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.

You can’t speak for a dead man. You can’t say what JA wanted. I genuinely don’t think you’re adding anything valuable to this discussion. If you look, I’ve actually ‘liked’ plenty of comments that disagree with me and are articulately written and considered. Your comments on the other hand are vicious and outlandish.

It was published in America this week and has already been dismantled

That’s as maybe. We all know people like that. One of my best friends was a terrible liar and fantasist. Although he often let me down I rarely if ever called him out on it and treated him as a human being not an object of scorn and ridicule. He was flawed but had many good qualities too and I enjoyed his company. Boiling someone down to “fantasist and liar” is to overlook all their other better qualities and attributes. My friend was hugely generous, a great listener, a talented artist, hilariously funny, loyal, kind too, sadly he died of Aids back in the 90s. My point is, Arday deserved to be treated with some empathy and understanding imo, not to be relentlessly attacked in the national press for weeks on end. I still don’t get why they were so out to get him.

Don't be silly. If you report something to the police, you do it for a reason, you want them to take action. At the least you are doing it because you want it on record in case further action is needed. Jason Arday tried to use the police against journalists and another academic IIRC who made some queries; it's a clear attempt to intimidate and shut down questioning.

@KellyK2026 Nope, not at PhD level they aren’t. Firstly, the thesis itself is too big to put through software

Bullshit.

It's not called 'DEI' in the UK, for fuck sake.

Of course he wanted to report it, but it wasn’t his decision for the police to launch a full investigation. That’s all the police, and they’ve already taken full responsibility.

There is a TV interview I saw with JA and his wife. She, at that time anyway, believed him. The marathons etc would have happened before she met him. I am sure she was as taken in as Cambridge uni.

I don’t think anyone in the whole sorry situation has covered themselves in glory. A system grabbed on to a vulnerable individual and set him on a pedestal, they heaped praise and promotions on him, it appears they were more interested in reflected glory than in a duty of care to a colleague or student. When it began to unravel a different voice began, they took every detail and put it under a microscope. Bad enough but they didn’t allow time for any investigation they just kept up relentless baying pursuit. He may have lied or exaggerated to live up to expectations and that is wrong but his treatment has been abysmal and reminiscent of ignorance in the past. His glorification by some institutions is as bad as freak shows and the last few weeks have been a witch hunt. Truly trial by public opinion and a public which lacks compassion.

I've downloaded a copy out of curiosity, but as with Graham Linehan's memoir, I'm not sure whether it's just rubbernecking at a clearly unwell man indulged into publication to actually read it. Ho hum.

Which doesn't remove JA's responsibility for reporting in the first place. He is being treated as if he is not responsible for his actions, which is bizarre to me.

Sorry for his family, but the man himself is very much the architect of his own misfortune.

She has corroborated his story and she apparently helped to teach him read and write when they met as teenagers. This Thread isn’t to speculate whether that’s true or not and only they can answer that, and he’s dead, and there’s absolutely no point in ‘what-if-isms’. That’s what we know so far.

Nobody has said he 'deserved to die'. I am sorry for anyone in so much anguish they can't see any way out other than suicide, even if they are a conman and a liar.
There is no reason to believe he had a disability, we have only his word for it, which has proved extremely unreliable.

He’s responsible for reporting it. The police are responsible for their actions after the fact. There’s nothing to dispute here.

In much the same way, if I drop a brick on someone's head, I am responsible for the dropping but gravity is responsible for the injury.

I am only commenting that in that TV appearance she appeared to believe in him.

The thing that has stuck out for me is that the media put him on trial. Should it have been trial by media, where anyone and everyone can have their two’penneth, or should it have been in a more enclosed professional setting? Personally, I think the latter.

If you drop a brick and it kills someone then you are responsible. If you give someone a brick and they chuck it and it kills someone then they are responsible.

The police have already taken accountability. There’s nothing to debate. That line of argument has already been shut down by the police themselves who admitted wrong doing.

You don’t make reports to the police in anticipation of them taking no action. He wanted at minimum to shut up the reporter by scaring him with police action, or for him to get a criminal record and stop him that way. Either way he had no concern for the reporter.

It seems to me, certainly from what I've read, that he was a bit of a charlatan. In that respect, I don't blame the journalist from raising the issues. On the other hand, it seems as though he was elevated to a position for which he was not qualified and, at some stage, it was all going to end. Where does the fault, if there is a fault, lie? In my opinion it lies both with Arday himself and also with those that appointed him without proper scrutiny of his claims.

If just one person on the academic team that appointed him as professor had scrutinised his work properly as they should have done they would have never given him the job.
If just one person on the appointing panel had looked beyond the woke agenda of his age and the colour of his skin, and actually realised this was a person with mental health issues who was living a Walter Mitty existence, then maybe this tragedy could have been avoided,and he could have got the help he so obviously needed.
The academics who appointed him and enabled his fantasy existence should be hanging their heads in shame.

He was entitled to report it to the police. Again, nothing to debate here. The police admitted wrong doing on their part. It’s been shut down by the police. I’m not going to go around in circles as it’s ridiculous when that line of argument has been shut down by the police themselves.

There is something of the Greek tragedy about this, I couldn’t think what story it reminded me of and I think it was Icarus, who flew too close to the sun.

It has shown up Cambridge and its processes in an incredibly bad light, and deservedly so, but I’m just so terribly sad that it has led to the suicide of a man with a young family.

Did you feel the same level of disgust at the vile comments that were made by some individuals when Charlie Kirk was murdered?

You can refuse to go around that argument if you wish. Regardless of the police taking responsibility for their part, you can't ignore his actions in doing it very much show bad faith and an attempt to intimidate and silence critics. Or rather you can ignore it, but everyone else won't.