is irrelevant. He would have been all over the newspapers if he’d been white and said the same things.

Pointing the finger at the media and their articles is giving Cambridge a too easy way out. They should have supported him, and they should have actually looked at what he was saying and not treated him like some token. I find it insulting and patronising that they didn’t.

He resigned after they informed him and the world they’d opened an investigation. This would have involved a meeting with him and senior academics; he wouldn’t have received a short email or the like informing him of this decision.

When this happens in other areas it’s often a case of “resign with dignity or be sacked”. This may or may not have happened but once CU were in the position of having to look into everything officially he knew the game was up. He said himself that he was like Icarus and flew too close to the sun. Self fulfilling prophecy springs to mind.