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.

Just that sometimes you have to read between the lines, they may have been asked to write something addressing his death by their editor or feel if they don’t the twitter mob will come for them, or that if they write a sympathetic article they’ll get more clicks, or they just saw an opportunity to rinse one more article out of the story.

I’m fairly convinced they weren’t made to do it considering they looked genuinely upset about it and even said they were debating addressing it as they didn’t want to make it about them. They even said that the amount of headlines wasn’t justified and was, in their words, ‘disportioncate’. That’s a big thing for a journalist to admit.

now if you’re saying that journalists only say what they are forced to say, the same line of argument can be made for the articles about JA. Perhaps they didn’t believe or want to write it but felt that they had to due to pressure higher up. We can’t cherry pick.

Reading carefully for context, I don't think the person said to have been showing his medical records around was JA; I think it was a random friend who was being used as an illustration.

Ah I see, thanks.
Well as we have seen JA's 'evidence' for stuff was somewhat questionable to say the least.

Anyway. I'm off. X

Those are all things people would say and do even if it weren’t true, sometimes people tow the line or can see which way the wind is blowing, they don’t preface things with I don’t want to say this but my editor says I have to or wink at the camera so you know they’re not genuine.

I’m not saying that any of my suggestions are true, just that in life it pays to be a bit sceptical.

Eh? Did people really think I was referring to JA’s medical records? Lol. I clearly meant a close friend of mine who I had serious reservations about because of the lies they kept telling, to the point that I started not to believe anything they said, including their supposed diagnosis In their defense, they showed me their record. Christ! I don’t have access to JA’s medical records nor did I imply that.

Your post was unfortunately ambiguous. People certainly had concluded you were making a slightly startling claim about having seen JA's diagnoses. Hence my pointing out what I thought you must have meant.

Or his kids trying to get jobs with his surname, the instant mistrust and extra scrutiny that will come and the added questions about potential PR issues.
Id be changing my name ASAP

And you could be right, we will never know people’s motives. However I will say that the two from The Telegraph genuinely looked heartbroken. I know the guy is very religious and he seemed devastated and truly apologetic. I had watched his interviews about Arday before I wouldn’t even say his were particularly condemning of him.

Well in that post I was talking about a friend and JA, so could perhaps see where some confusion came in. When I was asked ‘how did I know?’ I perhaps should’ve asked for clarity but I genuinely didn’t think anyone would think I was referring to JA.

I think what he did was pretty bad but he shouldn't have lost his life over it. How many times w do we tell ourselves we aren't our career. I mean it's bad because it did have an impact on people and I'm sure his actions have directly harmed others academically at least and professionally, there are some who have had classes and seminars led by him and say he wasn't very good (found on Reddit, no idea if true). I'm sure it blocked opportunities for genuine scholars.

But to end your life? I think we can think of a fair few people who probably don't deserve to live and he isn't one of them!

Just wondering of anyone knows whether the articles written by the journalists mentioned by op dug up the personal stuff or whether they were mild in nature?

Are these journalists viewed as having a particular political leaning (not just what media they work for)?

Sorry for the questions but I want to get a feel for who they are before forming an opinion about why they have apologised and if genuine.

Exactly this. And I look at the handful of Cambridge Professors who are currently being investigated for/found guilty of sexual harassment towards students and I think ‘why aren’t they in the bloody news?’. I think if you’re going to express outrage at JA you need to express an equal amount of outrage at other people abusing the system. People ask how did JA get a prestigious role at Cambridge, I ask how does a pervert get a prestigious role at Cambridge? It did feel disproportionate.

They varied. From what I recall both the Telegraphs and the Times were pretty damning of JA, and aren’t they both more conservative papers. The guy from the Telegraph who apologised is a conservative Christian and he did make jokes about JA, as many others did. But I wouldn’t like to presume what Party they support. And these are just three I know of. There may be some from the more left wing papers, but I haven’t looked into it deeply.

Hi everyone,

We are just popping our heads around to please ask that everyone posts in line with our talk guidelines. We appreciate it can be hard in heated moments, but please do report posts to us and we can take a look.

Please also remember you can always hide the thread for your peace of mind.

I didn’t say that I saw JA’s medical records. Read the Thread again. As another poster wrote, I was referring to my friend’s records.

That is very much the way it came across whether you meant it or not

Other people have a responsibility to ask for clarification if they don’t understand what I’m saying. I’m not responsible if people misunderstand what I say, don’t ask for clarification, and then get upset about it when they’ve asked me an ambiguous question like ‘how do you know?’ to a comment where I was referring to two different people. They assumed I was talking about JA despite the fact I didn’t mention his name. Instead of thinking, ‘oh, that can’t be right, she must’ve meant the friend she was talking about’ out came a tirade of bizarre comments.

As you admitted in an earlier post you were somewhat ambiguous in that post which did cause some confusion hence I cross posted with you and others about ot whilst I was catching up on the thread.

There is a regular Daily Telegraph podcast on YouTube which is presented by Camilla Tominey and Tim Stanley, and the one I watched earlier was all about Arday and how they reacted when they found out about his death. Camilla is the editor of the DT or deputy ed perhaps, and I know the paper has been criticised for the number of articles they ran about him, so maybe that's why they sounded so contrite.

Really feel it would have been better for JA to have been in a MH facility where he wouldn't have had access to his phone or the internet presumably, he really was at the eye of a storm last week.

That particular user has repeatedly misunderstood what I’ve said. Hence why I didn’t want to engage with them anymore, told them as much, and they still repeatedly asked me questions. We are all adults and, personally I would’ve just asked for clarification rather than upsetting myself. In the time it took to write all those comments like ‘this is nuts’ would it not have just been easier to ask whether I was referring to my friend or JA?

Thats your opinion and your free to have it but we will have to agree to disagree on that as that poster did try and clarify and your response to them wasn't exactly helpful

They absolutely never asked me whether I was referring to JA. They asked an ambiguous question and perhaps they got an ambiguous response in return. Either way, that conversation wasn’t going anywhere and if they raised their blood pressure that’s on them as it could’ve easily been resolved by asking if I meant JA. And throughout this Thread, when referring to JA I’ve always directly used his initials. But we can agree to disagree, like you said.

Exactly this. I said to my mum when we were chatting about JA, it's such a sad situation, almost an unresolved one whereby he is doomed no matter what he does.

Unless he had left the country, changed identity, and considered a future as a non-academic doing something else, potentially he'd already have a tarnished reputation following him forever more. How anyone could cope with that ongoing for the rest of their life is too much to even consider

Yes, I guess he'd brought it on himself, but he obviously couldn't deal with the consequences of his actions. A sad, but interesting story.