Jason Arday #2

[PurvyPanda]

I’ve just seen the news on the Daily Mail website and gasped.

I had already started to see from the people who had been covering the story quite intensely, that they had started to feel quite sorry for him. There was obviously a problem underlying all of this. Reality bites i’m afraid. I’m sure the last few weeks, being made to face his reality has been excruciating for him. He’s obviously had to process that a lot of his claims were just not plausible to the wider public. No one hated this man. If anything they were intrigued by it. I was only thinking the other day - they’ll probably make a movie out of it.

Unfortunately those people in academia, in the media, in publishing, indulged this man’s fantasies which is just the worst thing you can do. I speak as someone who has struggled with MD - Maladapituve Daydreaming since my teens. It is a mental health condition linked to BPD. I’ve never acted out and have always had a clear sense of reality and fantasy, but the compulsion has still been very damaging. I am of course only speculating, but it’s hard not to. It has been a very bizarre story, which to me, came out of nowhere.

I’m sorry to hear he’s passed away. I really wish he hadn’t taken this extreme measure. It would have blown over as a news story eventually. Very sad.

 

[InkHeart]

He's already a martyr over on Reddit.

The majority over there are criticising the huge media pile on that was 'disproportionate' to what he'd done.

I know the story got a lot of attention, but I don't really think it was a disproportionate pile on? I never saw anyone saying, "Wow what an awful man, here's a panel of experts to analyse his body language and say he's a psychopath. He should have his children taken off him!" It was all just talking about what he had done.

If lots of media outlets reported on it, that's because there are lots of media outlets. And sorry because he's now dead, but at the time it was funny. "Man claims he ran 9 marathons on a broken leg" is funny. We can't demand that people don't talk about stories like this. We can be critical of when discourse spirals out of hand, but that didn't happen here imo.

 

[VeniVidiVicki]

I’m moving on from being annoyed about the marathon story onto the neurodiversity claims.

I‘m not an academic. But I’m a runner and I’m a parent of an autistic child who has really fucking struggled to access education. Aand that’s why this part of his ‘story’ really enrages me.

So I’ve sort of done the marathon lie (I can bore you more about how fantastical it is but it’s so boring!) but the ND shit really grinds my gears on a lot of levels (some is stuff I’ve said before) so I want to put it all in one place to explain how harmful it is:

• He says that he was diagnosed with Asperger’s and global development delay at the age of 3. While Asperger’s is no longer a DX, very few kids were ever dxed with it at such a young age.
• NO ONE is ever diagnosed with GDD - which means that you’re behind in lots of different areas - and Asperger’s at the same time. Asperger’s literally means you have autism but it’s not impacting you intellectually. Which is the opposite of a GDD DX.
• He says he smeared his shit on the walls. If you do that, you don’t get an Asperger’s DX.
• He says he was non verbal until he was 11 and had hours of daily speech therapy. His SALT became so frustrated with him that she assaulted him. If his mum took him as he says, she’d be in the room. Interventions outside of school, the parent is always in the room
• His mum fought for him to leave the special school he’d been put in so that he could achieve his full potential in mainstream school. I’m not disbelieving this but it makes me really fucking angry. Councils are savagely cutting SEN provision and for so many of our kids, a specialist setting is the only place where they can thrive and even access education at all. His take that all kids need is a parent who really loves and advocates for them and then they’ll flourish in MS education is a Reform wet dream.

Glad I’ve got all that off my chest. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk etc.

 

[The Skeptical Gerbil]

Even in death he is being treated by many as childlike and innocent in nature.
This is a form of racism, well perhaps more than that, it’s something that gets applied to many people considered a minority.

This is part of a modern superiority attitude in which some believe they are more culturally and emotionally evolved than others, it’s grown from the ‘white saviour’ complex where those with privilege think that not applying the same moral & sometimes legal status upon those they deem a ‘minority’ will somehow raise them up and make up for decades of oppression. As if are just children and cannot help themselves.

The reality is of course quite different, it creates deeper divisions, resentment and a culture of infantilising sections of society .
What we are seeing is the outcome of that behaviour.

 

[SwiftieNewRomantics]

Well shit. Regardless of anything no one wanted this outcome.

 

[cokeyoakey]

This article by Sarah Ditum is very good, and covers a lot of the issues that are covered here.

https://sarahditum.substack.com/p/the-most-unfortunate-thing


Including that it seems ok to hound people with the "wrong" views.

"But I suspect my mental health isn't the kind that counts here".

And this comment below the article makes the point about damage to children with learning disability much more eloquently than I could.

 

[FrumpyCat]

Cambridge university have a lot to answer for a lot of things.

For those who were not aware, whistleblower (who is protected by law) Professor Wyn Evans, an older white man, has just won an industrial tribunal after spending two years being 'investigated' for reporting misogyny and bullying within his department.

 

[VeniVidiVicki]

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?

Simon Baron Cohen who was a director of the autism Centre along with Jason said that any criticism could drive him to suicide. While I’m sure he’s absolutely horrified by JA’s death, it shouldn’t be weaponised. We need to teach autistic people resilience. Not that criticising them is wrong because their mental health is so fragile.

ETA I don’t think anyone on this thread needs to feel responsible in any way. I doubt this thread was even on his radar. And also (and I’m really adamant about this because of reasons), in 99.9% of cases no one is responsible for someone‘s decision to end their life. The 0.1% is for coercive controllers.

My heart goes out to Arday‘s family and friends who must be devastated

 

[Daisy Uncle]

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.

Don't beat yourself up, he will have been facing very serious conversations with Cambridge, his publisher, and then conversations with his family. Nothing said here will have been anywhere near as overwhelming as that.

 

[BohemianRatsforTea]

Absolutely tragic all round. A house of cards that very suddenly came crashing down all around Jason Arday. So many people in this day and age, aided by social media, are able to weave a web of lies and build an identity around them. Slightly different for Arday, as he was able to gain access to academia, and because he was black, and was seen as having overcome tremendous obstacles, he was paraded as someone truly special by the institutions who used him for their own agendas. In doing so, they were judging him on Race every bit as much as the usual suspects who cannot countenance a non white person in any kind of high office.
JA must have felt humiliated and cornered, unable to see a way through the mess and mire. It has seemed that he's received more media attention than others who have been grossly over promoted, and a lot of that attention has issued from people with a very particular agenda. Scrutiny was necessary, and reportage should obviously have reflected that; the blame, however, for the whole mess lies firmly with the institutions, particularly Cambridge, and the publishers, who saw Arday as good publicity and a moneymaker. I suspect the publishers hoped that US names like Oprah Winfrey would platform him and ensure very healthy booksales.They should be ashamed of themselves, and they should not be allowed to walk away from the tragic way this situation has unfolded.
My heart breaks for his poor children, and the rest of his family. I know what it is to lose parents young and in a violent way, and it leads to lifelong trauma.
This situation must not be fobbed off with the usual get out clause of 'lessons will be learned'. Many people/institutions/systems need to be looked at forensically, and there should be accountability. No doubt though that sites like tattle will be used as a convenient scapegoat.
I don't believe in life after death, but his turmoil is now over; it's just tragic that he felt he couldn't see this period through, goodness knows many guiltier of much worse than this have brazened out the scandal and notoriety. Sadly, the turmoil for his children is just beginning.

 

[GabbyJ]

I am unfollowing and blocking anyone on Instagram blaming everyone else for Ardays death. Yes it’s tragic. Nobody wanted this outcome. There were just lots of questions that needed answering. How is it acceptable that there should be watering down of standards in academia? How is it right that meritocracy is being replaced with tokenism? And any attempt to highlight this is met with outrage of racism, jealousy and murder. I follow a few accounts on Instagram about non verbal autism because I have a 6 year old non verbal son. I have already seen some of those accounts harp on about what an inspiration he was and how he gave hope to so many. It seems people refuse to see the wood for the trees.

 

[10%]

Most of them were pretty quiet while JA was alive.

Dr Jessica Taylor posts up to 20 times a day. Not once did she mention Jason Arday.

After his death was announced on the BBC she had something up within 20 mins. She claims to have seen this all coming and claimed she was messaging his team previously to help.

Like the death of princess Dickson she left skid marks with how quickly she was to use it to further herself and silencing anyone daring to call her out for the dangerous fantasist she is.

 

[Cherry Chapstick]

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.”

I think this cuts to the heart of the issue here: Arday's research method was essentially auto-ethnography - he was often the subject of his research and therefore it could be argued his back story was essential to understanding his position, and potentially why criticism hit him so hard. I used to be an academic and I know how important it is to be completely thorough in risk-assessing research methods and complying with institutional ethical oversight. I find it incredible that his work seems to have bypassed this process in a number of projects; this was one of the issues raised by senior sociology academics in other universities on his appointment at Cambridge, aside from the possible grudge held by Cofnas. Risk assessment looks at both participants and researchers, and I wonder if Arday fully considered what it meant to expose his life so thoroughly, let alone write an autobiography.

In am incredibly sad that those that supervised his PhD research did not seem to train him in research methods thoroughly (this is often a core part of the first year of doctorate study) and this has had knock on consequences for his later work. Doing effective research is not easy and takes time and the retraction he was forced to make in a couple of papers demonstrate he did not understand this aspect of his job very well.

I also think the discourse has shifted to deny Arday agency in what happened. As many have said here, he was a grown man who had plenty of opportunities to do the right thing but persisted in seeking personal glory through ever more prestigious posts. The number of speaking events he did throughout his career suggests to me he was more interested in external validation than 'doing the work'. Many people have questions to answer all round, and I hope the tragic circumstances don't stop that happening.

 

[kev1974]

Don’t lie your way through life and make shit up kids, mkay?

Canbridge University and the other institutions and individuals along the way that enabled him and didn’t do even the most basic sanity checks have some serious questions to answer, and the spotlight needs to be even more firmly on them now. None of this #BeKind shit letting them off from any investigations into what theyve caused here.

 

[NomDeGuerre]

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

The Caroline Flack pass

 

[GabbyJ]

It's actually a shame that he didn't feel comfortable in his own skin that he felt the need to tell tall tales. He obviously had some kind of personality disorder . The thing is I don't think he unalive just because of the press I suspect his publisher was looking for a refund for his book and Cambridge was probably going to sue him. It's Cambridges own fault though they didn't feel comfortable challenging what was obviously lies.

If someone was truly non verbal at age 11 not situational mutism it points towards severe cognitive impairment they wouldnt end up being a professor, you would be lucky if they can live without 24/7 support. It's really cruel to give parents of non verbal children hope like that.

I think if it hadn't got so far he could have faded into obscurity. I feel for his children

Exactly this!!!
My son says the odd single word to meet his needs, a few short phrases but at age 6 we can absolutely not have a back and forth conversation with him and I’m not sure we ever will. For me that’s very hard to come to terms with. But as I mentioned on the previous thread, when I was made aware of JA I did think it was incredulous but a tiny part of me thought what if? If the not speaking till age 11 and no literacy till 18 is a lie (which is looking very likely that it was ) then it’s very difficult for me to have any sympathy for him being exposed. However his death gives me no pleasure at all. It’s a sad situation

 

[Incywincy]

It's sad.

But it doesn't matter if JA was "gorgeous", what mattered was his behaviour. And as has been said many times on this thread, he lied, possibly manipulated, took opportunities from other people and gave false hope to those who found comfort in his "stories".

It's not racist to call out David Burke for the murder and abuse of Celeste. Nor should he be let off for his crimes because he's "gorgeous".

It's not racist for Axel whatshisface to be in prison for his crimes.

And before someone jumps on me, I know what JA has done isn't anywhere near as awful but my point is, it's not racist to question questionable behaviour and to expect someone to be accountable for their actions. You can't just excuse behaviour because of someones race (or disability, or any other protected characteristic..).

This person is writing like JA was murdered. Like he had no choice in his death. But he did. And this is what he chose to do. Nobody forced him.

If this is a genuine professor and OBE, it's easy to see how he got away with it for so long.

 

[TrashleenMoron]

Mary beard has been tweeting that everyone should now stop asking Cambridge any questions...

Frankly I think they have more questions to answer.

 

[VeniVidiVicki]

Sorry I lost my patience with you @L3moning. I‘m horrified Arday is dead but I’m also very angry with him and everyone who went along with his tall tales.

The really awful thing is that there are no winners here. Arday is the ultimate victim of everyone around him treating him like a clapping seal.

He (and the people around him) must have known it was all going to come tumbling down around his ears when journalists and fellow academics started digging into his back story in 2023. That was the point at which he could have put the brakes on and it would have all faded away into a bit of a non story. But he set lawyers and the police on them. And doubled down and wrote an autobiography.

Cambridge had a duty of care to him. I’d like to know what kind of support they offered him after his resignation

 

[Eye_Spy]

It may be that if there were 2 women of colour and they were better candidates…that they weren’t as photogenic and weren’t as interested in pushing themselves forward for thing like tv appearances, Arday was used as a poster boy, and if its true that there were actually other better candidates that were of colour…this makes it even worse as its going beyond the standard thing of just selecting someone on balancing the books on DEI, but also to selecting them based on optics and promotional value.

I think there are more questions to be asked with regards to the money…

he did GCSEs and a BTEC - state funded

he then did:
A Bachelor of Arts
A Master of Arts
A PGSE
A Doctorate

This happened between 2005 and 2015…it’s only the final year of that for which he also state he was employed by the university alongside competing the doctorate. So that’s NINE YEARS at university with either no proper income. So from age 20 to 29…what was he living off, and how much in student loans, government grants, or benefits such as child tax credits did he get due to not working a regular job? Did he pay back his student loans or do they now just get written off?

Bear in mind that in the book extract shown on this thread, he states his wife was pregnant in 2007, so at least one of his two children were born during the time he took 9 years out of being a provider to focus on his education. The obvious thing to factor in is that his wife worked as a ‘teacher’, however assuming they were the same age or near enough (there doesn’t look to be an age gap from their appearance on tv), that would make her 22(ish) when she had the first baby, usually to become a teacher you do a subject degree then a year for teacher training…so she’d have to have been a student herself with very little income, then started a teaching job, almost immediately got pregnant, all while Arday is at uni himself, and she is also in the background having to support him with him still learning to read and write and by his own admission scoring so poorly on that first course that he was close to being thrown off it.

None of this makes sense unless somewhere he was being seriously bankrolled, Maybe he had access to funding that is designed to push for more black people to get places on these courses? Does he actually mention anywhere in the book how all this education, while raising a family, was actually funded?

As for the £200k not necessarily being a huge sum because it’s only giving his family about 2 years of his future salary…I disagree with that! He should never have been earning that kind of money to begin with, so since 2015 the family (if he has actually spent the money on them) have had a larger income than was fairly deserved. All of this extra committees/boards he was on…there would have been payments of some sort and for the tv appearances and public speaking events, he was a grifter, and they were lucky financially while it was working.

There is also the fact that if it’s correct that he split with his wife in 2019, and she’s a qualified teacher…she wouldn’t have been dependent on him anyway or had joint expenses and shouldn’t need any kind of payout from his death. This isn’t a housewife who is suddenly unable to pay the rent and needs emergency funding to give some breathing space prior to getting their finances sorted. One of the children is over 18, so not a financial dependent, and the other could be close to that age, plus if his death means child support payments stop, it could mean tax credit is received instead and the difference may not be that drastic.

I also wonder about the charity money he raised. How do we know it actually reached those charities? Did he name them and state the amounts given to each? Did he have a fundraising page that was directly linked to a charity so it didn’t pass through his own account? Seeing as he can’t settle on an amount and claimed he can’t give details as was part of a syndicate…it makes me suspect a possibility that he pocketed the cash. Anyone can set up a fundraiser and say ‘it’s for charity’, doesn’t mean the money ever gets donated.

Also, his death may have triggered more interest in the book…who is now getting the proceeds? If it’s his children that could be thousands £ for them from that source.

I really detest these types of ‘go fund me’ schemes. The target has been raised simply because the original has been surpassed, but there’s no real explanation of what the money is going to be used for. It’s very possible that people donating are I a worse financial position than his children/family, and just don’t realise it because it’s being sold to them as a sob story that his poor family are now penniless.