The millions of people around the world who encountered Professor Jason Arday through the deluge of toxic, often vitriolic headlines in recent weeks would never have known that he was one of the gentlest, most loving and decent human beings you could ever meet. How could they?
Barely a week before his death, I sat with Jason in a private room of a restaurant in Chinatown, London. He had insisted upon a discreet entrance, terrified of encountering what he called the “rabid media” who were hounding him. He had lost a frightening amount of weight. His dreadlocks were hidden. He was anxious even about being overheard. He held my hand.
“Simon,” he said quietly, “I’m the most boring man you’ll ever know. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I don’t gamble. I don’t like arguing. I’m not a fighter. Why are they doing this to me?” That question should trouble us all.
Chris Smith, chancellor of Cambridge University, has since described what happened to Jason as a “racist feeding frenzy”. Those are strong words from the chancellor of one of the world’s greatest universities. But having witnessed at close quarters what happened to Jason, they do not feel remotely exaggerated.
Jason had been subjected to criticism and investigation over allegations concerning his academic work and, subsequently, almost every aspect of his life. Academic standards matter. Plagiarism matters. Universities must investigate credible allegations without fear or favour. But proportionality matters too.
Liverpool John Moores University, which awarded Jason his doctorate, had examined allegations concerning his PhD and did not uphold them. Yet the word “plagiarism” became almost inseparable from his name. The scrutiny then expanded far beyond his thesis: his CV, sporting achievements, charity fundraising and personal history were picked apart in public. In the pile-on from so many quarters – some very surprising – many were left feeling, “My God, he must have done something terribly wrong to merit even half of this.” Eventually, it felt less like an investigation and more like a hunt.
Hunts have consequences. Behind every headline was a human being: a son, a brother, a colleague and a teacher. Jason was not an abstract argument in a culture war. He was a person absorbing, day after day, the cumulative weight of public suspicion, ridicule and condemnation. Who, amid all that scrutiny, was asking whether he was all right?
And something else matters. One of Jason’s most persistent critics was Nathan Cofnas, who describes himself as a “race realist”; others, however, might call him a white supremacist masquerading as a thoughtful academic. Cofnas has written that under what he considers a true meritocracy, the number of black professors at Harvard would “approach 0 per cent”, and that black people would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment”.
Think about those words. Because the argument surrounding Jason was never simply about one professor. It became entangled with a much bigger battle over who is presumed to belong in our great institutions, and who must continually prove that they deserve to be there.
There is an uncomfortable double standard here. Search the history of British academia and you will find Oxbridge professors accused of – and some found responsible for – plagiarism or serious academic failings. Their cases did not generally become national morality plays in which every detail of their lives was excavated and their entire character placed on trial. Why Jason?
As the media storm intensified, I watched good people hide for cover. Their fear that the media pack might come after them too was both chilling and real. Institutions retreated too.
There are legitimate questions for Cambridge and others about academic governance. But there is another question: when does legitimate scrutiny become something else? For example, why a recruitment review with Jason, and not with bullies and plagiarists? What duty of care does an institution owe an employee when scrutiny becomes a relentless “racist feeding frenzy”, as its own chancellor has argued?
Jason’s death should become one of those moments when Britain looks hard at itself. Stephen Lawrence was murdered 33 years ago. His death ultimately forced Britain to confront institutional racism within policing and beyond. The circumstances are different, but Jason’s death presents us with another uncomfortable question: whether institutional racism can also reveal itself through unequal scrutiny, unequal protection and assumptions about who really deserves to occupy positions of prestige.
Nobody expects Oxbridge or any seat of learning to abandon academic rigour. Nor should it abandon diversity, equity and inclusion. We must demand both excellence and fairness: the same standards, the same scrutiny, and the same humanity and decency for everyone.
And equality must surely include the right not only to be exceptional, but occasionally to be ordinary – even mediocre – without having your very right to belong called into question.
Because if the wider lesson of Jason Arday’s story becomes that black people who reach the highest places should expect their legitimacy to be questioned in ways others are not, then those who believe we do not belong will have won something much bigger than the destruction of one man’s reputation.
Those of us who knew Jason must ensure that is not his legacy. I will remember something very different. I will remember a gentle, vulnerable and extraordinarily kind man who believed, perhaps unfashionably, that love mattered – in education, in institutions and in society. In the end, Britain showed Jason far too little of it.
[Further reading: The shaming of Jason Arday]
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Subscribe here to commentWhat a pity that such articles were not written before Arday died, rather than after.
Remarkable piece. It was good of you to confirm that there are some small differences to the Stephen Lawrence murder, at least.