Jason Arday #2

[Harlot O'Scara]

Tumblr deliberately misrepresenting the entire situation, unsurprisingly:

Quite a lot conveniently "forgotton" there.

It's almost Orwellian the way the narrative has been so completely rewritten.

 

[drmortimer]

£200,000? Are they actually building a stairway to heaven?!

 

[MoistPlinth]

My son is 24. He was non verbal until he was 5, diagnosed autistic at 2.5 with GDD, now moderate learning disabilities. He went to a special school so I know many of his peers and no way would any of them have been diagnosed with Aspergers. Even now having a reciprocal conversation with him is hard as he is mainly focused on his special interests, and his understanding isn't great. Him and his peers mainly talk at each other, rather than to each other. Different conversations! Despite this he actually has two GCSEs, in Maths and English. Grade 1, after many attempts and lots of U grades. No way is he going to be able to progress in his education!

I have a friend whose son didn't talk until he was 5, was all set to attend special school until he suddenly started talking, caught up quickly and he now has a degree. No autism diagnosis though, and they were never sure why he was so late to talk.

When the story first came out I was quite uninterested in it, plagiarism at universities isn't something that's on my radar. As more and more of his stories came out that's when I started taking notice. It was a lot of bullshit for one person. But i know people like that! I had to distance myself from someone who told blatant lies even about events that had happened when we were together. At least she's only talking to her friends, not trying to deceive the whole world.

It's very sad he's died, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't question people in case they do that.

 

[PurvyPanda]

He lived like a fraud and by killing himself has now cemented his legacy as a martyr

Yes - 100%. Many people may see this is a callous statement, BUT it is the truth of the matter.

We are just not being honest anymore. People are so insincere now. They are more concerned with saying what makes them look good, then stating a fact that is by its very nature, unsavoury and unpopular. It’s why so many of these people could not bring themself to commiserate poor Ann Widdecombe’s violent death, because she was a conservative.
They cherry pick who it’s okay to dehumanise, and who to make a martyr. None of these people should go to sleep at night thinking they are better than us. They are not.

 

[I'm not actually here]

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.

Just to point out, he may have expected to be found before it was too late. We will likely never know, and shouldn't, really.

Don't feel terrible... He truly did make all these choices, over the years, and today, on his own.

 

[MaineCoonMama]

In Australia we have our share of fantasists but the one who stands out the most to me even 30 years on is Helen Demidenko (Darville.)

Helen wrote a controversial, antisemitic book about a Ukrainian family who aided the Nazis called The Hand That Signed The Paper which won all kinds of literary awards including the biggest one, the Miles Franklin.

She claimed to be Ukrainian going so far as wearing peasant-type blouses everywhere and doing her hair in traditional styles. Totally untrue.
I could go on but if anyone is interested she's a fascinating example of a BS artist taking prizes and attention from others. She was headline news here for months and her downfall was brutal. There's plenty of articles online if anyone is interested in reading about her.

 

[lilykestrel]

It's basically a massive complex, very sad, shitshow isn't it

Was he vulnerable? No doubt. Was he a fantasist? No doubt (but fantasists are usually vulnerable, given you're generally not such a fantasist without a hefty dose of unresolved mental illness). Was he enabled institutionally and personally? Most likely. Was he a mediocre academic? Probably. Did Cambridge appoint him on vibes alone to try and speedrun the appearance of diversity and get a good news story? Certainly. Do heritage institutions need to take a hard look at how they're currently seeking to remedy structural inequalities? Definitely. Was the media coverage more vociferous than it might have been had it not been summer recess/silly season? Likely. Was his initial critic probably driven by racist ideology? Yes. Was the right wing media coverage more vociferous because of race and them having a bone to pick with current (liberal) diversity efforts? Probably.

 

[GabbyJ]

Sometimes I really question if I am devoid of all human empathy and compassion. This vigil is very performative and the comments I see on Instagram posts are vomit inducing. At this rate JA is going to be canonised! Whilst his death is sad and unfortunate I’m tired of hearing about how he was racially targeted and what a good soul he had and a kind face along with words like talented and brilliant.

 

[Jelly Bean]

I have so many thoughts on this, but one of the big ones for me is: whose idea was it to engage Carter-Ruck? Who contacted and paid them?

You can see on this thread that many people haven't even heard of them. That escalated the situation dramatically. It also made it clear there was in fact a serious case to answer, and Cambridge absolutely should have taken action at that point.

The publishers also hold a lot of responsibility. The book is terrible, and as we can all see, totally implausible. They must have known it would not stand up to any scrutiny.

As someone who's done a PhD and knows lots of others who have too, the extracts from the book bear no relation to what the experience is really like. He clearly didn't even know what it was like from the outside. It is horrifying that he was supervising PhD students.

He was obviously a con man and a fraud, but the lies were so mad and so huge that it was always going to fall apart. Which means that all of those enablers, who used him for their own profit, should be held to account.

But they won't.

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

Oh Mary Beard. Sometimes I like her and sometimes she's just downright wrong. Remember her defending the male Oxfam charity workers in Haiti who used underage sex workers? 'They were in a terrible place and who knows how any of us would react under those circumstances?'
Sometimes people doing the wrong thing have to be held accountable

 

[NomDeGuerre]

I think it’s entirely insane that anyone who questioned his web of fantasy is now being told off by an establishment that spent too long patting itself on the back for having a black man in such a prominent academic role and not questioning the trench-sized holes in his story.

It’s like we’ve gone through the looking glass.

 

[InkHeart]

I wonder a lot about this too. With people like him, jack monroe, people I've known in real life.

Is there a voice in there saying, "you know this is all lies?" Or is it so deeply repressed that they don't ever hear it?

When the Guardian asked Arday for evidence, he said, "I didn't think I needed it. I thought you'd just believe me."

From what I saw with my ex-boyfriend I mentioned above, they basically split things into "What is literally true" vs "What is emotionally true."

Making up an example here... A narcissist says that he was bullied at school and it's affected him throughout his life and causes him to feel bad even in his mid-life. But he wasn't bullied. No one actually did anything particularly bad to him. But he felt bad at school: he felt like the other kids weren't friendly enough to him, he felt the teachers didn't like him enough, it made him chronically sad. But no one actually did anything wrong. But to him, he feels terrible, so he tells himself and everyone else that he was bullied. Over time, he realises that he has no examples to back that up, so one day he says in an outburst, "The other kids held me up against a wall and pulled a knife on me!" It's not true, but it serves his purpose, which is usually getting sympathy or admiration. So he tells that story again and again. If you really press such people for details, you find that they usually struggle and sometimes admit, "Well maybe I misremembered." If you can prove to them that one of their lies didn't happen, they sometimes admit it, but then it's straight on to the next lie.

So, at some level he really does know he's lying. But it feels true to him, because he felt saddened by lack of enthusiastic friendships at school, so to him that means the other kids were horrible to him, right? And yeah, maybe he made the details up, but that was because he needed to illustrate to other people what it was really like for him (i.e. what he feels like happened). That's why they feel justified in saying it and why to them anyone who points out it didn't happen is not really exposing the truth, they're just being mean and denying how he feels and saying that he didn't really have a hard time at school, and he's not really struggled, and they're denying his whole personhood.

Some cool stories from my ex boyfriend:
1. The time his bosses threatened to sack him if he didn't make his work less good.
2. The publishers who didn't publish his novel because it was too good for modern audiences who are too stupid to get it.
3. His ex partner who abused him after finding out he was cheating on her with dozens of women.
4. The time he was diagnosed with autism. Ok, well he wasn't diagnosed, but the assessor certainly told him that if she could diagnose him, she would.
5. The time other people agreed with him that I was bitchy. Who exactly, and what exactly did they say? He can't remember.

 

[GabbyJ]

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.

 

[nothanksbabes]

Well, when he first met his wife (when they were both teenagers and he was still illiterate) she was gorgeous, hot, and everyone in the shop they both worked at wanted to be with her. And nobody could believe she chose the ‘hippy kid’ over them. So…

Didn’t ss or mention it at the time because it made my skin crawl*, but here it is in synopsis. The detailed chapters are View attachment 4090957View attachment 4090939View attachment 4090958

Spoiler

View attachment 4090977
(have cut out some stuff in between the three ss below, so not a direct follow on, but…)View attachment 4090979View attachment 4090981all the while, this paragon is spending her entire work day protecting him from his secret illiteracy, teacher training, and secretly helping him learn to read and write.

*As did the ‘you’d never have guessed she was ‘with child’ because she was so ‘naturally slender’.View attachment 4090982

She sheer amount of repetition about Debs physically and what obtaining her says about Jason is staggering. At no point did the ghost writer ask, yes, but what is she actually like?

Debs isn't allowed an interior life, but we have plenty excruciatingly pedestrian detail about what Debs' appearance means for the author's conception of himself. Surprise.

Imagine you're poor Debs. Years together and children, and the best he can come up with about why this woman mattered to him is... beautiful, petite, defended my music taste, did I mention she's tiny, liked cake. I could talk about my favourite knife and fork with more consideration.

 

[ButtonDownTheHutches]

This lecturer in journalism is not only seemingly entirely ignorant of the guidelines around reporting suicide, but also very happy to openly state that whistleblowing students are 'culpable' for Arday's death.
View attachment 4092206

Really? So students rack up £50k of debt to get a degree, but they mustn’t complain about sub-par teaching in case they find themselves ‘culpable’ for the suicide of a fabulist with a series of question marks around their credentials?

 

[Smirr]

I am sure that many of you have already said this in a better way than I can. I just need to say it as I feel like I will explode with frustration if I don't, and there isn't anyone irl that I feel I can say it to without being judged.

I am finding it very disturbing how a lot of people are twisting the truth to try and push their own agenda. Trying to portray Jason as a simple college professor who was unfairly treated due to his race and was hounded to death due to it. As if he was just someone working at a normal college and just quietly trying to do their job.

The reason, imo, that it was such a big deal is that he had made himself a public figure through various media appearances, speaking engagements etc. Someone who was simply an academic would not have had a massive book deal to write an autobiography. If there wasn't a book coming out, people probably wouldn't have started fact checking everything he has ever said.

It is Infantilizing to put all the blame for his career on others. He was put into a job he was under qualified for, but he was happily taking advantage of the situation to accsept more paid work. He could have stayed under the radar and declined the invites to speak or go on tv, could have suggested someone who was better suited to go instead.

I saw someone elsewhere suggest that in another world, he could have stayed as a PE teacher and been one of those really charismatic and popular teachers that inspire students to greater things. Or someone who did a lot of work for the local community and eventually got an MBE. I honestly wish that he could have had this life instead of the one he chose for himself.

I not sure I even see him as a genuine college professor tbh. He's someone who wanted to be seen as a professor, in the eyes of the world; for the cachet, the social standing, the opportunities it would bring him for even more grifting. Not your average humdrum professor either, but the youngest ever black professor at a university with a famous name. But it sounds like he wasn't interested in any of the everyday work activities of actually being an academic, of learning your subject inside out, of research, of teaching, lecturing, tutorials, marking, of peer-reviewed publishing, of networking for funding for college and subject (not self). Makes me think of people who choose medicine as a career for the standing in society it will bring, not because they feel any great drive to help others - but they at least have to put in the graft if they want to to qualify, even if you suspect them of indifference later.

In everything I've read his grandiosity in off the scale, it's hard to see how it was missed and how he got away with so much. But that's with hindsight, and unfair.

I think I read somewhere that there were 4 shortlisted for his professorship; the other 3 were all more senior academics with proven track records, and two of them were women of colour. Is this accurate? If so, that really makes my blood boil, and those two women have a legitimate axe to grind and story to tell.

 

[Yel]

Reframing this story as a simple story of the media hounding someone to death is disingenuous. I'm not saying that didn't play a part, but it's one fragment in a complex situation. I think the Guardian getting school friends to debunk his stories in the last few days was probably amongst the most damaging things in the media.

It's depressing how no one ever learns anything

 

[PurvyPanda]

This mawkish canonisation of Arday feels like a fracturing of the timeline, if you know what i mean. Another issue on which the country can be divided into "goodies" (unquestioning acceptance of Arday as a kind sweet clever man who just wanted to help people and was persecuted by a racist mob) and "baddies" (horrible bigots whose legitimate questions about his claims and credibility are evil bullying). Unsurprised that a terrible narcissist i follow is using this story to launder his own terrible behaviour and avoid criticism.

The fact remains, if Cambridge had hired a person who was truly academically gifted, then we wouldn’t be here discussing this. We wouldn’t know who any of these people are.
If that person happened to be black, I would question why any respecting person worth their salt would WANT to be used as a trophy by the institution they work for? Wouldn’t they just want to settle into their role?

I hope lessons are learned. Although there is no admittance of wrongdoing, Cambridge must know they majorly fucked up and dropped the ball on this one. Arday was a conman but he wasn’t a particularly smart conman.

 

[Jelly Bean]

I always wonder about the people who come out and crow about how other people have blood on their hands after something like this happens. Do they ever worry that someone who spoke up like for example a former classmate or student might be mentally fragile and this might push them over the edge? Would they feel guilty then?

This idea that criticising a persons actions is beyond the pale is so silly especially if someone has voluntarily put themselves in the spotlight.
Imagine if someone said Nigel Farage has had too much of a pile on because of this £5m donation or lets ease up on Andrew Mountbatten Windsor etc

I remember Sali Hughes (beauty influencer and no. 1 Tattle hater) having an absolute meltdown on Twitterx over Huw Edwards. Basically 'well done everybody, slow hand clap, you've driven an elderly man into a mental breakdown. I hope you're all happy now. What a world'.
Then the truth came out and she permanently left X.

 

[Carefree]

My stepfather did the same when he was no longer able to control the narrative and whilst I do feel bad for his kids, I am not shocked or surprised.

This is going to be a story that'll run and run. He just won't be here to see it unfold.

 

[I'm not actually here]

This is the reason why the Jack Monroes of this world get away with the fab

The only part of the story which was newsworthy in a classical sense was the spurious police reports against journalists. There's a public interest argument in reporting that. The rest of it is, well, Tattle bait at most.

Educating people about The Ways of Grifters & Narcs is of supreme importance and of public interest IMHO. So many people are pulled in by them.

I've yet to meet anybody who has even heard of Tattle IRL, which is a huge shame, because Tattlers are remarkably astute.