Jason Arday found dead today.

One has to question Cofnas’ motives.

MayBee70

Aldom

Sorry to hear of a death FGT, but who is Jason Arday please?

I’ve been trying to avoid the news as much as possible for quite a while and the only reason I recognised his name when it came on the news last night was because of the thread about him on here which I hadn’t read.

We must protect our wellbeing and MH. I will restrain myself from looking at the awful posts about this person ( written by some who then comment, feeling sad)

I don’t think anyone is saying that asking questions is bullying. But ‘race card’ accusations are. As are dissections of an interview process the dissectors weren’t part of, and the general pulling apart of a young man’s life.

If he had been proven guilty of misrepresentation then he should have been sacked - of course he should. But AFAIK that has not been proven, and public humiliation is a huge price to pay for what amount to rumours about his profiting from his racial status.

To ‘Galaxy What do you know about Caroline Flack that the rest of us don’t? I agree that talking about things isn’t bullying, but ascribing motives and pushing a narrative can be.

For context - I was once a victim of a public ‘shaming’. I don’t want to go into detail for obvious reasons, but it was devastating. The basis of it was true, but the (crucial) context was missing, and the hypocrisy I saw from people I’d thought were my friends was unbelievable to me.

I will never forget it, and I can well understand how someone might feel that life isn’t worth living if you think that everyone believes things about you that are not true. There is also the terror of not knowing what your persecutors will do next.

Mindgames can be worse than physical pain. I have a lovely husband and had a young family at the time, so I didn’t contemplate suicide, but I can see why someone young who feels alone might do so.

That isn't a way society can function, it is hiding truth. And quite dangerous.

Galaxy

The exact same thing happened with Caroline flack, in my view it did considerable damage to discussions of domestic violence against men.
And I would also say I had very serious concerns about the discussions around the head who took her own life. It makes it impossible to discuss these issues.

You can discuss these issues.
You can discuss domestic violence against men and the stress levels endured by Ofsted inspections, as well as plagiarism and the employment of academics without sufficiently checking their credentials first, without referring to people who tragically took their own lives.

Sorry, alleged domestic violence.

The exact same thing happened with Caroline flack, in my view it did considerable damage to discussions of domestic violence against men.
And I would also say I had very serious concerns about the discussions around the head who took her own life. It makes it impossible to discuss these issues.

Indeed. WWM.

As regards above, there is a limit of "duty of care" when it gets to professorial level. Generally people are excepted to be able to cope with normal academic stresses and strains. and reasonably so.

Another professor took her own life at Cambridge a couple of years ago, I am in contact with my old tutor, and this poor lady was one of her best friends.

The one who died would and did not call for help She was up against a still male establishment

And what we seem to forget is that it may have been mooted or offered to Jason Arday but someone with a lot to prove may well have turned it down.

Doodledog there’s SM and there’s GN, which is the gentle side of SM. Regarding SM generally, it’s there, and you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
Anyone who comes into the public eye through wrongdoing, be it lies about their background and education or anything else will always be under scrutiny. Sadly many can’t hope with the fallout from their actions, but does that mean they shouldn’t be investigated? I don’t think it does.

The reputation of Cambridge university itself has been damaged. I expect it will recover in time but a lot of egg on academic faces.
I won't comment on Arday himself.

Asking questions is not bullying, wanting people to tell the truth isnt bullying, as I have said on the other thread the guardian carried out an investigation which detailed many of the allegations. Highlighting that he contacted the police about a journalist isnt bullying.
Talking about the allegations ( domestic abuse) against Caroline flack isnt bullying.

We know that Nathan Cofnas was the first to raise what he saw as a serious concern over Jason Arday.

Cofnas’ profile is certainly worth a very brief look.

In 2024 Cofnas position with Cambridge University was terminated because of his views regarding talent and intelligence, which he says are not distributed equally amongst race.
He argues that diversity, equality and inclusion should end (DEI)

I’m sure anyone interested in this know the arguments si there is no point in delving further, but when he makes statements like “ Black people "would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment," and that the number of Black professors at Harvard would "approach 0 percent"

It is no surprise imo that he is seen as a white supremicist and that Cambridge sacked him.

However what is notable is that Cofnas (an American citizen) was the first to accuse Arday of plagiarism claiming “numerous instances”

But no university has yet confirmed this to be the case after investigation.

It may be true that Cambridge should have been more assiduous in checking his credentials, but IMO it will have been the hounding on various SM platforms that led to his death (Gransnet included, whether he’s likely to have read it or not).

He clearly needed social validation for whatever reason (we don’t know the full story yet) so reading comments from people who have no idea about him, his life or his motives claiming ‘race card’ behaviour and more must have been devastating.

I don’t usually take the moral high ground, as I’m far from perfect myself, but I genuinely hope that those who denigrated him so cruelly lose a lot of sleep. It’s no different from the way children bully one another on SM, and many of the culprits in this case have enough to say about that. Obviously those complaints suggest that they are caring people, and fit with their self-image, though.

If there were any justice they should have to copy out ‘An Inspector Calls’ a few times before being allowed to log onto SM again.

There were no crimes against a person in the initial coverage of mandelsson, ( again the guardian) should that coverage not have happened?

sf101

Exactly.

So you would need to start with the guardian and as joyous as that would be for me, it isnt the right thing to do.

That’s it in a nutshell sf101

If his outlandish claims and dubious academic qualifications had been questioned earlier, he might still be an anonymous PE teacher and alive.
Shame on all those so called intelligent people for using him to promote their DEI agenda.
It seems the more he lied the higher they pushed him without a thought of what it might do to him when the truth came out.

Or singling a group out, for that matter.

The media have been getting worse over a long period.

It's like consumer choice in shops it seems - giving people someone to "hate on" is popular with viewers on TV & gets more clicks online.

Maybe we should try consumer power & avoid anything singling someone out (short of crimes against the person) as a target...

👏

So sad. This poor man is clearly the collateral damage for a DEI campaign by the bullying media. Yes facts need to be reported on but these massive long term campaigns need to stop. The media has never been so toxic and controlling. Disgusting!!

Yes WWM! and fancythat

(A rush to blame is human but it's a lot more complex than one uni.
For example his Phd was from LJMU (`Liverpool)- they awarded Arday his PhD 2015 - and they had concluded that he had not plagiarised his work.

^it was still under investigation when the horrific vitriol begun)

Leaving these issues aside, the shock remains and has done and bear in mind more than one person here has experienced it in the family - its a me too here - and please just remember his family and loved ones come first.

Magenta8

Getting back to the subject of this thread. It all seemed to kick off when Jack Grove, who writes for The Times Higher Education Supplement, contacted Jason Arday to hear his side of the story when the accusations of plagiarism first started. Jason Arday reported Jack Grove to Scotland Yard for harassment. The Met have since admitted that they over reacted to Jason Arday's complaint.

I’ve watched the video where Mark Rowley said we dropped the ball, it should never have got to the stage where we contacted Jack Grove
Jack grove was also giving his side of the story. He only contacted Jayson Arday because of the amount of other journalists who contacted him.
BTW. This harassment claim was 3 emails.

This

“I cannot stand by and watch when an autistic man is on the ground and the kicking continues. This is relentless bullying of a vulnerable autistic man and raises safe-guarding issues”

That is what killed him.