Jason Arday
Jason Arday was found dead at his home on Friday, just a week after resigning from his role as professor at the University of Cambridge.
A statement from his family said, “The campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason, who was a gentle man and who always wanted to see the best in everyone.”
After his resignation, the right celebrated the fall of Cambridge professor Jason Arday with the glee of a colonial hunting party that has just blasted a lone creature into oblivion.
Guns had been out for him as soon as the elite university made Arday one of the youngest black professors in Britain
But Cambridge was at the heart of the racist witch-hunt against Arday.
The university still runs on hypocrisy and racism. Jesus College, where Arday taught, still displays a plaque in the chapel celebrating the slave trader Tobias Rustat. This is in spite of a campaign to remove it four years ago.
He said resigning was the only way to end the “relentless allegations” that his academic achievements were faked, and that his backstory didn’t add up.
For the hunters from the Times and Telegraph newspapers though, taking Arday’s head alone was never going to be enough.
Their real aim was to insinuate that most black people appointed to prestigious positions are there for cosmetic reasons alone. It is, they suggest, because employers value their skin colour, rather than their abilities.
The right says this amounts to a form of “reverse discrimination” that disadvantages white people. It comes from a so-called woke multicultural “mania” that has in recent years gripped everything from academia to broadcasting—and even their beloved armed forces.
Disgraced former Cambridge researcher Nathan Cofnas was only too happy to aid the hunters.
He was dismissed in 2024 after outrage greeted posts from his blog. In them he argued that under a true meritocracy, “blacks would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment.”
Cofnas spent months digging obsessively into Arday in an effort to prove his argument. He wanted revenge for himself and fellow “race realist” Noah Carl, also dismissed by the university.
Broader right wing forces were only too happy to join his quest for “truth.”
But if all university professors—the vast majority of whom are white—were subject to the same spotlight, many would emerge as liars and plagiarists.
And, as to Arday’s other no doubt exaggerated achievements, there is little new here either. There is a small industry of people who, for money, will help you lie convincingly.
They say you must embellish your CV because all your competitors are doing it—and it’s the only way to get a job.
Here Arday’s failing was not that he lied, but that he didn’t lie convincingly enough.
Universities as institutions choose to cover up any hint of scandal, rather than live up to standards they claim as sacrosanct.
That is part of a wider pattern generated by the collapse of state funding and the intense competition between institutions for students and investment.
Millions of pounds are frittered away on showpiece buildings that look good in overseas students’ prospectuses, and “star” lecturers employed for their profile, not their abilities.
And in this, some universities attempt to feign genuine equality and diversity by hiring people that create the illusion of it.
These obstacles mean that developing academic talent among the working class, and among the black people within it, requires a long term commitment. It also requires investment from institutions.
There are thousands of thoughtful, insightful and inquisitive young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who with the right backing could go far in academia or elsewhere.
Universities could play a vital role in this by introducing themselves to people who know little about the world they represent. They need to make themselves relevant.
But in the cut-throat world of the free market, where every institution is locked in competition with the others, that approach simply isn’t enough.
The real danger of Arday’s snaring is that the hunters will move on to their real prize. That’s the gutting of all the higher education policies designed to improve representation.
And they want the end of teaching the truth of the blood-soaked British Empire. They want to banish discussion of trans people’s rights and gender equality.
And they want universities reduced to an echo chamber of the right, where students are only offered courses that will help them aid the wealthy.
The bagging of Arday is only the first step to a new, right wing utopia.
Monday 17 August 6.30pm, Market Square, Cambridge, CB1 0SS
Monday 17 August, 6pm, Trafalgar Square, London, WC2N 5DS
Dominion Society is building links with Restore Britain
Demos will be held across Britain
