When last Friday the body of Jason Arday was found “unresponsive” in a home in South London and his death by suicide confirmed, as always in such tragic cases, a culprit was needed. In turn, blame was laid at the door of the Telegraph and its reporters (though not of the Guardian, which had published the most extensive and damning reporting on the case), of former Cambridge researcher Nathan Cofnas and his Substack exposé, and now, increasingly, of “white supremacism” and “racism”. The irony being that—in the Trafalgar Square vigil held in Arday’s honor—a bunch of people cheered on the very policy that arguably played a large role in Arday’s death.
Indeed, the policy of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion—in the form that led to Arday’s appointment by Cambridge—is not merely a dangerous game with people’s perceived or real “identities”, but has now even claimed its first fatality. At this point, the rational response would be to ask hard questions about Cambridge’s recruitment process and criteria.
But we are far from a rational treatment of the matter. Instead of a thorough investigation into why Arday was chosen for the prestigious fellowship over four more senior scholars, including two women of color, the foot-soldiers of public opinion have decided to jump on the very same rhetorical bandwagon, “ubiquitous racism”, that put Arday in this very tragic mess in the first place.
The foot soldiers of public opinion have jumped on the “ubiquitous racism” bandwagon that put Arday in this very tragic mess in the first place.
But Jason Arday did not kill himself because of “racism”. In fact, when a Guardian journalist confronted Arday with his obvious fabrications of racist abuse, he said: “To be honest with you, I thought you’d just believe me”. Even the racism he allegedly faced was a lie, though of course not in the eyes of those who could only address it in the language of Jim Crow (“public lynching”), drawing an untenable and thereby ridiculous comparison.
“To be honest with you, I thought you’d just believe me” – Jason Arday
The unavoidable Ibram X. Kendi wrote on X: “The attacks are wielded by racist propagandists, resenting you for shining a light on anti-Black racism”. Owen Jones, Kehinde Andrews, Diane Abbott MP, Jameela Jamil, leader of the UK Green Party Zack Polanski, and 30,0000 others have signed the “Green Letter”, a call for a public inquiry into the media, because, according to the letter, the press had “harassed” Arday for two weeks, and “relentlessly” at that—of course motivated by racism. Never would it occur to the signatories that Arday had put himself in a position of public interest not only by plagiarizing large parts of his PhD and academic articles, yet still occupying a prominent position at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, but also by publishing a memoir so full of absurd anecdotes that any publisher would—under normal circumstances—have at least recommended he use a pseudonym.
According to his own account, Arday did not speak until the age of 11 or learn to read until 18, yet went on to earn a doctorate and become a sought-after keynote speaker on the academic circuit. He had also reportedly run 30 marathons in 35 days for charity—a feat that would have placed him among the world’s elite endurance athletes. As he further claimed, just prior to his PhD defense, he had undergone the major surgical intervention of having a brain tumour removed (though his original book proposal had stated it was an operation for testicular cancer).
Arday has put himself in a position of public interest not only by plagiarizing large parts of his PhD and academic articles, but also by publishing a memoir full of absurd anecdotes.
But it was the plagiarism that caught the attention of other scholars. Two emeritus sociologists, David Harris of Plymouth Marjon University, and Martyn Hammersley of the Open University, raised their concerns about Arday’s doctoral thesis directly with Cambridge in 2023. An investigation was launched at Liverpool John Moores University, Arday’s alma mater, that rejected the accusation, despite vast evidence of plagiarism. His first monograph, however, was no less spiked with easily traceable copy-paste-craft (independently investigated by Café Américain author Ian Pace).
Times Higher Education journalist Jack Grove was going to publish a larger article after a months-long investigation into Arday, who many colleagues meanwhile knew was “a little loose with the truth” and whom the Cambridge and the media establishment “lifted up like Simba the Lion King to appease the very same crowd”. (See “You’re the best in the world in terms of the research you do”, Chair of Education Department Hilary Cremin to Arday on the BBC). Grove’s critical investigation never materialized because Arday had hired a legal firm to prevent it, issuing a police complaint as garnish.
Arday was not a man who believed his own lies, but he hoped that others would. He knew he was a fraud. He was equally hopeful that society’s universal condemnation of racism would allow him to get away with it, since no one would dare to take action against him, the epitome of a black disadvantaged man’s success story. And for a while he was proven right.
Cambridge and the media establishment “lifted Arday up like Simba the Lion King to appease the very same crowd”.
How much he was in fact proven right is shown by the fact that the whole affair only really took off with Nathan Cofnas’s Substack essay, ‘DEI Fraud and Cover Up at Cambridge’, published on July 21 (after which UK media found a true gift that kept on giving for the 2026 summer hole: Arday dominated virtually all outlets for weeks).
The article itself is unspectacular. Cofnas writes at the beginning: “I ran Arday’s 2015 PhD dissertation through the plagiarism-detection program Copyleaks. It found substantial overlap with previously published work, particularly a dissertation submitted by Paula Zwozdiak-Myers in 2009”. The article then documents Arday’s plagiarism of Zwozdiak-Myers, as well as plagiarism of several other articles on race and racism-adjacent subjects by Arday since 2018. Cofnas’s target however is Cambridge’s reluctance to address the fraud. Cofnas ends with the remarkable words that “the upshot is that we lose both free speech and equality. Equality means treating people the same without regard to immutable characteristics like race, and that is not what is happening at Cambridge”. Words that are as innocent as they come.
Let me briefly digress: a good comedy drama—and despite Arday’s tragic death, the whole affair has all the ingredients of a good HBO series —portrays the villain not just as evil, but always as getting a little help from the ironic and serendipitous. In this case, the joke is on Arday.
Because of all people who could have broken the story to the public, in the end, it had to be an actual racist. A “race realist”, no less, who not only believes that there are fundamental genetical differences between black and white people (there are none), but that these differences also determine their intelligence “the same way the genetical differences between men and women determine their height”. Cofnas says that with actual meritocracy, even fewer black people would be in position of influence, outside athletics. These are statements beyond the pale and so ridiculous that ordinarily no four-year-old would make them —never mind a former Cambridge fellow, and they are one substantial reason Cofnas no longer holds a job there.
The joke is on Arday because of all people who could have broken the story to the public, in the end, it had to be an actual racist.
While none of Cofnas’s investigation into Arday are explicitly “racially motivated”, and his interviews and writings on the matter are reasonable, decent, and stick to a broader level-headed critique of EDI/DEI, whichany firm critic of discrimination would make, one can’t help think of the phrase “of all people”. Dozens could have pointed out Arday’s lies and plagiarism, but it had to be looney-tunes who got the front seat.
Considering the sway of the recent anti-Cofnas and anti-“right wing racism/white supremacy” protests in the UK—one shudders to think of a BLM 2.0—one can’t help but wonder if the alleged “anti-racism” of EDI/DEI programs that are obsessed with race as a defining category for humans has not cynically won this time. All the more cynically, because one person paid for that obsession with his life.
Further reading on this topic in Café Américain: Teacher Training, Ranked Hypocrisy and Forging Ahead by Daniel Hadas.
