Jason Arday, former lecturer in Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge, was found dead on Friday in his flat in Battersea, London. His death has sparked intense controversy over moral, ethical and political conflicts in British academic institutions.
Arday was appointed the youngest Black professor in Cambridge's history at the age of 37. Born in 1985 in Clapham, London, he was diagnosed with autism as a child and, according to his own account, did not begin to speak until age eleven. His academic trajectory included studies in Physical Education at St. Mary University Twickenham, followed by a master's degree in Education and Pedagogy, before obtaining his doctorate from Liverpool John Moores University.
In the weeks before his death, the tabloid Daily Mail questioned aspects of his academic and biographical record. The Daily Telegraph had identified up to one hundred passages in his doctoral thesis that bore similarity to an earlier publication by Paula Zowzdiak-Myers, produced six years before. Liverpool John Moores University rejected the plagiarism accusations, attributing those passages to "honest and reasonable errors". Some of his claimed sporting achievements and honorary academic posts were also questioned.
Thousands of protesters gathered on Monday outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, convened by the Stand Up To Racism campaign group, to hold a vigil in remembrance of the professor. On the same day, Arday's family had already raised more than 150,000 euros for combating racism. Jesus College, where he taught, lowered its flag to half-mast.
Simon Woolley, director of Homerton College, Cambridge, denounced the campaign against him as a "racist witch-hunt". In April of this year, during a conference marking the 75th anniversary of the British Sociological Association, Arday denounced the manoeuvres of an "activist right" which, he claimed, was using academic integrity mechanisms in a campaign against Black professors. His research had focused on issues of race and racial neurodiversity in the university world.
