Jason Arday’s Enablers and Encouragers Cast the First Stone
I had two immediate reactions to the news of Jason Arday’s apparent suicide. The first was sadness, especially for his two children, wife, and parents. The second was to start a countdown to when the left would blame his decision to end his life on those who had uncovered his serial academic misconduct and fabulism. (Uncovering is not quite the right word: it was there in plain sight all along. Having the temerity to point it out is more accurate).
The countdown was a short one. The blaming started almost immediately.
But the blamers should look in the mirror. They are responsible for Arday’s unwarranted rise and are thus responsible for his inevitable fall. They are a necessary condition for the whole sorry tale.
The British academic establishment is the guilty party here. His thesis advisor(s) who granted him a doctorate based on a shoddy thesis: even putting plagiarism aside, its intellectual vacuity, borderline literateness, and sheer sloppiness (apostrophes go wild!) disqualify it even in a notoriously weak field like education. The universities that hired him, and used him to virtue signal despite his obvious lack of scholarly ability and flagrant fabulism: Cambridge is the most guilty here, because the gap between its scholarly reputation and Arday’s scholarly unfitness was the greatest. The university adjacent in media (the BBC in particular) and politics. Supposedly reputable publishers who advanced him seven figures for his Baron von Munchausen-esque autobiography.
Think of the likely effects of this on someone like Arday. What else could he conclude from his treatment other that there was no penalty for academic misconduct; that schlock research on racism got him treated like an academic superstar; and that there was an audience that not only suspended disbelief but avidly gulped down his tall tales? Given that feedback, the natural thing to do is more of it.
Which eventually and inevitably attracted the skeptical attention which brought it all crashing down. His failings were so immense that even his most ardent promoters found them indefensible.
Unless he was totally delusional, Arday must have awakened every day asking: “Is this the day I get called out?” I can only imagine the psychological toll that took. And when that day came, he decided he couldn’t go on.
Of course Jason Arday is ultimately responsible for his choices. But the “elite” enabled those choices, when at every step they should have given him a reality check. And they enabled not because they cared about Jason Arday. It was all about them. To advance their agendas. To validate their intellectual conceits. To feed their vanity.
Decent people would consider their role in Jason Arday’s rise and fall, and repent. But instead, they blame those who would not countenance misconduct–misconduct that they enabled, and indeed encouraged.
Long, long ago, when I was young, a Cambridge STEM department approached me to offer me an Assistant Lectureship (conditional on my pulling together a CV and not cocking up an interview). I was much more highly qualified than Arday and he was given a Chair.
In some ways I feel sorry for him; he was not only a crook but a fantasist. A con fabulist. He was a sap, exploited by the racism of fellow black academics and by left-wing rent-a-gobs.
Heads should roll. To start with Cambridge should simply close its Faculty of Education – teacher training should really not have a place at Cambridge, even if it weren’t a cesspit of DEI and gormlessness. The Vice-Chancellor (boss) should resign. The Chairman of the Board of Electors for Arday’s Chair should be driven out with ignominy. And so on. But I’ll lay odds against.
Comment by dearieme — August 17, 2026 @ 3:17 am
While I concur that Arday was beyond foolish to think he could get away with his ‘research’ in this day + age, the way he was hounded by the likes of the Telegraph was truly shameful. It’s telling how their tone changed so profoundly as soon as his death was announced.
That said – and for balance – it’s not the reserve of the right wing press here. The Observer ran a similarly unhinged and extended campaign against the author Raynor Winn last year.
They all seem to revel in kicking their targets even when they’re clearly down and out.
Comment by David Mercer — August 18, 2026 @ 10:35 am
The Telegraph would have been derelict in its duty had it shut up about Arday’s repeated frauds. Your argument is presumably that Arday should not have been held to civilised standards because he was black. Shame on you for such racism.
Mind you, even I am impressed that his mother a nurse, had five degrees. Or so he said.
Comment by dearieme — August 18, 2026 @ 12:24 pm
@Deari do you enjoy anonymously acting out your little alt-right fantasies on this site? Does your family know about your little habit?
Comment by David Mercer — August 18, 2026 @ 2:53 pm
I do wish he hadn’t committed suicide, I was enjoying the silly season fairy tale so much.
There are degrees of suicide.
Roman, falling on the sword
Japanese, sepuku
These are surrender and a refusal to assist the conquerer.
Suicides of despair, mental illness, etc
“Suicides” by doctor (see Canada, Belgium…)
The last and worst is suicide for revenge. “See what you made me do”, the excuse every domestic abuser makes.
I pity his children, now knowing what he was.
Autism is a lifelong condition and autists don’t relate to how they are viewed by others. If he was in despair his autism was just another lie.
And he could have made a fortune on the American speaking circuit spouting shite about systemic racism and everything else. The emails for engagements were probably already flooding his inbox at the moment he topped himself.
Comment by philip — August 18, 2026 @ 3:02 pm
@dearieme–That’s when Cambridge had standards, and you had to prove yourself, rather than be anointed.
Comment by cpirrong — August 18, 2026 @ 3:23 pm
I do feel sorry for Arday, as a naïf exploring a wonderland of gingerbread and golden goose-eggs, showered in glory. That he gained fame by promoting racial hatred, then persecuting his critics, I find shameful.
Comment by Michael van der Riet — August 22, 2026 @ 2:58 am
I heard a neologism the other day emerging from Arday’s disgrace and that of his enablers: “blackademic”: a race grifter determined to gain unearned advantage up to and beyond tenure by citing and producing racist pseudo-science.
There’s a lot of it about and it’s excellent we now have a word for them.
Comment by Green as Grass — September 11, 2026 @ 6:16 am