The Hounding of Jason Arday

0:02This is a global production. Jason Arday became the youngest black professor in Cambridge University history. He was accused of plagiarism. And this set off a cascade in the British media. It doesn't stop, though, when they've got him and he said, OK, I resign. At times it felt like a full-blown witch hunt and moral panic. Dredging through every petty embarrassment and humiliation and blip on the CV. Is it carried on and on and on and on? And it's a silly season story that has now cost a life. My name is Jason Arday. I'm Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge. And I'm very fortunate to be the author of Great and Unfortunate Things.

0:49I was diagnosed with autism at the age of three. I learned to speak just before the age of 12, so I was 11. I learned to read and write when I was 18 years of age. Those milestones became quite significant. 12 years after learning to read and write, I gained a PhD. and then I ended up becoming one of the youngest professorial chairs in Cambridge's history. And Jason Arday is now dead, his lifeless body found in a flat in Battersea on Friday afternoon. It was profoundly shocking and yet somehow unsurprising given the unrelenting, unsparing, unforgiving assaults on his character. Jason Arday was a prominent academic, but he wasn't a politician.

1:33He hadn't been a public figure for all that long. Yet day after day, he found himself in the full glare of the media spotlight. Might things have been different? Welcome to The News Agents.

1:53It's John. It's Lewis. and this is the first time on the show that we've actually covered the Jason Ade story and that was deliberate in the sense that while it was going on and it was dominating the headlines day after day this summer we felt that even though we talked about how we might cover it and what we might do we didn't feel that there was that much to say not that there was clearly not a story there there was a story there Ade was a prominent person he was a prominent academic what happened to him probably does and we'll talk about this, speak to certain inadequacies and attitudes and deficiencies of the way higher education and some of our public institutions have been running in recent years, and he clearly did wrong.

2:36But it felt to us as if that the prominence of the story, the intensity of the story, the way that this one particular individual was almost being used as an embodiment of something far bigger than himself felt to us over the top. And I think since we've had the news that came on Friday that he took his own life I think to some extent that view has been vindicated just in case some of you haven't been following this story very very quick summary of it Jason Arday became one of known as one of the most remarkable success stories in British academia he was raised in South London he was diagnosed as a child with autism and developmental delay.

3:17He said he didn't speak until he was 11 and he couldn't read or write until he was 18. And yet in 2023, at the age of just 37, he became the youngest black professor in Cambridge University history. It later emerged, and he was accused of plagiarism in his PhD thesis, actually something that wasn't upheld, but nonetheless, there were mistakes in his doctorate. He said they were innocent errors. And this, for all reasons we can get into, set off a cascade in the British media, where day after day he was held up as an example, either explicitly stated or implicitly inferred, that he was a kind of DEI hire and that he should never have been at Cambridge in the first place.

4:03And many newspapers and many commentators said, in effect, that he was everything that was wrong with British society, British liberal attitudes and higher education. And there are elements of that that may well bear scrutiny, that may well indeed show that he was underqualified for the job that he was given at Cambridge University, that he was given this professorship. But there was something about the coverage. And let's face it, this all starts from the charge that he had plagiarised his PhD thesis. Just as a thought experiment, if it had been a white person who had been guilty or accused of plagiarism and was a professor at Cambridge University, would it have attracted the same degree of scrutiny, the same degree of attention, the unsparing questions about his character, personality?

5:07Is his whole life a lie? And day after day after day, more and more articles, more and more accusations, more and more spotlight on this guy who, yeah, had become moderately prominent. But as someone said yesterday, was not had never even been convicted of stealing a bag of crisps. obviously since there has been so much vitriol about Arde and look I think we should preface everything that we're going to say here by saying I don't think there's much doubt that Arde did wrong and he at times if some of this reporting is to be believed clearly there are elements where you might have even described him as something of a fantasist and it's absolutely clear and I'm not just talking here about his academic work We should say again, let's remember that his PhD thesis, the investigation by his armameter into that, did not uphold accusations of plagiarism.

6:10There were clearly some mistakes and there were clearly perhaps some sloppy scholarship. I think that's fair to say. Some of the more overblown claims about his own life and about some of the things he did, it clearly raises questions about the level of scrutiny about academic appointments. He was very senior at Cambridge. He had a chair at Cambridge University. This isn't just a normal academic position. It's a very senior quasi public office. Very, very prestigious. And I don't think there's much doubt that there is truth to the accusation that sometimes people like are they either because they have because they have an extraordinary life story, perhaps because there's a particular characteristic about them, whether they're they're black or they're working class or a woman or disabled or whatever it is.

6:55Sometimes institutions so desperate as they are to prove that they are widening the field of intake and widening their workforce and their diversity. Not a bad impulse, by the way. It's not a bad thing to want to do. But sometimes they can be lauded unnecessarily. And perhaps there's been plenty of journalism about this. It may well be that Cambridge, in this case, did not ask some of the questions that they ought to have done because they were so keen to appoint the guy for the reasons I've described. That's all legitimate, all fair. It separates to the question of the tenor and the tone and the proportionality of the coverage, which, and I don't use this term lightly, at times it felt like a full-blown witch hunt and moral panic.

7:47Now, you might say, well, in this case, there was witchery there because he did commit mistakes and maybe there was plagiarism. Fine. There are loads of examples of academics that have committed plagiarism. There are loads of examples of shit academics. I'm not saying he was necessarily. But, you know, we were talking here, we saw day after day of endless newspaper coverage of finding any student who had ever received a bad tutorial from this guy or some bad lecture notes literally being used by the Times newspaper, in one case, as paid for ads to get people to click and subscribe to Times, dredging up any anonymous student that they might have been able to find who once had a bad experience with the guy.

8:28dredging through every petty embarrassment and humiliation and blip on the CV that the guy ever had and crucially, crucially, were doing so after the point at which he resigned. At which point one has to ask what was there more to say about this story? Not on the institutional side, by all means do reporting about Cambridge and his appointment and all of that, but was it really necessary to, after the point of resignation, hound the guy, traduce the guy, try and humiliate the guy, which they did in the full glare of public view. And we've seen this story before, and we've seen where it might lead.

9:11And I'll be frank, I mean, you know, when we were talking about it last week, John, when we were thinking about who are you going to cover this, one of the senior producers on the show said, he's going to kill himself, isn't he? Everyone could see where this was going. And although we've got to be careful about suicide and talking about the motivations of suicide, of course we must. It is clear it would seem impossible to the point of absurdity not to believe that the way he was treated, basically as a sort of public enemy number one in the press, likely did not contribute to where he ended up.

9:42You talk about the Times newspaper and, you know, looking for clicks and trying to use it as a sort of generator for people to subscribe. Right. We understand that impulse. You know, on the news agents, we look at what our download numbers are, what works, what doesn't work, what can drive output. And of course, you know, was the public interested in the story? Yes. What was the public interest? And I think those are two different questions that you need to answer. and as you say Lewis surely there was a point where he resigned they'd got their guy I mean you said it was a sort of moral panic it felt to me like a blood sport you're chasing after we didn't kill him I mean he jumped over the edge of a cliff well I was thinking about using the word lynching well it was a lynch you can have a lynching without a rope on which someone is hung it felt like that sort of we're chasing, chasing we're chasing after you we're getting closer we've got you right it doesn't stop though when they've got him and he said okay i resign it carried on after that and i you know there's i kind of can't help thinking that when i think about this story that our day's great misfortune was for this to come at the start of the silly season for journalism that period where it is the dog days and there's not much happening and the politicians are away on holiday and you're desperately trying to fill your newspaper or your airwaves with stories of something and the Jason Arde story fell sweetly into that particular kind of miasma and what it's done is it carried on and on and on and on and it's a silly season story that has now cost a life oops oh we didn't mean it to go that far but it was fun while it lasted and i think that there were elements of that where look you know i've seen calls that there should be public inquiries into journalism and that i i don't buy any of that but i do think we as journalists you know and i bet you we've all done stories where we thought oh god we went too far of i i wish i hadn't said what i'd said and i've you know i've got chapter and verse in my own head now are the things where you know it went too far and i was part of it um i think this is a moment for just some reflection i'm not saying all journalism is shit i'm not saying that it was all unworthy i'm not saying that they shouldn't have done these things but there are areas where people maybe just need to reflect and also i mean again just just on the media side of this for a second again not all the coverage of this was wrong and and i'm not saying for a second there wasn't public interest in it and that there shouldn't have been some coverage of course there should nonetheless there is and this is difficult for any particular journalist or any particular editor to reckon with of course it's entirely possible that any story any given particular story in isolation is entirely justified in a public interest and yet when taken in aggregate, when all of those stories are put together, that the volume, number and intensity of it all put together becomes not commensurate, disproportionate with the public interest involved and what Arday had to reckon with.

13:14And I think anybody who, anybody who has ever found themselves at the centre of a social media storm has a little bit of a sense. Nothing by comparison to, I think, what Arday went through. of what this is like. But someone once spoke about, one writer once spoke about the horror of finding yourself as the main character of the public discourse for a day or X for a day. It's what you never, ever want to be. And Arday basically found himself as the main character of British public life day after day after day. Not only over his professional life, but over any particular inadequacies of his personal life.

13:54It reminded me a lot. it was a sort of weird fusion as a media story, a weird broadsheet plus tabloid fusion. You know, it reminded me there were elements of it, of kind of the tabloid type stories of the 90s and 2000s, where, you know, every bit of raking over, every little iota of someone's life, a celebrity's life, a footballer, a pop star, an actor, and all their indiscretions and all their problems, all raked over. And yet at the same time, there was enough for the broadsheets to be going on as well, not just the right-wing newspapers, but the more liberal newspapers as well, because there was an institutional political angle.

14:29And Arde, again, clearly committed wrongdoing. Clearly, you can make a strong argument to say, well, maybe he shouldn't have been there, who knows. But to find yourself at the centre of that, I do think that we as journalists do have to think sometimes not just about how our work is in the particular, i.e. just our work, but how sometimes it comes together, as I say, in aggregate and the effect that might have on a particular individual. I also think that it's, you know, we've talked about the polarisation in British society, the culture wars, the willingness of some to wage culture wars, and that, you know, and I'm sure if you're on the right of British politics, you think that the hire of Jason Arday was purely a DEI hire.

15:16And for God's sake, I mean, Cambridge University, the percentage of black professors at Cambridge is half a percent so not overly represented and you can see that maybe he comes along he's got a phd he's got an extraordinary backstory you suspend normal judgment and think this is would be a good guy don't blame him for the fact that he is black and being given a professorship at cambridge university there are institutional questions for cambridge to answer but the willingness to The kind of desire to have someone in the crosshairs, a living, vivid symbol of DEI, is what he was. And you could see that, you know, it wasn't just in academia, liberal institutions, the BBC got him to guest edit the Today programme.

16:06And even, I should say, the Times newspaper, when he got appointed, was talking about what a great thing this was and what an extraordinary backstory. but suddenly he becomes the sort of prime example the exemplar of what is wrong with british society and it focuses on him because it's easier to focus on an individual much more relatable than on an institution right more on this in just a moment

16:48I mean, the irony of all of this is that Arde, again, whatever his personal failings, which of course we all have, whatever his personal failings, he was basically held up as an avatar by both sides of the culture war. Yeah. He was chewed up and spat out by both sides of the culture war. I'm not both-sidism-ing here. No. I'm really not. I just think it is just sort of objectively true. He wasn't allowed to be an individual. You know, he was always for the liberal left and the radical right, basically the sum of his parts or just his parts, just the basically the characteristics that he had. And what I mean by that is, as you say, John, for parts of the liberal left here, always looking for heroes, always looking for that remarkable life story the people who've overcome those characteristics which liberal discourse is very preoccupied with our day was held up as you say as as as an exemplar he was used as an exemplar by those institutions so on so on perhaps when he ought not to have been and there are obviously clearly questions for cambridge and for other higher education institutions about their processes and frankly after he resigned their duty of care towards him But for the right, as well as you say, John, they were desperate for the tale, in this case, of the fallen liberal hero, the fallen progressive hero.

18:14from the very start, you had newspapers like The Telegraph introducing him as Cambridge's diversity poster boy and reportedly and reusing that framing repeatedly, commentators consistently treating his case as proof of DEI and that DEI or race based social engineering was corrupt. his individual conduct being used basically to prosecute a much wider argument about advancement of ethnic minorities and a DEI agenda, even though, of course, we don't have any particular proof that that is what was going on here. And let's not forget as well something that has consistently been missed from this coverage.

18:54The very reason this emerged in the first place. Who brought this to attention? This is a guy who quite literally has argued, this guy Nathan Kofnus who has literally argued that in a true meritocracy black people would largely disappear from prestigious positions. That's the guy who initially brought this to attention. That is not to say that Arde's plagiarism if that's what happened, his lack of qualifications if that's the case shouldn't have been brought to public attention but let's not forget the context here of the wider politics which is this is not the case. These newspapers are not in the habits of reporting on every academic who falls from grace, right?

19:33They're not that interested. The Telegraph, The Times, these newspapers, they're not interested in, they don't have like tutorial watch, right? They're not like, oh dear, well, we've got a horrible report here of a biosciences lecturer who's not quite up to the mark at Southampton, right? We're going to do, let's hold it, let's hold pages four, five, six, and seven. This is part of a wider ideological agenda and political battle, which is all linked to contemporary politics, which is this consistent, quite new in our politics, but this consistent need to speak to white anxiety, racialised politics, and this idea which keeps coming up of a two-tier society.

20:13That basically there are two different rules for different racial groups or different minorities and white people are being systematically and systemically discriminated against even when there is no evidence for that in particular. That is what Arde became. He became a pawn in that wider political battle. Can you imagine if you are black and you had kind of your career is soaring and you're doing brilliantly and whether it's against the odds or with the odds of depending on your background, whatever. But there is that sort of assumption that has gone through, I think, some of the Jason Arde coverage is, oh well he must have got there because you know he's just because he's black and just because they wanted to hire somebody like that and you're a black person and your career is going great and that question must hang over you when you read this coverage my god what what we can't just be there because we're good at what we do and that is why i think that you know that's why i think there are some profound questions for cambridge to answer if it was the case that they just kind of turned a blind eye and just thought oh great we've got this person he seems to exemplify everything we're trying to correct here and you've got on the other side of it people who just think i want to tear him down and this shows that black people in senior positions are there just because of you know diversity equity and inclusion and i think that is a grotesque place for us to be but that seems to be where we have landed i don't want to do both sideism as well and there are still we you know we're not here answering questions and sort of definitive because there's so much that we still are yet to learn but as you say Lewis it is hard to believe that when your character has been taken apart like that on such a sustained and kind of appalling level that that hasn't played some part in some guy's death yeah and look I was also thinking to myself about the different ways in which in which we think about redemption and forgiveness I mean this is also a summer in which, you know, we've had the leader of the opposition try and allow a former neo-Nazi who quite literally harassed a sitting Labour parliamentarian and caused an enormous distress.

22:30She said he should be allowed to stand for her party because he made mistakes. And he was an individual who made a mistake. And he went to prison. And he went to prison. But, you know, that should be allowed because he's redeemed himself. OK, fair enough. We had a very, very distinguished in lots of ways, columnist on the right of politics who died for whom there were tremendous tremendous tributes paid rod little um i think it's fair to say someone who was pretty controversial who was often accused of of racism or misogyny um but you know the way that he's talked about oh he's just being mischievous and all of these sorts of things you know on the right for a lot of these people there is almost no space on which anyone might not be redeemed you know when people make mistakes as both of those individuals did.

23:16I'm just using those as examples, but there will be others as well. We can use the academic sector where there are people quite literally at Cambridge who have been found to have plagiarised, but have been allowed to stay in position on the day that Jason Arde, the Jason Arde story was it was in the newspapers, a vice chancellor, a sitting vice chancellor at a prestigious Russell Group University with lost his job because of accusations of embezzlement. maybe made it on a nib on sort of page 11 or so on. What I'm getting at and what I'm saying is, is that we allow, and even this summer, we have seen plenty of space for people to either be allowed to redeem themselves or to make mistakes, pay a price and be allowed to move on.

24:04Because in those cases, they were just individuals. They were just individuals who are allowed to make mistakes and allowed to move on and rebuild their lives. Arde wasn't allowed that luxury because he became the embodiment, the kind of talisman of a wider political battle because of the colour of his skin. And there is a word for that, and it is racist. And that redemption and that luxury of redemption is afforded rightly to people time after time after time. Really, with Arde's case, He didn't even have a chance to get that far. Such was the assumption of guilt from much of the press and many leading commentators from day one.

24:51There is one other aspect to this, I think, that we should discuss, and that is, well, what should be the response to this in terms of the press? Because there have been calls for whether there needs to be greater regulation. you know we've looked at regulation of the press leveson inquiry and all the rest of it and whether there should have been a second leveson inquiry and i kind of i don't know where it would get us i don't know where it would go i think there has to be freedom of the press i think there is good journalism and there's bad journalism and you know maybe it's in the eye of the beholder what class is as good and what class is as bad but i think exactly as you say lewis it is absolutely fair to hold people to account.

25:34But let's hold people to account relatively evenly and fairly. And as you say, you know, if every academic who'd ever given a shitty lecture was held up to scrutiny, my God, there wouldn't be enough newspapers in the world to print all of it. And that's not to say that all lecturers are bad. I'm not saying that. If every journalist who ever wrote some shit copy was held up to scrutiny. Perhaps even plagiarised their copy as well-known journalists have done and gone on to do rather successful things. exactly not naming any names Boris Johnson but there we are and that that should be the benchmark by which we look at what has happened to Jason Arday and not say was he perfect no he wasn't was Cambridge University perfect no it certainly wasn't was he appointed maybe unfairly possibly probably but he is not the guy who deserves now to have been hounded like that to the point where he thinks that life is not worth living we'll be back just after this

26:49so the last time we spoke mr goodall um you were in albania yes and you're now back welcome back I am. How was the weekend? Our cameraman, Shane, is still in Albania. Why? Perhaps there are reasons we can get into that. Well, for some reason, he wasn't allowed to board the flight. I mean, I don't know. No man left behind, except a man always left behind on the newsagents. Never mind. Hello, Shane. He's fine. He's next to a Burger King about 25 miles from Tirana, so apparently he's happy as Larry. Right. So what about the weekend, the protests? Were they surprising, as big as you thought? It was very interesting.

27:25I mean, we were there, for people who haven't been following this story, basically for the last 75 days or so, there have been nightly protests in Tehran, the Albanian capital. Initially, and he is always at the centre of everything, isn't he? Initially, you guessed it, in one way or another, sort of about Donald Trump, or at least Donald Trump's family. Ivanka Trump and Jara Kushner, her husband, of course, are heavily involved, long story short, in trying to build a new€4 billion luxury resort complex along the coast of Albania. This is a very pro-American country, one of the most pro-American in Europe.

27:59So it's not an anti-Trump thing per se. But what that sort of lit the touch paper in a way for a series of cascaded protests around the country, especially in Tirana, really kind of focused on not just this one resort, which is being built on environmentally protected land. But the accusation is, is that basically the rules and the law are being changed to benefit these oligarchs, these uber rich people who are going to build hotels for other uber rich people. And actually for a lot of Albanians who were promised and thought that they were building a democracy, their prime minister, Elirama, who's been there for 13 years, they are accusing basically of being a friend of these oligarchic forces.

28:40And they thought they were going to get something better with democracy rather than the same old thing of the rules being changed to befit the rich and powerful. Here's just a quick taster of some of the people we spoke to at one of those protests on Friday night. So we're just approaching now the Albanian House of Parliament. It's on our left here. And they're all chanting. The main chant all through this thoroughfare has been that Eddie Rama, the current prime minister, should be in prison, sent to prison, and his grievance as prime minister and his deputy should all be sent to prison as well.

29:19You know, we've been so well over here that there is interest in a revolution. And honestly, when you're listening to them, it doesn't feel so far away.

29:32The protest started from the Trump project in the Sazan Island from one guy that got dragged across the mud on his own land, by the way. If that action was the lighting match, the gunpowder, the dry gunpowder was already on the ground. People have been whispering about a strong people's revolt for years now. And what would your message be to the Trump family right now? To Ivanka Trump and to Jared Kushner? Hands off our land. Our land is not fulfilled. Transportation is not good. The education is not good. So people are here to demand more transparency, more accountability from these government officials to say, hey, we don't like this and we want you to do better.

30:15How important do you think the Trump family connection is to all this? Well, they are important, aren't they? So anything that is related to their name is huge news, big news. It is big because things have been happening behind our backs. Laws have been changing to accommodate the rich, the rich being the Trump family. And when you say laws have been changing, what do you mean? So in 2024, the law on protective areas has been amended to allow strategic investments to be built on these protected areas. I'm here protesting against the project that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner want to make in Albania.

30:51We are here to tell our government that we want him to repeal the law 21-2024, to not touch protected areas. We want investments to be made in public interest and not in the interest of a small handful of people. So we want them to take accountability. We want them to stop the project, to cancel the law and just take responsibility. Why do you feel so passionate about it? Why is it so important? Because it's been like this for 35 years, the government has never taken the interest of the people in their hands. They've always thought just about themselves, they have impoverished Albania. So we are fed up, we want them to take responsibility and change and just work for Albania and for Albanians.

31:41Hands off Albania. Albania is not for sale, do not come here. This is our country will protect our country with every every every step of all Albania. We're here for 76 days today. I look at my shoes. My shoes are broken. Yeah, because I've been walking every day every night. Look at my shoes So we're not giving up. I left my job in UK as a chef. I left my business as a taxi driver. Really? Yeah To come protest because this is this is history You didn't want to miss it? Yeah, I don't want to miss it. I'm part of the history. One day it's going to be a Netflix series. If Rama government goes down, we're going to be a Netflix series.

32:23It's going to come up. Who's going to play you on Netflix? I don't know. I'll play it myself. My name is Arta Danai. And why are you here today? I'm here to protest against the government, against corruption. And we are here because our prime minister has done many negatives. our people. And what would your message be if Ivanka Trump was watching tonight or Jared Kushner? What would your message be to them? To respect the people of Albania. They have to respect our people. Ivanka Trump must be dealing with her father first. Why are you here tonight? Because Idirama is not my prime minister. It's bastard.

33:02He's a drug dealer. He's not from this country prime minister. You think he's a drug dealer? Yeah, yeah, of course. Why a drug dealer? Because all the people, all the people, it's to say mafia here, mafia here, kill here. Every day people is dead. Just for this prime minister. So you think it's a mafia deal? Yeah. A mafia bot? 100%. 100%. Is there any proof of that? I don't have, but TV, TV, media, media, I'd say. I believe the media. And what would your message be to Ivanka Trump and the Trumps tonight?