Arday’s autobiography, published posthumously, eventually reached me in Stockholm. I was planning to write a review of it, but have decided not to bother. Firstly because so much has already been written about him and his ‘case’, including by his collaborator, an American who describes herself as a ‘ghostwriter’ (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242978426-great-and-unfortunate-things) – so how much of the book really is his? And secondly, because the whole affair upsets me so much; as a writer, a Leftie, a former academic, and a Cambridge alumnus.

Cambridge – specifically its Department of Education – must take most of the blame for the way things have turned out there. There’s no doubt at all that Arday did commit the ultimate academic sin, in directly plagiarising much of his PhD thesis and his (few) published articles. The plagiarism is not difficult to spot, and should have been spotted by those who appointed him as a professor, and as a Fellow of Jesus College. The other claims he made about his pre- and extra-academic life, many of them false and some even ludicrous, should also count against him. He was a liar, a cheat and a fantasist, and not at all deserving of the high-status academic position he was accorded at the end of his life.

That he was also monstrously hounded – probably to his death – by the right-wing press is no reason to doubt any of this. If he has a defence it should be on the grounds of his psychological infirmities, pretty clearly indicated in his memoir; which indicate that he should have been seriously and sympathetically treated for those, or even ‘sectioned’, rather than either encouraged to go for a very top position in academia, or – of course – driven to what we assume was his suicide. At the very least his qualifications, as they were presented to Cambridge and the other universities he passed through, should have been more meticulously vetted than they clearly were. If they weren’t for ideological reasons (DEI), then that should fill the ideologues with shame.

Apparently one of Jason Arday’s main purposes in life was to encourage better representation of minorities in academia. His tragedy – or one of them – is that his ‘case’ might have the very opposite effect. That – together with of course my deep sympathy for him and his family – is what upsets me.