Jason Arday #2

[VielleFemme]

The most famous Jason in the 1980s was Jason from Friday 13th.

Ahem.

 

[VielleFemme]

To a degree I would feel the same, in the sense of "why is this random person getting so much attention", although obviously its not the same as negative coverage. There is the fact though that even that kind of coverage might not necessarily be the best for someone's mental health if they want to be private.

He was about to embark on an international promotional tour for his memoir.

He did that knowing that his plagiarism and other lies were already on many people's radar.

Those aren't the actions of someone who wants privacy.

It's possible to be sad about the pointless waste of human life without rewriting reality.

 

[Tabitha D]

To counter the “hounded to death by the media” narrative, here are some contrary views from black voices - a UK psychologist, a US academic, and a UK KC. (Serious people, in other words).

I really think the baying mob would do well to read comments like these and consider the other side. But critical thinking appears to have died a death some time ago.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

"Fabulist conmen in important national institutions who use libel law to intimidate journalists shouldn't be investigated & exposed because it is likely to cause them significant personal difficulties, & they may respond in extreme ways" is not a sustainable principle.

Edited to add source

 

[Jelly Bean]

Obscene


View attachment 4092943

The way they keep using 'lynching' with all the connotations, is so distasteful and provocative.
They all know exactly what they're doing.

 

[InkHeart]

I've just seen the news. It's very shocking, but at the same time, quite expected. In these kinds of situations, with severe narcissists, it seems 50/50 whether they will commit suicide or come out completely unscathed with a new grift. As horrifying as it is when anyone does this (especially given his age and that he has children), suicides like this are methods of manipulation and abuse - a way of going, "Look what you made me do. How dare you tell the truth about me?"

My ex was "suicidal" any time anyone pointed out that he had lied or been abusive in any way. So this hits home, because I often wonder if he will really do it one day. In a way I feel genuinely guilty because I watched so many YouTube videos laughing at this guy and lamenting what has happened to academia if he could be elected. Then in another way, I think that we can't avoid holding people accountable for their actions on the off chance they will kill themselves. While mental health can spiral quickly, this was not something that would have been done by an otherwise normal person in these circumstances: most people when caught in a lie, even losing their job, could have the honest self reflection to say, "Yes, I lied. I did it because I wanted to feel like I was that person who achieved all those things. I'm sorry." But to a narcissist, admitting that they were wrong is literally worse than death.

I hope this doesn't stop the reviews into why a substandard, cheating academic was hired for a professorship, or why the publishers of his biography did no fact checking.

 

[emm]

This is ridiculous, but also who would put "gorgeous " before talented? In a description of an academic?

 

[maytoseptember]

Blaming this on "DEI" or whatever is exactly what the right wing media want. They want anything to get attention away from the way they went so far over the top on something that was barely in the public interest to begin with, and probably would barely have been reported if it happened at another time of year.

I think it’s blinkered to say any mention of DEI is some sort of right wing dog whistle, or that the media reporting was corrupt and driven by a bigoted RW agenda. A wholly unqualified academic with a chequered CV and a plagiarised PhD waltzed into a professorship because Cambridge needed a black man in a senior role. Arday’s appointment gave him the status he craved and ticked a box at Cambridge too. Win-win.

In other words:

Did Cambridge appoint him on vibes alone to try and speedrun the appearance of diversity and get a good news story?

As for whether it was in the public interest, I was interested. Here was a man claiming not just to have been autistic, but fully non-verbal until 11. He will have made the general public think that so-called “severely” autistic kids have a hope of not just developing speech, but leapfrogging from a diagnosis of global developmental delay (after about age 7 the terminology can change to learning disability aka low IQ) to high IQ!

I have autistic kids and mix in a lot of SEN spaces. Many parents had spoken about how he’d given them hope for their children. False hope, as it turns out.

I think it’s absolutely in the public interest when a man who has lied, cheated and swindled his way to the top (not just as an academic in an ivory tower but a public figurehead) is found to be a total fraud.

 

[nothanksbabes]

But doesn’t that ignore certain factors that might preclude (for example) Black African and Black Caribbean males from entering academia as a career? Unless I’m misunderstanding, it isn’t an entirely level playing field in terms of educational outcomes at GCSE, not to mention cultural factors that mean high-achieving black kids are going to overwhelmingly be funnelled towards degree courses like medicine and law by their parents?

And changing the subject entirely, this is (very frustratingly) the kind of response you’ll get from the autism community:

View attachment 4090504

The framing here is detestible.

“Autistic people are much more likely to die by suicide than neurotypical people”, creates a grim binary, autistic people on one side, and apparently everyone else, the psychologically uncomplicated “neurotypical people” on the other. But “not autistic” is not remotely synonymous with healthy, happy, socially accepted, economically secure, non-traumatised and free of psychiatric illness.

"Never question us or we'll kill ourselves" is pretty fucking bleak.

 

[nothanksbabes]

‘A woman behind the counter greeted me by insisting she couldn't find my booking. Was this her way of saying, you don't look like you belong here?’

Strewth!

It was probably her way of saying she couldn't find your booking. I assume the woman behind the counter doesn't give a shiny shite about you one way or the other.

 

[AnonymousMumOf4]

Meanwhile the students who complained about JA's supervision were ignored and blamed for being racist. Their grievances swept under the carpet. Their degrees possibly below the level they were expecting and that would help them progress in the future. They are now going to be further ignored and if investigations are dropped by the universities they will have no further answers. Whilst still being expected to pay off their student loans.

This isnt about racism, this is totally about the establishment ticking boxes and not doing their due diligence. Did JA deserve to die? Of course he didnt. Do those students deserve better of an elite institution such as Cambridge? 100%.

 

[InkHeart]

I’m already sick to the back teeth of people popping up Instagram saying everyone should be ashamed of themselves for hounding him and that it was all racially motivated! No doubt there are some racists who jumped on the bandwagon picking holes in his stories. But I do believe for the majority it was the fact that his back story was riddled with lies and exaggerations and not just necessarily targeted because of his skin colour. It was Cambridge who made it about race from the get go by declaring him the youngest black professor. This case of positive discrimination by Cambridge has hugely backfired affecting their reputation. Putting a fantasist like arday on pedestal (didn’t the woman who hired him say ‘you’re the best in the world at what you do’) was so damaging. It was all tokenism.

I hate to say this, but I'm fucking sick of the media's emphasis on him being young. He... really isn't. He's young for a professor, which, ok that's a job you need years of experience for. But that doesn't mean he is fresh faced and naive, which caused him to make a silly mistake. 37 is already very adult, and 41 is basically middle aged. Women are torn to shreds for being old hags at younger ages.

A lot of the media is reporting this "youngest black professor" thing as if it makes him literally a young inexperienced person. He was by far old enough to know better. Heck, that's 20 years into working life for most people.

 

[L3moning]

I have a strong suspicion that the media are going to go all in on social media over this, rather than look at themselves or at Cambridge

 

[nothanksbabes]

The people lambasting the press... Who do they think "the press" or "the media" is? Some amorphorous, autonomous machine imposing stories upon an unwilling population?

It is a commercial system responding to the population. A 200th story isn't commissioned if nobody read the 199th. Then thousands of people click that one in order to announce how disgraceful it is that another Arday story has been published. The outrage at saturation is the very thing sustaining the saturation.

Somebody who read every article, reposted them on social media to demonstrate their goodness and outrage and then announces “the media wouldn't leave this poor man alone” has to confront their own position in that economy.

"The media” has become a wonderfully convenient moral entity that somehow contains everybody except the person currently condemning it, even when that person is... Kay Burley?! If she's not "the media" then I'm not sure who is.

If the proposed ethical rule here is something like “stop feeding the cycle of commentary because the attention is harming somebody,” then someone writing another column or tweet about the person doesn't cease to perpetuate that cycle because they're signalling their sympathy/outrage/self-serving display of engagement-farming virtue. That in itself extend's the story's life.

The hypocricy is fucking wild.

 

[emmer_moans]

I feel sorry for the students he let down and told they have white privilege when they rightfully questioned his marking/feedback/support.

I feel sorry for some of his colleagues who will have been silenced in the past for questioning his academic integrity and work performance.

Many people have been silenced in favour of the continuation of excess fawning of this man who did not achieve what he claimed to.

It's sad it's come to this but the questions must not be swept under the rug.

 

[mumpty]

It’s such a desperately sad ending and I feel so sorry for his family.

I hope this shines a light on the entirety of toxic academia. I’m in it and honestly, the expectations of what academics need to achieve to be appointed to roles is nothing short of what JA claimed he did. It’s ridiculous - have millions of pound of grants, teaching awards, external speaking events, write books, publish research, have spin out companies and much more. In some aspects JA just got swept along in the culture of embellishing his achievements (albeit to an extreme), something I have seen in colleagues of mine. There will be many, many other academics who have massively over embellished their resumes just to get basic lecturing jobs but haven’t attracted the same scrutiny because Cambridge didn’t do a press release about their appointment to make themselves look inclusive.

 

[thegirlscout]

Sadly I do think some people/places will use his death (likely suicide) to hide behind so their own lack of due diligence isn’t scrutinised. Of course Arday lied and benefitted from that all but how on earth was Cambridge so taken in by all his fantastical claims that they didn’t do any proper background checks?

 

[Jelly Bean]

I feel terrible about some of the harsh things I have said about him on this thread. I honestly didn’t think he’d end his life, I thought he’d sail through the accusations without any regrets, like other people who have been exposed as fantasists do. He obviously did feel shame. His poor family.

I know
But you can be critical of people and still never wish any harm on them (a fact Tattle critics never can seem to grasp). It was probably the resigning/being pushed from Cambridge that was the main factor.
Poor chap. The constant enabling of him did him no favours whatsoever.

 

[VeniVidiVicki]

Beautiful post @nothanksbabes

I‘m so sad he couldn't see any other way out. And that he didn’t have anyone in his life who could tell him it was ok for him to be completely ordinary.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

This is interesting read


“A surgeon does not become better because her childhood was difficult, an engineer does not make a bridge remain standing because he is black and his grandad came over on the Windrush, and a professor at Cambridge cannot become a brilliant academic merely because his personal journey is "inspirational". None of that means adversity, representation or widening opportunity are bad things, because the entire point of equality should have been removing stupid barriers so talented people who had previously been excluded could compete properly. Instead, somewhere along the way, we began treating the story itself as part of the qualification, rather than working out if somebody was actually qualified.”