The very avoidable death of Professor Jason Arday…

The problem is not one that has a solution.

It goes right down to the most basic of human flaws..

The minute you laud an individual by colour: “youngest black professor” or “youngest white professor” or by sex: “youngest woman CEO” etc. You are already part of the problem. People have various decent reasons for creating association of black lawyers or police or doctors, awards for women in engineering etc. I get it. But the simple truth, it all adds to the ongoing division in society.

There can never be a sane reason to expect anything Jason Arday may have done or not done, how many lies he is said to have told about what he’s done, to end up with him having no way out but to take his own life.
I do not have chapter and verse of his life, but I understand he completed a PhD at Liverpool John Moore University and went on to lecture at two universities as a professor, before he was hired at Cambridge very recently and at the age of 37, he became Cambridge’s youngest black professor. That, was perhaps the nail in his coffin. Over the 3 or so years, he was repeatedly crucified and challenged to defend his qualifications and efforts were made to discredit him and his work. He was accused of plagiarism and over recent weeks, he was accused of lying about his childhood speech issues and a TV show he claimed to have been on, how long it took him to run 600miles and how much was raised for charity. None of those transgressions – if true – are punishable by death.

But the real issue here, is that when you find academics releasing work relating to meritocracy and the age-long arguments that some groups of people are smarter than others; it is clear to them and others, that it is impossible to create a situation where such assertions can be accurately tested. Even if you manage to lock a sample size of white babies and black babies and brown babies, any other colour babies, from the day they were born, into a room or man-made mini world and they all attend the same schools and experience exactly the same life, how do you stop a bunch of biased teachers telling one group of babies that they’re better? It is impossible to control every aspect of such an experiment. And for what purpose?? If the argument is that one group of brains is superior to others, fine. Congratulations. Now, go and do something useful with those supposedly superior brains!

Instead, you find groups of people, forever trying to make those idiotic points!
When you have an inheritance system like we do in the UK, where some folk will never be poor. And even the not so wealthy, still benefit from the sale of their dead grandparents property etc., and you look at the monetary support provided to athletes here (including lottery money), versus an athlete from a developing country, who has to keep a full time day job and train at night. Then we talk about meritocracy! Laughable isn’t it?

If Jason Arday never ran a single marathon but claim he did, if he was never on the TV show seven-up but claimed he was, if he plagiarised aspects of his work – by not crediting some of his sources – he was still a brilliant lecturer and most of his students over the years said so! If he was not of the calibre to be a professor at Cambridge, then the university should confirm that and fire him. He can of course head back to other universities that didn’t have any issues with his calibre. Durham, where he previously worked, is a very decent university. His lies – if so – about his marathons and TV show appearance etc., and whether or not he couldn’t read till he was 18 etc., has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he did complete a university degree, his PhD was reassessed by the university he attended and confirmed to be fine; he did not seek a job that states he must never have told any lies! Even priests lie. We’ve just had a Chancellor of the Exchequer who was accused of embellishing her CV (it’s not a crime punishable by death is it?).

Should Jason have applied for or accepted the job that makes him Cambridge University’s youngest black professor? In hindsight, he would know that he shouldn’t have. He could have lived his life quietly to a ripe old age as a Professor at the University of Durham and nobody would have ever heard of the name Jason Arday and nobody would have cared whether or not he was on seven-up or nine-up or ran 1000 marathons in 2 days or claimed he made pigs fly!

Yes, it’s a wicked world and all the rest. Is it ever going to change?

Would the people attempting to change the world do any better, if roles were reversed? Most likely not!

Could more voices, known people who are respected, not have spoken up 2 weeks ago, to explain that Jason Arday hasn’t killed anyone and even if he plagiarised, then sack him and let him get on with his life! Why do we need to know that he claimed he was mute till 18 or that he raised millions for charity? Society craved these supposedly lurid tales and now, we are blaming the press! If some sections of society wasn’t pining for such stories, would the press put it out there?
People with a voice could have spoken out, but didn’t. They are all now offering condolences!

It is a total waste of a human life! Now, his children have to grow up without a father. We really shouldn’t be descending to such depths. It is so sad. So tragic.

It is such a big, big problem. One that I can’t see any answers to. Human beings have decided we will continue to hate each other. That we will continue to use race, sex and any other means possible, to divide each other and hate on each other. It doesn’t appear possible, to try to get the world to just live and let live. We have willingly created a monetary system that leaves half the world in abject poverty, so they can come begging, so they can continue to attempt forced migration and so we can toss them about. It is sadistic, but it seems that this is how the world will remain. I can’t see it ever changing. We want to be at each other’s throats: white, black, others. Nobody appears interested in just living a peaceful life.

Very sad indeed.