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.

What I find disturbing about this story is how viciously people have gone after Arday. It's like they've tasted blood and even now he's dead, they can't stop. I just saw a video where the commentator claimed Arday was a narcissist who didn't care about his kids and killed himself to get revenge on his critics. As though this man could have known what was in Arday's head. I saw someone else who'd found out where he died and wanted an inquiry into why he was living in social housing, on his salary. There are jokes about his death. People accusing his bereaved family of grifting. The campaign against him has been dripping with spite, far beyond what you'd expect for anyone except a notorious murderer.

Is the Guardian now right wing?

@NotTerfNorCis someone earning £100000 per year should not be in social housing.
I didn't know that he was in social housing but its ridiculous if he was and its not hate to say that someone with his earning profile really shouldn't have been in such a property if he was.
He claimed to have been paid £1.4 million for his booking the family appears to be fundraising for his funeral, that looks like a grift.
Again its not hate to point this out, perhaps its not the right time to point it out and ask questions however they need asking and answering

On the social housing part, Bob Crow was absolutely vilified for living in social housing or to be precise, a council house.

It was the press and Tories that would absolutely tear him to shreds.

Every strike or union action and they couldn’t wait to stick the boot in with bringing up his residence.

I do wish the left would stop calling everything they don't agree with hateful. They represent the lion's share ot it.

With regard to the 1.4m book advance, it was said by various commentators at the time that it was very highly unlikely to be true and an advance for a book like that would usually be around 5k. It will probably sell a lot more copies now but even so I doubt it will justify a 1.4m advance.

...with the obligatory charity donation thrown in. Autism no doubt.

They’re suspiciously quiet when the hateful rhetoric is aimed at people they don’t like.

Remember the initial reaction from the left when Anne was announced as dead. The derogatory comments and insults were common place then even after it was announced she was murdered, many of the TRA and their apologists doubled down on her deserving it for having ‘evil’ views on sex and gender.

Yep. Free Palestine and anti Zionism, TRA movements and death threats to JKR, Just Stop Oil, Palestine Action Group Antifa, Hate not Hope, sitting back watching BLM pull down statues, holding vigils for fraudsters., mimicking Charlie Kirk's murder. The list goes on.

But we have a far right problem.

Isn’t it amazing how many BAME individuals are now completely immersed in centre right leaning politics and are calling out the shameful and harmful rhetoric of the left.

The casual racial slurs directed at these individuals are largely ignored.

Yes, those BAME are then either going ignored or, as you say - and have shared your own experience - exhausted their usefulness. You really do have to wonder who the real racists are.

Only one side has weaponised racism and it’s not the right.

All we want is equality, not special rules for us, lower standards, less accountability, true equality.

The saddest part is nothing is going to change. The left have such a grip hold on the public sector, which explains why it fails for many reasons. Money wastage with nonsense job titles and top heavy management is a big problem. They really do suck the soul out of things.

We have an authoritarian problem. Which is coming from both the left and right.

The efforts to silence debate mean sensible but controversial and sometimes very sensitive conversations we need to have are not being had because 'it causes offence'.

The reality is, can't stop people feeling uncomfortable in some reality important conversations because there are inconvenient truths we do not want to admit to because they conflict with our other views.

It's this rigid thinking and tribalism that is the problem. It's the unwillingness to listen to anyone but the sound of our own voices.

Liberalism is founded on the principle of listening to each other not shouting at each other. You can not be 'progressive' if you stop listening.

There's this fucked up idea that liberalism is a bunch of set ideas and morals. It's not. It's a recognition that the world isn't perfect and you have to not compromise - that's the wrong word - understand what other people's values, priorities and concerns are and more importantly than that understand WHY they are saying it.

I don't believe people are fundamentally racist at heart. I do believe that they turn to racism if they feel social injustice though and they feel like concerns aren't being listened to.

Ardey probably covers this fault in the culture war neatly because of that. He has suffered racism but he's suffered racism because he was given special treatment and there was a lack of accountability that applies to others. That's different to giving opportunities to disadvantaged groups. It's a failure to understand that some people will take the piss out of in-built opportunity in the system and to protect yourself adequately against that by ensuring that those you give the opportunity to do have the talent and are merely disadvantaged by circumstance rather than being given an unfair advantage and a lack of ability. It's about identity being more important than substance and a total lack of monitoring of your gatekeeping.

The level of nuances in this conversation is huge. But really important.

We seem to be stuck in the trap of having 256 character, over simplified and totally immature shouting matches rather than having in-depth, honest and hard adult conversations about anything.

Ultimately our depth of understanding 'the other side' and it's motivations is dreadful. It's easier to sling insults about.

The centre right is currently doing a better job than the centre left of adequately recognising the importance of the role of free speech (aka accountability) in this. This largely due to the left being so much more concerned about having the right PR and are terrified of doing the essential job of being self critical of parts of their own tent.

Meanwhile the majority electorate and the sane headed who live in the real world rather than these self bloating bubbles of echoes, can see everyone has something of a point to offer and has a valuable contribution in some way and they are tired of the arrogant nosy bloatiavators.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg4kn44l8lo
The BBC have run this article today. It's important.

"Giving your opponent a way out" is one of his golden rules of campaigning - his full list can be found in his new book Institutionalised Deceit: Taking the Lid off Westminster Governance.

Another is to avoid party tribalism. Despite voting Green, Bailey has rarely been picky about who he works with.

In the 1980s, he teamed up with the Association for the Conservation of Energy, a body governed by directors and CEOs.

In a goodbye speech at the end of his time with them, Bailey said: "Perhaps we have both learnt something.

"I have learnt that not all capitalist bastards are capitalist bastards and you have learnt that not all anarchist nutters are anarchist nutters."

Another mantra is to always appear "ultra reasonable". In his book he writes: "Make it as difficult as possible for people to oppose you."

This is where the modern likes of climate protesters fail miserably when they glue themselves to the road and make even sympathetic environmentally motivated voters decide they'd quite like to go and buy an SUV so they can drive around the nutters. Or when Amnesty decides that rape crisis charities are far right and it's obvious to everyone with a brain cell how meaningless and fucking ridiculous this claim is.

Engaging braincells and ears would do everyone the world of bloody good.

People turn to the right, when the left goes deaf or starts to naval gaze at its own sanctimonious meaningless ineffective drivel.

It's the difference between being told something is bad and blindly accepting this or going out into the street, using your eyes and ears and working out for yourself using your critical thinking skills whether what you are being told matches reality.

The Guardian didn’t hound him. In a handful of articles they produced some very good journalism exposing Arday’s ludicrous lies.

I don't believe people are fundamentally racist at heart. I do believe that they turn to racism if they feel social injustice though and they feel like concerns aren't being listened to.

Ardey probably covers this fault in the culture war neatly because of that. He has suffered racism but he's suffered racism because he was given special treatment and there was a lack of accountability that applies to others

Amazing how you write the first paragraph about turning to racism "if they feel social injustice" and then immediately assign this turn entirely to Ardays critics.

Arday's entire career has been anti white racism, based on a theory of social injustice. The social injustice of a modest income family from Ghana arriving as adults and being able to afford to have 4 children in a home in Clapham in the 1980s and 90s?

I feel like this is a seriously reductive take, just like calling all Arday’s critics ‘racists’ is reductive. JA wasn’t racist. Racism is to think that one ethnicity is superior to another. Cofnas is racist as he has openly said that he thinks that different ethnicities have different intellectual abilities. If you’re going to claim that JA was racist, show me a source where he said one race is better than another.

But individually they all wrote only 'a handful of articles'. It was the collective volume not individual pieces.

The fanciful life story is really a side show (though cat nip to tabloids).

If this story had run as it should have originally in TES before Ardy himself took legal action, it was about academic credentials.

And we can say 'but others have plagiarised and got away with it' and yes, that's true. But to be promoted to Professor in 7 years instead of the usual 12-20 you have to be outstanding - and that means research.

So look at the research. He did publish papers but not to the volume expected of a Chair. We can give the benefit of doubt to his condensed career and say 'well less volume but very impactful'. And yet his citations are low.

So that only leaves the quality of the outputs themselves and when they seem to have issues, what's left?

Then it seems reasonable to question the basis on which he earned not just a professorship but one at one of the world's best universities.

I don't think you can remove the racial element. There was some form of anti racism at play but ironically this is somewhat racist in itself.

In Arday's field there is a lack of black representation I'm sure. But go into any business of engineering school at any university in this country and you'll find many excellent black academics (though many jot British). Why weren't any of them, the ones slogging the conventional route, elevated in this way?

Perhaps Arday was an outstanding lecturer (whatwver the exaggeration hd must have had something) but there was a distinct dearth of people willing to stand up and say this.

I agree. It is very complicated. The media has admitted wrongdoing with plenty of journalists who were critical of Arday now coming out to express remorse and say that the attention he received was disproportionate to his actions. The story shouldn’t have been about one man. It should be about the entire institution. In the last few years at Cambridge we’ve seen a Professor plagiarise extensively from a student (he kept his job despite being found guilty of it), they currently have a handful of Cambridge Professors who are being investigated for/found guilty of sexual harassment of female students. They hired Nathan Cofnas who was a known racist. Etc. Arday is just a drop in the ocean. The story should’ve been about what happens when you turn universities into businesses that only care about funding rather than hiring decent teachers. Why they focused on one man is beyond me. People will say that Arday put himself in the public eye, but the fact remains he wasn’t a public figure and many of these other Professors are just as well known if not more so.

None of the mainstream media hounded him.
Let's be clear here nobody was doorstepping him, reporters, film crews and paparazzi weren't following him. His family weren't being targeted or followed or doorstepped.

All that happened was he was questioned by email for an article in a higher education newspaper and he set lawyers and police on said journalist, then his lies came out anyway (mainly due to his book) and everyone started reporting on his lies ie they took his previous statements and bio's and his book premise released in January and later the actual book and investigated them all and guess what he was a big fraud.

Oh of course. It was different. Nobody hounded him anyway.

But the people who visited JA in the days before his death said that there were media in front of his house and he didn’t feel he could leave.

Journalists who were critical of Arday are now coming out saying that the attention was disproportionate and they regret it.

But who stopped this story running in a publication that may have done just that? It was his own legal action that pushed it to the murkier corners

Anyone who accuses a student of white privilege and/or racism just for querying a grade or asking for a tutor who actually turns up to class and teaches the course is an anti white racist.
His whole grift was based on critical race theory which is anti white racism and christaphobia dressed up in a cloak of respectability when in reality its no different from white supremacy.

Arday first approached the Guardian a year ago. That's why they were able to both publish & refute the wild claims about a masked intruder with a knife & the pig's head. Jolyon's beef with the Guardian is because they exposed Arday's lies.