I know we've already had two posts on the death of Cambridge's youngest black professor, but I want to touch on it again because so many are blaming his death on racism. If you're not familiar with the story, Jason Arday was a DEI hire who suddenly found a journalist looking into both his body of academic work and other claims about his life. As Townhall's Amy Curtis wrote, Arday said he ran 30 marathons in 35 days, that he didn't learn to read or write until he was 18 due to autism, and that he had to relearn his dissertation following brain surgery. He resigned from Cambridge on August 5, facing claims of plagiarism. As our own Gordon K wrote, academics and politicians alike tried to make the story about race.
An aside: Race in the U.K. isn't what it is here. I'm a big fan of horror movies, and there's a good one called His House about a South Sudanese refugee couple who move into government housing in the U.K. There's a scene where a bunch of black kids playing soccer taunt them and tell them to get out. The blacks consider themselves fully British. Black and white Brits alike agree you can hate the Pakistanis all you want.
But as I wrote before, London Mayor Sadiq Khan slipped a little dog whistle in there when he said that Arday "was the victim of a pernicious public shaming that other people in his position simply wouldn’t have faced."
Here's someone calling Arday's death "an indirect lynching."
I hope all those racist bastards are happy with themselves for driving a young black man to his death.
— Supertanskiii (@supertanskiii) August 14, 2026
You essentially achieved an indirect lynching.
God, I fucking hate what this country is becoming. https://t.co/9Af5G35vmQ
The ideological, right wing, racist media that hounded Jason Arday - shame on you and your monstrous witch hunt.
— Sangita Myska (@SangitaMyska) August 14, 2026
The 41 year old was found dead at his home today. He was complicated, vulnerable, and at times reckless but he was a human being . He didn’t deserve to be treated… pic.twitter.com/ebng40dmHH
"Complicated, vulnerable, and at times reckless" … not a good thing to be with your academic career.
White supremacy killed Jason Arday. Murdered him.
— Nels Abbey (@nelsabbey) August 14, 2026
I’m saddened by this beyond words. I’m also disgusted by white supremacist colonialists who deliberately amplify the mistakes of a black man whilst ignoring the systemic structural racism that’s the much bigger issue that supersedes by orders of magnitude the injustice of… https://t.co/sbqgHYSWhZ
— Dr Aseem Malhotra (@DrAseemMalhotra) August 14, 2026
Which system are you talking about specifically that is racist? The one that rewarded an obvious delusional psychopath who told whopper after whopper that nobody noticed until he was granted one of the highest achievements in academia? That system?
— Progressive Shield (@ProgrsiveShield) August 14, 2026
Mistake? Structural racism?
— ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (@TomCrowe) August 15, 2026
My man, he did it intentionally, over and over again, while the white-dominated structure dominated went along with it, propped him up, promoted him, and raised him beyond his ability or qualifications for years.
The race-baiters in the U.S. did the same thing when then-Harvard President Claudine Gay was busted for plagiarism. Christopher Rufo was only going after black women, they said. Speaking of Rufo:
The DEI regime killed Jason Arday. Cambridge liberals were so desperate for a racial fairy tale, they elevated a man who could only meet the standards through fraud, then abandoned him when they started feeling embarrassed. Sad, predictable end to a story with only villains. RIP.
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@christopherrufo) August 14, 2026
The story that will be spun about Jason Arday will be that his death lies at the feet of the people who called out his serial fabulations for being what they so transparently were, but the real story is of an elite academic world that was so excited by a compelling narrative that… https://t.co/nL1tlzu8OU
— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) August 14, 2026
The post continues:
… they rushed a clearly mentally unbalanced man with no real qualifications to the heights of academia because he ticked so many useful boxes. If anybody had stopped to drill into his story BEFORE we got to the point that he was a notable enough figure for others to begin to drill into it none of this would have happened
A thought:
Jason Arday never admitted that he was a fabulist and plagiarist. If he had come clean and admitted everything he would likely have felt a lot better and he could have started a new chapter: the rogue redeemed. R.I.P.
— Kyle Smith (@rkylesmith) August 15, 2026
This is what gets me about the people claiming that Arday’s death is the fault of the press for not moving on from the story… not only did he never acknowledge wrong doing, he had countless defenders in academia backing him up despite the actual mountain of evidence to prove the… https://t.co/QaPPk8mcnB
— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) August 15, 2026
The post continues:
… claims against him and his research so it continued to be a live story. If he’d just said “I misled people, I’m sorry” the entire story would have gone away or at least faded into a background noise
They were never defending Arday. They were defending themselves. They were defending the system that produced him. He was a pawn in all stages regardless of his issues with honesty.
— Kyle Beckley (@Kyle_Beckley) August 15, 2026
Academia let him get farther than he ever could have on his own merits, overlooked it, and made him a star anyway.
***
