A tragic death as a man is hounded to suicide by a right wing campaign and the British press. What must we learn from it, asks Simon Hannah?
Jason Arday is dead. The 41 year old Black academic from Cambridge was hounded by the British press for the last few weeks with accusations of plagiarism and outlandish stories about his personal life. The nation was gripped, intrigued about it, forgetting there was a human at the centre of it, someone with a life to live. Someone whose only possible ‘crime’ was academic plagiarism.
The entire story came about because of one racist fanatic, Nathan Cofnas. Cofnas had been sacked from his Cambridge job for saying that Black people were not intelligent and without Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) hiring practices such as positive discrimination they would only succeed as entertainers and athletes. This wretched man recast himself as a crusader, going through Black academics’ careers and publications to find any dirt or inconsistencies, any publications that might show academic malpractice to prove his point. He found Arday’s PhD from Liverpool John Moore University and claimed it was largely plagiarised.
Liverpool John Moore stood by their decision to issue him the PhD. Any subsequent investigation was between Arday, his employer and the university that awarded the PhD. But it was made into a public spectacle by sinister right wing forces, desparate to prove a wider point, and conduct a public trial to hang a Black man’s career.
And this is the first claxon for racism. The press rubbed their hands with glee – salivating at the prospect of tearing down Arday. Arday was subjected to intense media scrutiny beyond anything a white academic has received in living memory. Lists are already circulating of white academics accused of fabrications or embellishments in their intellectual work, but The Telegraph and The Times were not interviewing their ex-students to get a character profile on those teachers. It was not just the right wing press, the Guardian also contributed several articles on his situation.
And what does this tell us about modern academia? An institution rife with accusations of plagiarism. When the future of academia itself is being called into question due to pretty much every student, as well as some academics, using AI to write and mark papers? When there is a replicability crisis in science, researchers and academics unable to replicate the alleged outcomes of their peers to establish consistent results?
People have said that Arday was a fantasist and many of us read online the incredible claims of long distance running prowess and how much money he raised for charity. He had recently been paid £1.4 million for his memoirs. But how many of us know people that embellish stories? Make up facts? How many of us have lied on our CVs? Fake it till you make it. Hustle culture. Arday spoke about being an autistic Black man trying to navigate the world. Battling that crushing feeling of irrelevance in a world that tells you that you don’t matter or you should get back in your box.
Arday was put under a spotlight and subjected to the court of public opinion and the feeling that all the things he had said did not stack up became more evident. But how many other people walking around would also crumple under similar levels of national scrutiny with full time journalists going through your personal life looking for dirt?
Let’s be real, self promotion is necessary to modern life. Creating a narrative about your own life for credibility is what every celebrity does, what every politician does, what your mate down the pub going through a divorce does, what your friend does when she’s feeling hurt and wants to ego project confidence. Arday might have gone further than most and was hoping to make money from his memoirs, but this constant drive for celebrity, recognition and fame is something built into capitalism, into how we are encouraged to see humans as geniuses or ‘people with incredible stories’ that get turned into movies. The recent The Salt Path controversy is just another example of the way the book industry encourages these stories.
No doubt people will blame the university for hiring someone “unsuitable for the job”. Shifting the blame onto DEI initiatives – already under attack by the far right – and away from the racist witch hunters. In an academic system built on hypocrisy, elitism and increasingly grasping after whatever scraps of money they can get to survive – late stage capitalism hates intellectuals – we face deeper problems than a possibly plagiarised PhD. Even if the university was to have taken disciplinary action it wasn’t the Telegraph’s job to decide who lives and who dies.
What was the point of any of it beyond the obvious desire to see a Black man’s career get hung?
Some will say it was tragic that he died but – he set the cause of racial equality back because of his behaviour. The reality is Arday was held to a higher standard than any white academic and it was the racists and the media making this into an intense publicity storm that is the real danger here.
The more we look at the forces arraigned against Arday the more it feels like a political motivated assassination. Or a public lynching.
This sad event reminds me of Pat Parker’s 1985 poem Jonestown about how behind the tragic death of oppressively racialised people lies the reality of a society that did not care about them, that punished them for who they were or could not support those people with mental health issues or autism or any of the thousand other aspects of humanity:
“No one had ever cared
that much about me before
and it came home
the messages of my youth
came clear
the Black people
in Jonestown
did not commit suicide
they were murdered
they were murdered in
small southern towns
they were murdered in
big northern cities
they were murdered
as school children
by teachers who didn’t care
they were murdered
by policemen
who didn’t care
they were murdered
by welfare workers
who didn’t care
they were murdered
by church people
who didn’t care
they were murdered
by politicians
who didn’t care
they didn’t die at Jonestown
they went to Jonestown dead
[…]
they died in
the school rooms
they died
in the streets
they died
in the bars
they died
in the jails
they died
in the churches
they died
in the welfare lines
Black folks do not
Black folks do not
Black folks do not commit suicide.”
This is the cold reality: Jason Arday was driven to his death by a cruel world that was using the excuse of academic rigour as a cover to destroy someone that they hated. They hate him because he was Black and they want to remove Black people from public life. Jason Arday was a casualty in the race war that the far right aims to inflict on Britain, and people like Elon Musk are actively agitating for.
And right now I care far more about that than I do about someone allegedly copying parts of their PhD.
Higher education statistics confirm that the number of black professors at Oxbridge is historically exceptionally low, with the vast majority appointed only within the last decade. The estimate is that fewer than 15 to 20 Black individuals have ever held full professorships (chairs) at Cambridge, and a similarly small number (estimated under 20–25) have held them at Oxford in the last two centuries.
Read that again, in the last two centuries! That means that black academics have been deliberately ignored in the highest of our higher education. Oxbridge is the pinnacle of the British establishment; had Jason Arday gone to Eton with the likes of Boris Johnson, he would have been closer to those who get to say who is allowed in their club but would still, until the last decade, not have been allowed into their boardrooms or classrooms. A Doctoral thesis is marked in a very different way to a degree or any other measurement exam, and it is up to those who read it, support the student and are already leaders in that work to mark; there is no A, B, or C mark. You either achieve it, or you don’t. Anyone involved in doctoral research will tell you the student who gets to this level has already achieved a lot in their academic life; they know more about their subject than many others who get a BA or Bsc will ever do but when black some jelous, bigoted fool can come and rip your dreams away from under you and the establishment in this country will help them at every step. My thoughts today are with Jason’s family and friends who stood by him for the last 3 years of this abuse, not the last few weeks. My thoughts are also with every black student thinking about what happened to Jason today and losing their dreams in this country. Please continue your fight for your rights, and we will join you however you ask us to
Arday was a victim of character assassination which ultimately took a tragic toll on him. The media needs to do some soul searching on their role in this saga, although I would not hold my breath that it will do.
The outcome of this final and awful occurrence, the death of Jason Arday, must rest heavily upon the lack of careful and adequate investigation into his suitability and academic achievements for the post he was offered and accepted by Cambridge University. Records show that there were questions raised at the time by senior University members as to the accuracy or actual content and research of the PhD he submitted, but the questions were rejected. The decision for the appointment was made without such questions being investigated.
The pressure on him and on his family grew to a level that was clearly beyond any normal measure, since it included racist statements from right wing political groups alleging improper procedures (unproven) and attempts to imply his appointment was in itself a racist move. Social media and the Press got involved, and there was little support visible for Arday from then on, other than a petition and several charitable organisations attempting to defend him against the racist attacks.
At this point, I am making a personal point. Someone under this level of stress, with so much publicity, and political attacks, already having interviews that had information from him that was being shown as untrue and knowingly untrue, might well be at a point of mental illness that would lead to desperate acts.
I feel strongly that we need to halt judgement right now on his death. His family will be suffering. This is not a time to start telling tales.
He may have been racially motivated but there is concrete evidence of mass plagiarism of his PHd and half his published papers. Most of fantastical life stories have been disproved. Cambridge knew most of this but continued to evelate him and he was a media darling. Cambridge should have dealt with him sensitivly rather than let him be tried by media. This has set back black academia a generation. With many quietly fuming.