Jason Arday dies following University of Cambridge scandal

straightorbroken said:
@Kala what made him a narcissist? You've previously gone on the record to say how overused this term is so I'm curious why you would use it as I'm sure it wasn't just blurted out without immense scrutiny.
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He was clearly mentally ill. The total fabrication of his life. Lie after lie after lie. Not a single thing was true.

Narcissists lie to maintain a grand, flawless image of themselves and to block out any criticism. Embellishing achievements, skills, or past events to secure constant praise and admiration.
 
A lot of the behaviour had the echoes of some kind of personality disorder being at play in this case, but the thing is that it's mainly a very damning indictment of Cambridge for not having proper scrutiny and putting him in that position. Fabulists and plagiarists will always apply for these positions (and indeed, there are examples of others currently in post there who've been reported on!). A functioning system weeds them out and doesn't stonewall all attempts at scrutiny and whistleblowing when it happens.

It's also pretty damning of a bigotry of low expectations as to the acceptable quality of scholarship when it comes to black educational inclusion - something Cambridge were visibly very happy to make him a poster boy on to cover up their continued failures on that front. If you care about equality, diversity and inclusion, it really doesn't sit well for people to be lined up and positioned as figureheads of that movement (and no, not just by the right-wing media - he guest edited the Today programme on the basis of his credentials!) with such low standards being held for how someone gets those credentials.
 
I broadly agree with what @Penelope said. I don't especially agree with the need for deep discussions about his mental health at this stage. That's happened and he's now gone.

However Cambridge and academia in general need a long hard look at themselves. There are clearly plenty of black academics capable of Professorships at elite universities. Was he the first, brave or stupid enough, to make a serious application to a famously racist institution? Did they find his look interesting to be a poster boy? Why the sweet hell did he slip through any checks? They absolutely set him up to fail and frankly die.

I recall a conversation in my sociology department about the fact their were no black senior staff. Of course sociology and similar fields are desperate to prove their credentials as progressive. I always hard rolled my eyes whenever I had white academics teaching me about sociological theories around race. I mean W.E.B Du Bois was forming his famous theories 125 years ago. Academia has clearly learned nothing, despite their insistence and preaching otherwise.

Of course the initial mishandling is nothing compared to the Neo-Nazi whistleblower and the likes of The Spectator and The Telegraph. These bastards need to be torn apart by dogs.
 
The right wing press - “Oh dear. Our witch hunt appears to have killed someone again. Clearly the best way to fix things is to start a witch hunt against the Cambridge administrators who appointed him.”
 
This is yet another example of death by media, Caroline Flack, Amy Winehouse… when these people are trailed incessantly it rarely leads to anything good. And yes, based on the way this story has unfolded there is clearly an element of racism that contributed to it.

Add on the lack of understanding for his neurodivergence too.

Unbelievably tragic and has made me very very angry.
 
Kala said:
It's a tragic situation and should never have come to this. However, this guy was as complete narcissist, and when he was found out this was always going to be one of the possible outcomes. I hope he has peace.
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Kala said:
He was clearly mentally ill. The total fabrication of his life. Lie after lie after lie. Not a single thing was true.

Narcissists lie to maintain a grand, flawless image of themselves and to block out any criticism. Embellishing achievements, skills, or past events to secure constant praise and admiration.
Click to expand...

I’ve sat with this for a day because I didn’t want to respond emotionally, but I’m still totally spun out that this is your first take so soon after he took his own life.

What makes me most uncomfortable is that there’s a dehumanising energy in what you've written, and suggesting him taking his life as a sort of inevitability feels reductive and cruel. Whether or not you intended it to, it reads as: this is what happens to people like him

I think you need to ask yourself why you jump straight to giving more moral weight to an HR issue at Cambridge University than to the wider context of systemic racism and public vilification.
 
Not only that but to say with such authority that there was a "total fabrication of his life" - on what basis can you claim that? Are you giving credence to every report published (largely by the right wing press)? Are you privy to the results of the internal investigations that are still ongoing?

It is precisely because of these tawdry Chinese whispers and a subsequent trial by media (social media included) that we have ended up where we are.
 
I think it takes a narcissist to confidently diagnose a narcissist teebs.
 
an excellent, thoughtful, long-ish read if anyone is interested.

paulddf.substack.com

Who Killed Jason Arday?

Earlier this afternoon, my oldest boyhood friend, a distinguished international lawyer who received his doctorate at Cambridge, called me to share the tragic news that Jason Arday, the Black British academic, had been found dead.
paulddf.substack.com paulddf.substack.com
 
Oof some of the comments in this thread. “This was always going to be one of the possible outcomes”…

The telegraph journalist - one of a dozen who wrote about this incessantly over many weeks - made 34 articles about this man’s plagiarism case. I do very firmly believe that had he been white, the same journalist would have written a two paragraph column about an ‘unfortunate misunderstanding” and then moved on.
 
I regret clicking on the Nathan Cofnas statement. The comment section is as hideous as you'd expect from X.
 
ZenGiraffe said:
And also, it seems more of Aray's life story was true than the media would have had people believe:

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"I was there with him when he did the last run" is not a verification. It says quite a lot that he changed his story on a fair few of those things.
 
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Is shouldn't be if they're employing that type of pond scum in the first place.
 
Oh God, can we please not make this sniveling herrenvolk wanker the latest right-wing celebrity?
 
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