The Jason Arday media storm was partly of his own making. But he deserved better

On August 5th, Jason Arday had resigned from his position as professor of sociology of education at the University of Cambridge, days after the university opened an investigation into his academic integrity. Denying any wrongdoing, he said the toll of “relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary” had brought him to the limits of what any person should reasonably be expected to endure.On Friday evening last, police issued a statement that Arday had been found dead at his south London home. The following day, his friend and colleague Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at Cambridge and director of its autism research centre, spoke about their final conversation, hours before Arday was found dead. “At the heart of all of this was a man who’d been diagnosed in childhood with disabilities that included autism and language delay and learning differences,” said Baron-Cohen. “He was a vulnerable child, a vulnerable teenager and a vulnerable adult, so he needed and deserved safeguarding and support and reasonable adjustment every step of the way.”Was Arday the subject of a grossly disproportionate media pile-on, tinged with barely concealed racism? That is what some claim, including London mayor Sadiq Khan, who said Arday had faced “an unacceptable public hounding and campaign of abuse” and was the victim of “a pernicious public shaming”.READ MOREOr was he the victim of an academic establishment that, as the Guardian’s Jason Okundaye said, treated him “not as a scholar but as a mascot” and a “vehicle for Cambridge to signal its institutional progress”, abandoning academic standards and intellectual rigour along the way?And to what extent is this sorry tale of Arday’s own making, the result of his own fabulations and frauds, both in his professional life and in the stories he chose to tell about himself?The glib answer, and probably the correct one, is “all of the above, and more”. This story has many layers, ideological, psychological, intellectual and personal. As Arday’s remarkable career unravelled over the past few weeks, each new revelation offered the opportunity for fresh inquisition. But it might not have reached its dismal end last week had institutional gatekeepers in academia and the media carried out the roles they are supposed to perform.In some cases, at least, it was not for want of trying. Concerns about Arday’s work were first raised back in 2023 by two reputable academics, who took their questions to Cambridge and to Liverpool John Moores University, the institution that had awarded him his doctorate, as well as to journals that had published his work. Little happened. Then, when Jack Grove of Times Higher Education began investigating in earnest last year, there was a concerted effort to stop him. A five-page letter landed on his editors’ desk from Carter-Ruck, the UK’s most feared libel lawyers, describing Grove’s reporting as targeted harassment and suggesting it might be racially motivated. The investigation was shelved.Mainstream UK outlets reported on fabrications and implausibilities in Jason Arday’s account of his life and career. Photograph: Simon & Schuster Grove explained to the BBC’s Media Show last week that Times Higher Education is no longer part of Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, as it once was, and does not have the deep pockets or legal muscle that might have led to a more robust response. But Arday also reported Grove to London’s Metropolitan Police, which spent four months investigating him for harassment before dropping the matter, having at one point instructed Grove to stop contacting Arday because it was affecting the professor’s mental health.In hindsight, it might have been better for everyone involved if this highly effective chilling of legitimate journalistic inquiry had not taken place. Had Grove been permitted to pursue his investigation, and had the educational institutions involved treated the questions with the seriousness they deserved, that would have been some vindication of the value of specialist, well-informed media coverage, and an indication that the checks and safeguards in those institutions were fit for purpose.Instead, into the vacuum stepped Nathan Cofnas, a self-described “race realist” who has said that in a “true meritocracy” there would be virtually no black people in academia. Cofnas’s views are repugnant but his findings of plagiarism in Arday’s doctoral thesis were difficult to refute. Within days they had been picked up by a range of mainstream UK outlets, each discovering new fabrications and implausibilities in Arday’s account of his life and career.Was the coverage excessive? Yes. Was it driven by racial animus? Undoubtedly, in some cases, although legitimate disagreements over diversity policies should not automatically be tagged as such. Was Arday’s race a factor? Obviously it was, since it was central both to the way Cambridge presented him to the world and to the way the backlash was framed.[ How Jason Arday’s fabulous life became a culture war battlegroundOpens in new window ]Add in the crucial ingredient of celebrity. Arday had been the subject of unquestioningly effusive media coverage from the BBC, which gave him the rare honour of guest-editing its flagship radio programme, Today. He also had a seven-figure book deal from Simon & Schuster. The fact that the book was due to be published at the peak of the scandal added further fuel to the fire.For all these reasons, the affair escalated within weeks from a minor academic controversy into the subject of in-depth investigative reporting by some of the world’s biggest media outlets. Alongside that came the inevitable torrent of vitriol and prejudice on social media. At some point in these stories, it becomes too easy to see the protagonist as a cipher rather than a human being. But at the centre of all this was Jason Arday, a fantasist and a fabulist, but also, by the accounts of nearly everyone who knew him, a kind, gentle, loving and psychologically vulnerable man. He deserved better.