Investigate How Arday Was Promoted as Cambridge “Success Story”, Say Dons

University of Cambridge academics have demanded that the Jason Arday review considers the university’s culpability in promoting him as “a success story”. The Telegraph has the story.

In a letter to Chris Smith, Cambridge’s Chancellor, more than 40 academics said the decision to make the late professor “highly visible, presenting his race, age, disability and personal biography as part of a major institutional ‘success’ story”, was directly connected to the “racialised, ableist and disproportionate hounding” he received.

Arday, 41, who had been the university’s professor of sociology of education, was found dead in August after facing intense scrutiny in a highly public plagiarism row.

Last month, Cambridge launched an independent review into its decision-making, policies and organisational processes in the period leading up to his death.

Arday made international headlines in 2023 when he became the youngest black professor in Cambridge’s history at the age of 37.

The university’s faculty of education published a 1,500-word press release on its website, heralding his “remarkable” journey in overcoming illiteracy in his late teens and the barriers that neurodivergent black people faced in academia.

Cambridge also invited the BBC to film Arday meeting the head of faculty days before he took up his post.

In July, Arday was publicly accused of copying parts of his PhD thesis from another student. Cambridge initially dismissed the accusations as “a vile campaign to undermine his credibility”, but further questions about elements of his life story and achievements emerged.

In August, the university announced it had launched an investigation into Arday, prompting him to resign hours later, citing the “unrelenting level of public scrutiny”.

Days later, he was found dead at an address in Battersea, south London. An inquest heard that he had been found unresponsive by family members. His family said he had been subjected to a “campaign of sustained abuse” for more than three years since accepting his Cambridge role.

In the letter, first reported by the Guardian, more than 40 professors, associate professors and fellows criticised the independent review commissioned by Cambridge following Arday’s death as inadequate.

They said the review “must establish who authorised and directed the university’s public promotion of Professor Arday” as well as “what assessment was made of the risks that accompanied it”.

“The painful events of recent months, including the racialised, ableist and disproportionate hounding of Professor Arday, are clearly connected to the ways in which the university chose to make him highly visible, presenting his race, age, disability and personal biography as part of a major institutional ‘success’ story,” the letter said.

“The extent of the university’s emphasis on personal biography itself requires examination, not least because aspects of that biography subsequently became a focus of hostile media coverage and online hounding.

“The consequences of that public visibility, and the university’s response as the hostility around Professor Arday escalated, therefore require careful examination”.

Worth reading in full.