When I heard of Professor Jason Arday’s death, I was sickened to my stomach, but I was not surprised. The British press had written 249 critical articles containing accusations concerning his character, sporting achievements, professional qualifications and affiliations, over a 22-day period. 188 of these articles were published after his resignation, due to the pressure of the unrelenting public scrutiny.
In his resignation letter Prof Arday stated that he wanted to be “present for his family”, and to reclaim some peace, some privacy and semblance of an ordinary life. Instead, he was hounded even more intensely, particularly by the rightwing press with The Spectator and The Telegraph publishing over 60 articles, many in the days after his resignation.
Originally accused of plagiarism in his doctoral thesis by Dr Nathan Cofnas, a self-confessed ‘race realist’, Prof Arday had already been cleared of wrongdoing by Liverpool John Moores University which found the errors in his thesis to have been genuine, and they admitted that supervision they provided may have been lacking. This might have been the end of the matter. Yet, the intensity of press interest in the story reached frenzied heights that ultimately resulted in his resignation, and likely contributed to his death.
Why was his story so compelling for those intent on prolonging his scrutiny?
Prof Arday’s alleged transgressions (many of which have now been disproven with evidence from newspapers and charities that reported, or benefited from his prolific sporting and charitable works), would not under normal circumstances create such intense levels of public interest, nor media scrutiny. For example, claims that professor Arday ran 30 marathons in 35 days for charity and that he played semi-professional football were lampooned in the press and cited as evidence of wider fantasist tendencies, but have been supported by both charity leaders and contemporary articles in local newspapers.
Plagiarism and worse accusations have been levelled at academics in senior positions within prestigious universities in the UK before, with little to no coverage in the press. One Cambridge professor, still in post, was found to have copied extensive parts of a published journal article nearly word-for-word from an undergraduate student under their supervision.
The same professor was also subject to controversy over Cambridge University’s handling of complaints of sexual assault made by several women against a male student with whom he was reportedly close. He was also accused of sexual assault – an allegation he strongly denied and over which police took no further action. Only a handful of outlets including Tortoise Media and Cambridge’s own student newspaper Varsity, seem to have taken more than a passing interest in this story.
Caught red-handed
Compare and contrast the intensity of media interest in a non-white professor specialising in race, inequality and education, whose alleged transgressions included exaggerating his affiliations and sporting activities on his CV, with that of a white associate professor at the same university, who has just been caught on film discussing ways to circumvent UK electoral laws regarding foreign political donations. I’m talking of associate professor James Orr who was filmed in an undercover investigation by journalists from Verbatim Investigations.
Orr was shown in discussions relating to the payment of opinion polling for Reform UK by an overseas company, and plotting ways to route larger donations from overseas, which would contravene UK electoral law, if proven. As a result of the broadcast of this expose on Channel 4 News, Orr stepped down as Reform’s head of policy.
While Cambridge University is “looking into these matters” he remains associate professor of philosophy and religion. Only 14 articles have been published on Orr’s conduct. The Times Higher Education magazine (THE) which published six articles about Professor Arday, remained silent on Orr.
A recent article in Byline Times notes that in 2024 THE took funding from, and entered into a partnership with, the Ministry of Culture and Innovation under Viktor Orbán’s then government in Hungary. Orr, an admirer of Orban, is also a trustee of the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation which has received substantial funding from the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC). Under Orbán’s administration, the MCC itself received an endowment valued at between €1.3bn to €1.7bn in assets and cash.
Why did non-white Professor Arday attract much media attention?
Having spent four months on the streets of Leeds, back in 1998, armed with a hidden camera and looking for examples of racial prejudice for the BBC mini-series, Black and White, I know just how hard gathering convincing evidence can be. In fact, I found it almost impossible to accept the systematic and all-consuming experience of racial discrimination that is run-of-the-mill for many non-white British citizens. I almost came to blows with my fellow, black British, investigator over my need for proof and unassailable evidence.
So when cries of racism are made in relation to professor Arday’s hounding by the British and US press, I understand the nagging doubts that even those of us convinced that racism exists can feel. It’s not easy to reach the levels of proof demanded by most white British people, like me.
My perspective changed during an encounter with the mother of a young child who had been challenged at school for her appearance “My hair is too curly mummy”. I began to grasp viscerally what racism is in the UK. I do not claim to know it as intimately as only a non-white person can, but I realised that I needed to listen more and acknowledge lived experiences.
My frustration as I write this article, is that for many people the racism at play in Professor Arday’s tragedy isn’t clear. Even when the chief accuser turns out to be a self-confessed ‘race realist’ who openly claims that non-white people are inferior intellectually to white people because of their genetic heritage, (hereditarianism), rather than the widely accepted view in academia, that systemic social, historical, and economic inequities drive any measured differences.
Two letters, two very different responses
What originally spurred me to write on this matter, was a letter sent to the rector of Ghent University, Prof Petra De Sutter, accusing the university of a “retaliation” against Dr Cofnas for daring to “publish academic misconduct” in relation to Professor Arday. The letter was widely publicised in the same news media that had found Professor Arday’s story so compelling. The letter attracted over 400 signatures from academics around the world. It went on to suggest that Ghent University was “failing in its duty to protect” Dr Cofnas from external attacks. A breathtakingly ironic statement.
Shortly after the publication of the letter attacking Ghent University, another letter in defence of their actions in suspending Dr Cofnas was published with over 4,000 signatories from the world of academia. This letter was largely missing from the press coverage, probably never reaching the feeds of those that received the critical letter. Such is the power of the media to gate-keep information that would not show up on the algorithmically defined information feeds of naturally conservative readers.
A failure to contextualise racist attacks by the press
Let’s not underestimate the complexity of the challenge of putting all the pieces together on what happened to Professor Arday in order to consider who ultimately is to blame for his tragic end. Yet the media coverage did not take place in a vacuum and, in my opinion, too many of the reporters involved declined to consider sufficiently, the environment in which the accusations were being pitched.
The Overton Window has shifted. The president of the US has openly stated that his administration will fund and assist right-wing political organisations in Europe. Christian nationalism and white supremacism are on the rise in US and a new right is rising in the UK.
Professor Arday was not the first non-white target of the anti-DEI political consensus. It’s only 18 months since the first black president of an Ivy League university, Harvard, was hounded out of her job in comparable circumstances.
Dr Claudine Gay stepped down after only six months in post after a coordinated and highly publicised pressure campaign following her defence of free speech on campus during a congressional testimony over accusations of antisemitism relating to student protests about the war in Gaza.
Dr Gay was subsequently accused of plagiarism by conservative activists who claimed that she was a DEI hire (diversity, equity and inclusion) and various. media outlets. This eventually led to her resignation, even though no substantive evidence of plagiarism was found by Harvard in its investigation of the matter.
The rise of the far right powered by academia
And what of Professor James Orr? With close links to both US Vice President JD Vance and tech billionaire Peter Thiel, he’s a kingpin in an influential transatlantic network of right-wing, traditionalist, and nationalist thinkers. Vance calls Orr his “British sherpa” and his “philosopher king”, and has visited his home in Cambridge, a venue which is currently acting as a finishing school for extreme-right intellectuals of the future.
Peter Thiel delivered his infamous ‘Antichrist Lectures’ at Cambridge University under Orr’s invitation. What scrutiny will we see, even now that he’s been exposed as at least, a central figure in attempting to procure potentially illegal funding for Reform UK? Will he be held to account? I’m not holding my breath.
But let’s leave the last words to Professor Jason Arday. Asked what he would do if he could change the world, he responded:
“I would take a thread and a needle and I’d interweave love into our society.”
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