I am shocked, desperately saddened, and angry at the death of Professor Jason Arday and yet somehow not surprised that this saga has ended this way.
I was never convinced that there were legitimate questions about aspects of Arday’s academic work, especially after my former employer Liverpool John Moores University affirmed the veracity of his PhD.
Of course, universities must uphold rigorous academic standards, but nothing can justify the relentless public hounding and racialised vilification to which Arday was subjected.
Jason became Cambridge’s youngest Black professor. His appointment should have been celebrated as another small breaking of the barriers that have excluded Black people from our great institutions for generations. Instead, almost from the outset, he was subjected to appalling racist abuse and, latterly, an extraordinary level of public scrutiny and personal attack.
We need to ask ourselves some profoundly uncomfortable questions about what happened here.
Why are Black people who succeed in institutions historically dominated by white people so often required to be not merely good, but flawless? Why can the mistakes or failings of a Black academic so quickly become an indictment of diversity itself? And why does legitimate scrutiny so readily turn into something altogether uglier when its subject is Black?
I have spent much of my life campaigning against racism and discrimination. We have made progress, but racism has by no stretch disappeared from British society. It has changed its language and sometimes its clothes. It remains present in our institutions, our media, our politics, and, yes, our universities.
Whatever conclusions might ultimately have been reached about the allegations against Jason Arday, he was a clearly talented human being, not a battleground in somebody else’s culture war.
May Jason rest in peace. And may the rest of us have the courage to confront the racism, cruelty, and dehumanisation that made his final weeks so unbearable.
C. E. Lord has spent much of their career working in and for universities and other education bodies leading development and other services and serving on governing bodies. They are a dedicated campaigner against racism and other discrimination and received an OBE in 2011 for public service promoting equality and social inclusion.
C. E. Lord OBE 