Jason Arday’s death is institutional murder

On August 14, Jason Arday, the youngest Black scholar to be appointed professor at Cambridge University, was found unresponsive in his home in London. Just three weeks earlier, he had resigned from his job after a vicious weeks-long campaign against him over allegations of plagiarism.The British media, the meme economy online and various commentators dissected every aspect of the professional and personal life of this 41-year-old Black man: from his manner of speaking to his scholarship. They gleefully claimed to expose his supposed “lies” and plagiarism, pillorying him mercilessly. Members of the media establishment defended what they claimed was their exposure of the “truth”.There was no ambiguity from the beginning that this so-called revelation of “plagiarism” was a cudgel: it was a way to make a point that equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives are supposedly academically dishonest.The attacks came not just from the right – with The Spectator and The Telegraph running article after article about Arday – but also from the left. Aaron Bastani, for example, the cofounder of left-wing outlet Novara Media, gave his opinion on X that, in a 40-minute lecture available on...