The Fatal, Familiar Takedown of Jason Arday
Subject
Higher Education; Black Professors
Description
I did not know Jason Arday, the youngest Black professor ever hired at Cambridge University. I have never read anything he has written. In fact, I had never even heard his name until a week ago, when my inboxes and timelines were flooded with links to news stories about alleged plagiarism in his doctoral dissertation and in several subsequent academic publications, alongside separate allegations concerning the misrepresentation of academic and fundraising accomplishments on his CV.
Professor Arday is now dead. Despite not knowing him or how he died, here is what I do know: He was a person, and a version of what happened to him happens far too often to high-profile Black male academicians. Here, I publicly mourn the loss of a person whom I never met, express frustration to everyone who found delight in his downfall and satisfaction in gossiping about it, and rebuke the attempted murder of Black men who defy academia’s low expectations of us.
Source
Publisher
Inside Higher Ed
File
