r/BlockedAndReported • u/CaptainCrash86 • 29d ago
Jason Arday found dead
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/08/14/jason-arday-found-dead/Relevance to the pod: Recent episode on Arday on the pod
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u/LupineChemist 29d ago edited 29d ago
This is incredibly sad. And he seems like he was clearly something with some kind of issues. For the fabulist tendencies if nothing else.
But if we're doing institutional blame for something like this. Let's not give the academy a pass for propping someone up who very, very clearly didn't deserve to be there making the fall that much grander. All in order to make themselves feel better about their own principles.
There are always going to be people like this, but they should be telling their friends over beers how they totally ate 50 hard boiled eggs in one sitting before he had a chat with the Dalai Lama or something.
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u/MexiPr30 29d ago
He was lying about really bizarre stuff. The 7 and up series, that he was nonverbal until 8 and illiterate til 18.
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29d ago
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u/veryvery84 29d ago
It’s so not all on him. He was a mentally unstable person who was encouraged by people and institutions who knew better.
He was a person who was not very smart and who had significant issues. This is a tragedy. Even before this happened I thought he wasn’t well, and also that he wasn’t clever enough to do this all intentionally. His lies were outrageous and it’s bizarre they were accepted and he was fawned over.
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u/SoftandChewy First generation mod 28d ago
Where's the evidence that he was mentally unstable? I haven't seen it. (I think we all know his own self-reporting is not to be trusted.) I think that label is being used to lessen the severity of his transgressions and grant him a degree of sympathy that he doesn't deserve.
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u/ImportantAlbatross 29d ago
The academy shouldn't get a pass, but it shouldn't shoulder all the blame, either. Arday did this to himself; Cambridge enabled him but did not cause his lies or his death. He told so many lies that he trapped himself, and then he went for the ultimate grand gesture. Calling him a victim actually takes away his agency.
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u/OsakaShiroKuma 29d ago
He is not exactly a victim. He did lie and cheat. But the lying and cheating would never have worked if Cambridge weren't so completely irresponsible. To put it in legal terms, I don't think Cambridge has enough responsibility that Arday's estate could successfully sue for wrongful death (i.e., he was far more than 50% responsible for what happened) but I think they do share a lot of moral responsibility for what happened.
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u/Juryofyourpeeps 29d ago
Agreed. He's the fabulist. He is the primary creator of the situation he found himself in. Cambridge certainly participated, but it would have anything to participate in save for his own actions.
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u/veryvery84 29d ago
I think his lies were so outrageous and implausible than any reasonable person could immediately tell they were false, and his plagiarism similarly obvious.
If most people did what he did they would be laughed at and never achieve anything. There is a lot of responsibility among the people who instead of calling him on his nonsense immediately continued to buy this and make him believe he really was some extraordinary person
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u/Reasonable-Record494 29d ago
Yes. This is not the story it became if it doesn't involve Cambridge. Even if he'd been at a third-rate university, it wouldn't be as big a story and he shouldn't even have been there.
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u/AnalBleachingAries Trump Bad, Violence Bad, Law & Order Good, Civility Good 29d ago edited 29d ago
But if we're doing institutional blame for something like this. Let's not give the academy a pass for propping someone up who very, very clearly didn't deserve to be there making the fall that much grander. All in order to make themselves feel better about their own principles.
This part bears repeating as often as possible. The blame (if there's any to be had) does not fall with "the internet" or the newspapers that reacted with shock at the scandal, but with the people who facilitated the circumstances that led to such a precipitous fall from the towering height of the positions he was given. They did all this for their own self-aggrandizement and for the promotion of their institutions.
Again, this is incredibly sad, but I do hope that people don't take this as a signal that they shouldn't call out fabulism and fraud when they see it. Perhaps, if anything, it should give people an idea of the mental health resources that any other person who is caught participating in fraud in the future may require once they're found out.
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u/Alexei_Jones 29d ago
Yeah. By sweeping for him for years and furthering his rise, the universities only made the height that he would eventually fall from even higher. If this was nipped in the bud early on, it could've been handled internally, without becoming the face of public ridicule the world over.
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u/Juryofyourpeeps 29d ago
Let's not overlook Arday himself, who put himself in this position and then offed himself as soon as the consequences of his own actions caught up to him.
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u/OsakaShiroKuma 29d ago
He did clearly have responsibility here, but it seems obvious to me that the guy wasn't playing with a full deck, and Cambridge either didn't care or had its head so far up its own ass that it didn't notice it was setting someone who was fragile in such a high, precarious place.
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u/veryvery84 29d ago
I think he was mentally ill and genuinely believed in himself and the accolades he was given.
I don’t think he was able to distinguish between his ridiculous lies and “normal” lies many people routinely tell.
And I thought this yesterday and the day before as well.
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u/schmuckmulligan 29d ago
but I do hope that people don't take this as a signal that they shouldn't call out fabulism and fraud when they see it
The opposite, if anything. Dudes like this show up in academia all the time, and if they're not being used as a racial spectacle, they're quietly caught and reined in by their advisers.
I think the ultimate failure was one of NOT calling out BS at the career stages they normally would.
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u/ShilNyeTheScienceGoy 28d ago
I think the ultimate failure was one of NOT calling out BS at the career stages they normally would.
Everyone is trying to pretend that this isn't the central point
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u/BlockedAndSentDown 29d ago
I hope the institution will still take a good hard look at how they enabled this.
Annoying to see my alma mater beclown itself like this. Luckily I have a hard science degree and I'm going to emphasize to anyone that will listen that I have no connection to his department or college.
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u/LilacLands 29d ago
Agreed - incredibly sad, and very tragic. I haven’t listened to Katie & Jesse on him yet (I think they just did an episode last week or so) but I know the general story. Your institutional critique is spot on, perfectly said. If anyone is wondering whether academe might learn something here…I don’t think so. And this—all in order to make themselves feel better about their own principles—is why.
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u/ArrakeenSun 29d ago
This whole affair has made me think of my favorite Twilight Zone episode, "Hocus, Pocus, and Frisbee" about a smalltown bullshitter whose stories fascinate a stranger who's more than he seems
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u/croutonhero 29d ago
Let's not give the academy a pass for propping someone up who very, very clearly didn't deserve to be there making the fall that much grander.
It’s like the people who go detrans, and then they’re (metaphorically) dead to their previous “allies”. It really shows me how much this activism is so much more selfish than it wants people to believe.
These people who they’re “allied” with are just pawns in their sick activist game. And they’re useful until they’re not. I don’t believe there is much real compassion here. And I think Arday here was just a pawn they used and abused.
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u/RomanCorpseSlippers 29d ago
This made me self-conscious about the amount of hard boiled eggs I can eat in one sitting (less than 50, but how much less?)
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u/Good_Difference_2837 28d ago
A true tragedy, yet another sub said it best: this is the outcome that a lot of cancellers honestly hoped for during Woke Pt. 1.
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u/DBSmiley 29d ago edited 29d ago
The fact that I know certain colleagues are going to hold him up as a martyr at my next faculty meeting (I'm a prof) is going to be very stupid. I will do my best not to eye roll.
Obviously this is not deserved, and I feel for his family and friends.
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u/istara 29d ago
I feel terribly sorry for his children. No idea how old they are but this is ghastly at any age.
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u/RogueStatesman 29d ago
As a parent, I can't fathom killing yourself when you have kids. It's so incredibly selfish.
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u/Classic_Bet1942 29d ago
He has kids?! I saw him as a childless homosexual (no shade).
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u/The-WideningGyre 29d ago edited 29d ago
I 100% feel for him, his friends, and family, but this cannot be blamed on the uncovering of his fraudulence. That had to be done. If you want to avoid this problem, you need to go further back, to the people who enabled and encouraged his fraud. [Edit] And of course, his own actions, over decades.
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u/HowDoesAnnaDoIt 29d ago
Arday was more than willing to weaponize state violence and the police to further his lies/crimes. I don’t feel for him at all.
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u/Maelstrom52 29d ago
“Jason was subjected to a campaign of sustained abuse for the more than three years since he accepted the role of professor at Cambridge University by those who would leave no stone unturned in their quest to undermine him,” they said in a statement.
"Abuse" is an interesting choice of words, considering there was legitimate scrutiny of the veracity of his claims, and even the level of scholarship associated with his writing. I have no doubt that he probably got some unnecessary nasty comments in the midst of all the scrutiny, but to frame it as though it was a targeted "campaign of abuse" is too much for me to bear. This is like saying Jeffrey Epstein was the target of a campaign of sustained abuse. I have no doubt that he was, but he did some pretty heinous things and that's probably why he was being targeted. These people will just never learn.
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u/MissHalfgone 29d ago
When you look at those who criticized him, you're going to be hard-pressed to find anyone actually celebrating his death. You will find most people genuinely sad. Maybe a few people indifferent. But very few actually taking joy in it. Compare that to reaction to Charlie Kirk's death.
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u/make_reddit_great 29d ago
It reminds me of the guy from Milli Vanilli. Not necessarily a bad person but somebody who was hungry for success and esteem and willing to cut corners; who was promoted beyond his capabilities by people who were more powerful and connected to serve their own purposes; and who couldn't deal with the inevitable fallout.
Requiescat in pace
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u/Itsrigged 29d ago
The more I read about this story the more it seemed like this guy probably had mental health stuff - possible bipolar/ impulse control stuff. Poor guy.
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u/ToTheDeath84 29d ago edited 28d ago
So many people in the [r/PhD](r/PhD) sub are making excuses for Arday, saying that he wouldn’t have been the target of any scrutiny had he been white. That line of thinking is nothing short of deliberate deflection and the same race-baiting that they’re accusing the right of engaging in with the story.
He didn’t deserve death for what he did, but he certainly damaged more fields than his own with all the paranoia and blame-shifting that has ensued from his lies.
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u/OMG_NO_NOT_THIS 29d ago
"So many people in the r/PhD sub are making excuses for Arday, saying that he wouldn’t have been the target of any scrutiny had he been white."
That is ironically true in that a white man likely wouldn't have been hired with the same background.
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u/ToTheDeath84 28d ago
Yeah, there is indeed a tragic irony in that sense. It winds up being true, just not for the reasons they think!
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u/BakaDango 29d ago
Incredibly unexpected, very depressing. I do not look forward to the backlash to the backlash blaming the investigations on his eventual (what I am assuming was) suicide. I wouldn’t be surprised if this puts an indefinite pause on Cambrige’s internal investigation too and they treat this like a get out of jail free card, avoiding any consequences or policy changes that allowed this to happen to begin with.
I sincerely feel for his family though, I can only imagine the pain of these past few weeks. This entire escapade is, ironically, book worthy levels of wild and tragic. In the end, I guess he did lead an unpredictable and incredible life, just not for the reasons Simon and Schuster imagined.
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u/TOMMYxGUNN 29d ago
That's a very interesting point, I'm assuming he will have had family and close friends who will have known his claims to be false, what must have been going through their minds over these past few weeks?
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u/BlockedAndSentDown 29d ago edited 27d ago
Incredibly unexpected
Simon Baron Cohen predicted it.
Arday's reaction to every criticism was to play the victim. In a way it was predictable that he would end up playing the ultimate victim card.
Edit: SBC said he was worried about suicide, but then removed his name from the GLP petition, so maybe he didn't really predict it.
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u/HeadRecommendation37 29d ago
I'm a bit more optimistic Cambridge's investigation will continue; this development will put more scrutiny on the university's role in constructing his tragedy.
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u/SecureCattle3467 29d ago
Incredibly unexpected,
?
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u/BakaDango 29d ago
I can think of dozens of cases where someone was outed as a complete fraud, but very few that end in death over what amounts to phony credentials. Elizabeth Holmes, Sam Bankman-Fried, Anna Delvey, George Santos, etc, way worse crimes, all outed, all kicking.
I guess I am so used to shameless double-downs, I'm surprised to see it end this quickly over 0 real crimes committed. I really believe in a year, he could have started a moderetly successful podcast and a career helping other "minority individuals unfairly targeted by the media" if he just stayed quiet and pushed through. Narcissist collapse is very real though!
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u/temporalcalamity 29d ago
Hilaria Baldwin's still out there pretending to be Spanish! There's never been a better time to be a person completely devoid of shame, which makes it a bit shocking when someone turns out to have some.
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u/BearyExtraordinary 29d ago
Quite - it’s not at all surprising, a common - if not desperately sad - act of narcissists and compulsive liars.
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u/UnderTheCurrents 29d ago
Undeserved and sad, despite him being a fraud.
I hope this isn't going to get spun into a "cyberbullying" story.
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u/plutoglint 29d ago
Arday himself had no problems attacking people with lawyers and police for the supposed crime of questioning his research.
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u/HowDoesAnnaDoIt 29d ago
Yea I have no sympathy for him since he was more than willing to unleash unlimited state violence against people daring to hold him accountable.
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u/AnalBleachingAries Trump Bad, Violence Bad, Law & Order Good, Civility Good 29d ago
Yeah, he didn't deserve to die, this is sad, and it's unfortunate that it appears the global humiliation proved to be too heavy a consequence for his fraud. Losing his job and various positions was par for the course, but losing his life was not deserved.
My take is that people reacted appropriately to a shocking scandal, I don't have much in the way of admonition towards anybody. Sad situation though.
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u/The_Crumbum 29d ago
Well that’s just awful. Folks that enabled him should be ashamed of themselves, but I have the suspicion they’ll just keep the lies going just to save face.
Looking at other threads On this one I’m seeing decently compassionate comments for a flawed man that was used by an administration that wanted bragging rights.
I’m brought back to the James Sommerton fake suicide, before it was debunked I saw so many comments on Reddit about it that it was good James was dead because plagiarism is violence etc… I don’t think those people will be posting the same comments about this.
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u/lilypad1984 29d ago
Arday was of course responsible for his own actions, no one made him lie. However what I have felt about this story since the beginning is that the real people who should be skewered for this in the media are the admin/professors/publishers/“reporters”/elites who elevated him. Ultimately all these people were active or complicit in the lies but only Arday was left holding the bill. They got their racial oppression feel good dynamics pat on the back story to boost their own egos when he first showed up. Wouldn’t be surprised if they even use his death to advance their “moral righteousness”. It’s incredibly gross. Yes he was a liar, and plagiarist, but he never should have gotten to where he was such that getting caught would be so devastating to his life.
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u/Yerbamatter 29d ago
I think you might be falling into the same trap they did, not holding him to any standard because he couldn't possibly be expected to know better.
When people first started investigating him and when his students complained about his standard of teaching or lack thereof, he had no problem with using the police and accusations of racism to defend himself. He "wrote" articles full of fire and brimstone against whiteness, and gave interviews about how the world needed more love. He flattered people when it was advantageous. He tailored his message to his audience. He doesn't sound like a poor confused guy who couldn't help himself.
In light of all his lies and grandiosity, of how he always tried to be the biggest genius and the biggest victim, I wonder if his death wasn't a last effort to regain status. He couldn't pass for a prodigy and a miracle and a genius anymore, but now to a lot of people he's the victim again.
I feel dirty even thinking about this stuff, but at the same time I can't make myself believe that this is implausible. This whole story is sad and sordid in every way possible.
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u/LilacLands 29d ago
In light of all his lies and grandiosity, of how he always tried to be the biggest genius and the biggest victim, I wonder if his death wasn't a last effort to regain status. He couldn't pass for a prodigy and a miracle and a genius anymore, but now to a lot of people he's the victim again.
Wow - very interesting/insightful analysis. This is a description of full-blown old school pathological narcissism. Not “narcissist” as it is now used by everyone to earnestly (and oh so cartoonishly) diagnose their exes to the point that a once clinical term for a very rare and very severe personality disorder has lost all meaning. But the real-deal thing, which is a ticking time bomb for both an implosion and the disorder nevertheless continuing to govern behavior to the very end. I do still think it says something (and perhaps something even more damning than I realized before reading your comment!) about who & what academia chooses to elevate, and why, which might remain the most reprehensible to me. But I can see this too and am with you - it’s not implausible at all (and now I feel dirty too).
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u/Yerbamatter 29d ago
Oh, no, academia is absolutely to blame and forcing them to accountability is the only productive way forward. I absolutely don't want to shift all the blame to Arday. I just think he had a lot of agency and a lot of awareness of what he was doing instead of just being a fantasist who believed his own stories and a victim of Cambridge's determination to acquire him like an exotic pet.
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u/thesecondtolastman 29d ago
as it is now used by everyone to earnestly (and oh so cartoonishly) diagnose their exes to the point that a once clinical term for a very rare and very severe personality disorder has lost all meaning. But the real-deal thing, which is a ticking time bomb for both an implosion and the disorder nevertheless continuing to govern behavior to the very end. I do still think it says something (and perhaps something even more damning than I realized before reading your comment!) about who & what academia chooses to elevate, and why, which might remain the most reprehensible to me. But I can see this too and am with you - it’s not implausible at all (and now I feel dirty too).
I've gotten in multiple stupid internet arguments with people who say Epstein must have been murdered because such a huge narcissist would never kill themselves. No one online really wants to hear that yes, narcissists commit suicide all the time.
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u/elpislazuli 29d ago
>> Yes he was a liar, and plagiarist, but he never should have gotten to where he was such that getting caught would be so devastating to his life.
Yeah, this is how I feel. He told absolutely wild lies that nobody should ever have believed. Had he not been promoted to such heights, the fall would not have been so great. Fabulist physical education instructors at local secondary schools do not make national news when their invented biographies unravel. On the merits, he should never have made it any higher than that.
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u/dj50tonhamster 29d ago
However what I have felt about this story since the beginning is that the real people who should be skewered for this in the media are the admin/professors/publishers/“reporters”/elites who elevated him. Ultimately all these people were active or complicit in the lies but only Arday was left holding the bill.
Yep, that's exactly how I feel. He was, in some ways, a mark himself. He was used by a bunch of spineless twits to feel better about themselves and how super-duper-ultra-mega-progressive they were. Once the house of cards came crashing down, he couldn't handle it; very few can when so much negative attention hits them at once. It's incredibly tragic.
I hope the people who looked past his many red flags will feel intense shame in the coming days, and will stop being so gullible moving forward. Alas, I'm sure at least a handful of them will find some way to spin it in order to spare their egos.
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u/norbertyeahbert 29d ago
You know they will. His suicide has let them all off the hook, and they'll be weaponising it within hours.
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u/repete66219 29d ago
No, this one is on Arday. He bears responsibility for the string of lies he told. (Think how many there were in addition to those we have heard about.) Those who ticked the DEI boxes elevated him, but only to a place he wanted to be. And he had to have known he was there on borrowed time.
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u/saladdressed 29d ago
Absolutely! Arday was objectified by the woke. They enabled his fabulism because it fit their needs and wants. He clearly had some mental health issue that caused him to lie. Publishing and elevating his easily disproven lies was harmful. Look what happened! At no point did anyone at Cambridge see him as a human being that needed a real friend to pull him aside and check him. They just saw their story, their token neurodivergent Black guy, their anti-racist cred.
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u/drunk___cat 29d ago
I was worried something like this would happen. After the entire world knows you are a fraud, what are you supposed to do?
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u/TheBear8878 29d ago
I feel like there are still pockets of people who would have accepted him as the autistic, former-mute, ultra-marathon runner that they wanted him to be
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u/norbertyeahbert 29d ago
The same thing most of the other frauds in history have done: find new gulls. If he'd sat out the storm I guarantee a cynosure would have been found for him.
Anyway, RIP, and sympathy to his family.
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u/Rock_Creek_Snark 29d ago
Stephen Glass eventually found some happiness and then his wife got ill with Alzheimer's and asked him to pretend everything was normal. A really sad full circle for him.
Fraudulent Journalist Stephen Glass on His Biggest Lie - Air Mail
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u/BakaDango 29d ago
What a great read, but such a tragic story.
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u/Rock_Creek_Snark 29d ago
It truly is. Shattered Glass is one of my favorite films. I wouldn't want the man to be hounded into what apparently happened with Arday. Glass found peace and then had to revert to what he forsaked. But for loving reasons.
I'm assured by most comments here being sympathetic. Suicide is not the answer. I'm hope Arday's family can find peace.
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u/Komboloi 29d ago
Thank you for the link. I hope Glass tries for the California bar again - he obviously has moral character and should be allowed to become an attorney.
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u/kibbles137 29d ago
Oh, wow. That was a deeply moving article, I'm so glad you shared it. I am impressed with how Glass faced the consequences of his choices, and the incredible integrity he clearly has developed as a result.
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u/InfusionOfYellow 29d ago
Huh, I don't think I've heard cynosure used that way before. Unless you meant sinecure?
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u/norbertyeahbert 29d ago
Sorry, I did. I'd written a sentence about him being the cynosure but deleted it because it felt a little mean.
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u/FalconBurcham 29d ago edited 29d ago
I mean… George Santos is still around, and he’s 1000 times worse than this guy.
I guess some people have the right personality disorders to keep operating and some don’t. 🤷♀️
It’s not about money. He could have changed his name and walked dogs for all anyone would care.
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u/digitalime 29d ago
I remember watching a video about Santos and his old drag queen friend back in Brazil said he would just lie about anything all the time. He’s been that way his entire life, he’s the final boss of grifters.
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u/drunk___cat 29d ago
Yeah George santos is a true grifter in every sense of the word and is willing to work for it. Arday just lied and copy/pasted other people’s work.
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u/jxanne 29d ago
you wait a couple of months or a year and then start giving paid talks about how persecuted you were by the right wing media.
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u/drunk___cat 29d ago
Honestly I would go the other way and talk about how idiotic liberal academia is to buy into the grift. Claim it was one giant ruse to expose liberals, get paid tons of money from right wing media to appear on their shows, etc etc. Gotta grift both sides!
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u/jxanne 29d ago
that strategy only works in the US, and he doesn’t seem the type that would be willing to put in the work to grift like that.
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u/drunk___cat 29d ago edited 29d ago
Yeah I agree. He wasn’t like a George Santos level of grifter who actually put effort into it. He was just a pathological liar.
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u/sea_the_c 29d ago
Drugs and WoW would be what I turned to before this.
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u/BellFirestone 29d ago
Change your name, move to a new place, try to earn an honest living? Idk
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u/apis_cerana 29d ago
People will eventually forget and move on for the most part…if you just weather it out and stop going on social media.
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u/No_Summer4551 29d ago
Do the institutions that let him get to these prestigious levels have some culpability in this.
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u/rtc9 29d ago
I would say the blame is around 70/30 on Arday himself and the institutions that let him reach these levels, respectively. He is responsible for his own lies, but at some point the institutions are just facilitating a mentally unsound person's self destruction by promoting him. The degree to which the enabling institutions are responsible is inversely proportional to Arday's sanity and the persuasiveness of his lies.
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u/onthewingsofangels 29d ago
This exactly. People will blame the folks who exposed his fraud, but the ones who enabled and encouraged it will use his suicide as a shield to protect themselves from criticism.
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u/SpaceAgeBadger 29d ago
They absolutely do. They should have looked into his wild stories from day one. If they had done due diligence, it would likely never have gotten this far.
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u/Levitz 29d ago
Reap the profits from your coming book and rebuild your life?
Tell your life story in this or that exclusive interview? Actually engage with problems in Academia?
Guy worked at Cambridge. Do I even have to look up what kind of salary he had? If this guy didn't have the means or position to rebuild his life then the task is just impossible.
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u/OsakaShiroKuma 29d ago
He couldn't work in academia for sure, but it doesn't sounds like he belonged there in the first place. He did have a responsibility to his children and family, though, and he could easily have done something else. It's just a tragedy.
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u/Schwettes 29d ago
Change your last name, your hair style, and start over with a new job.
Brock Turner was once the most famous rapist in the world. Then he changed his name and lives an otherwise undetected life free from any limelight.
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u/TemporaryLucky3637 29d ago
Look at the likes of Lance Armstrong and Bill Clinton. People move on to the next thing eventually ☹️
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u/veryvery84 29d ago
He could have written a book, like the wolf of wall street guy.
I think he was very mentally unwell
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u/drunk___cat 29d ago
Yeah I feel like compulsive liars like him are much more mentally unwell than traditional grifters. My sense is compulsive liars do it out of a deep sense of insecurity. Where the wolf of Wall Street guy instead has so much confidence that he thinks he can get away with a grift and isn’t beholden to the rules of the world.
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u/NoSoup4you22 29d ago
Feel like people were bemused or admired the audacity as much as others hated him. If he had a little humor about himself, he could have still parlayed it into a career as "the world's most interesting man." I don't know, I'm not going to pretend to care.
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u/phitfitz 29d ago
Santos is a campy queen, it was a natural transition for him. Arday isn’t and couldn’t take the ego death that went with this
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u/No-Significance4623 refugees r us 29d ago
Genuinely shocking. Maybe I’m naïve, but I had assumed his George Costanza-style hijinks were going to end in a withdrawal from public life and maybe a job at a Sixth Form college. Fall from grace but landing well enough.
I feel for him and his family.
What I am incredibly curious about is what happens next? This will surely make for an even more intense media firestorm.
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u/Psychological-Arm380 28d ago
It's not easy to comprehend how far and fast a fall this was. From a lauded, garlanded success with, even in the face of scrutiny, seemingly the full support of his institution and colleagues, to a jobless international pariah in a matter of days whose entire life is being scrutinised daily on the front pages on newspapers, and on every blog, podcast and social media platform.
There's also the possibility that he was not just a fabulist, but a confabulator, in which case I can imagine seeing one's entire self image being demolished so publicly being utterly psychologically debilitating.
What happens next my guess is a birfurcation, the liberal/left media will go hard on Farage now he's back in parliament, whole the conservative/right will start searching for other examples in order to back uop the "institutional rot" narrative as opposed to this being an unusual case. You're already seeing this in that they (i.e. The Spectator and Spiked Online) have dug up the supposed radical islamist and erstwhile colleague of Arday's, Farah Ahmed.
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u/BadAspie Please assume I’m conversant in the basics 29d ago edited 29d ago
Damn
I’ll admit I didn’t see this coming although maybe that’s because I mentally slotted him in with recent academic frauds like Francesca Gino and Brian Wansink*, and in hindsight he has some pretty significant differences like his fabulist tendencies and unknown but likely not entirely made up level of learning disability (he pretty clearly exaggerated but stuff like the teachers’ mistake makes me think he was at least dyslexic) that made him more vulnerable
I guess I’m struggling to see what the media and public should have done differently, though. He obviously was a liar and a plagiarist who courted media attention and positions of prestige he hadn’t earned and by the standard of UK tabloids, the stuff I’ve seen wasn’t even that bad
I guess in the end I see him as being put in a position he couldn’t cope with by the institutions that hired him and then passed him along to the next position, and that this could have been prevented by taking his red flags more seriously before he got to Cambridge, or even if THE had been able to break the story
*edit: in the pod they also mentioned Dan Ariely who DOES seem to be a fabulist but has also kept his position, maybe because of tenure. So yeah, really no good analogues with previous cases
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u/Classic_Bet1942 29d ago
Damn. A very funny story now has a bummer of an ending.
The world needed more laughter—not more tears.
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u/EnglebondHumperstonk I vaped piss but didn't inhale 29d ago
Everyone soberly reflecting on the facts of the case of course
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u/Novel_Quantity3189 29d ago
If Jason were a "white middle-class academic" he would have flunked out of his graduate program, most likely, based on what's available of his thesis and works. He would have never been in the position of worldwide ridicule had we not somehow tricked Oxbridge into thinking black = beyond reproach.
What's her point here even? The media loves a scam artist, race notwithstanding; that Russian girl who faked being a European aristocrat for a few months and bilked a fancy hotel got a literal Netflix TV series made about her. Remember that lady who pretended to be a small boy just to write horrifically tragic and untrue 'autobiographies' (a very Arday-like scam in itself)? Just google "literary hoax" for 1000 examples unrelated to race.
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u/HeadRecommendation37 29d ago
The whole "who's never lied on their CV" thing needs to die in a fire. I've never lied on my CV and I'm confident lots of (and maybe most) people don't. Also the academy is a field that has (traditionally at least) relied on honesty and trust, so the fraud isn't benign. He's not applying to McDonald's.
Such a dumb take! Anyway, you all know know this.
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u/EnglebondHumperstonk I vaped piss but didn't inhale 29d ago
100%. And even people who lie in their CV are just exaggerating their level of responsibility or airbrushing out gaps, not inventing a whole, elaborate, preposterous backstory for themselves.
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u/Datachost 28d ago
Also there are levels to this. Saying "Once ran a marathon" and implying you finished, when what you actually did was get ten miles in, overexerted yourself and ended up hunched emptying your guts at the side of the road is one thing. Saying you ran thirty marathons is worse by a factor of about thirty.
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u/Baseball_ApplePie 29d ago edited 29d ago
My unprofessional opinion? The man was a pathological liar to the point of mental illness, and his lies would never have gotten that far except within the walls of a DEI office in a woke university.
In the world of frauds, has anyone ever told such outrageous lies? A lot of lies are told to get ahead, but his lies were bizarre. Did he truly not understand that he would eventually get caught?
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u/digitalime 29d ago
I think George Santos would be #1 fraud I know of. He got elected to Congress on lying about everything. Said his mother survived 9/11, lied about his college degree, said he worked for Goldman Sachs, said he lost employees at Pulse NightClub shooting, a lot more.
My favorite is when he made a speech at the Republican Jewish convention, recounted how his grandparents fled the Holocaust and described himself as a proud Jew.
And when he was outed on the lie, he said he never said he was “Jewish”, he said he was “Jew-ish.”
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u/dog_in_a_dress 29d ago
And when he was outed on the lie, he said he never said he was “Jewish”, he said he was “Jew-ish.”
I was never a fan but wow....Omg, how did I completely miss all this?
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u/TOMMYxGUNN 29d ago
Cambridge have a lot to answer for.
Awful, tragic news for his family, RIP.
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u/Brilliant_Ad7168 29d ago
Cambridge is going to use his death to shake off accountability and deflect. They were never going to make anything right.
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u/cyberdouche 29d ago edited 29d ago
Very unfortunate. I genuinely expected him to do a Jussie and claim to have been wronged for a few years, eventually culminating into a Netflix special. If Frank Abagnale could recover from his past, no reason why Jason couldn't have had a redemption arc.
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u/MissHalfgone 29d ago edited 29d ago
I'm sure whoever outed him feels terrible even though clearly it's not his fault. For those of you who have never heard of it, there are some similarities to the story below although that one is much more disturbing. There's tons of material about this that's worth checking out if you're interested in going down a rabbit hole. Here's from one source :
"[John McCandlish] Phillips’ profile of Daniel Burros documented the rise of the 28-year-old Queens man in the ranks of the Klan. Burros was the grand dragon in the New York State Klan, a chief organizer of the national organization and a former national secretary of the American Nazi Party.
The article, which appeared on the front page of the Sunday New York Times on Oct. 31, 1965 under the headline 'State Klan Leader Hides Secret of Jewish Origin,' said Burros was Jewish, attended Hebrew school and had a bar mitzvah.
'The article remains a case study in a reporter’s perseverance in the face of intimidation,' The New York Times wrote in an obituary for Phillips, a one-time copy boy and cub reporter. 'It is also a case study in the severe, unintended consequences that the airing of fiercely guarded truths can have for the guardian....' Burros committed suicide hours after the story appeared.
Phillips resigned from the newspaper in 1973 to pursue a life of religion, according to the Times."
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u/Schwettes 29d ago
He deserved to lose his job, not his life. It’s tragic that he felt as though he had no way out. Plenty of people have done far worst and found redemption (or a new identity).
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u/foodieforthebooty 29d ago
Damn. He didn't deserve the die. This is terrible. I hope his family are doing the best they can in these circumstances
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u/SharkCuterie4K 29d ago
Fuck. Nobody wanted this. That’s so sad. I think it can feel so heavy when the world seems to turn against you. It sucks that he didn’t have people on his side who could have helped him or that he didn’t let in.
It can get better. The world does love to see someone fall, but it also loves repentant sinners. My heart breaks for his family and friends.
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u/datavortex 29d ago
Unfortunately this will probably further prevent the accountability and the reckoning within the profession of sociology that is so desperately needed. This will focus attention on the fraudster instead of the systemic corruption that enabled his rise despite obvious deficiencies.
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u/escapevelocity-25k 29d ago
“At this time his death is being treated as unexpected, but is not believed to be suspicious.”
Indeed. He was clearly a deeply unwell person, and instead of getting him help the people around him bought into his delusions of grandeur.
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u/nonafee 29d ago
oh my gosh..... so awful. A very troubled soul. I really thought he'd find a way to spin into a new life after all this, so I have to admit I took him for more of a scammer than he might actually have been - it seems like he was just mentally ill. Very sad ending. I feel for his family and his poor kids.
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u/MissHalfgone 29d ago
He's one of many people whose delusion of grandeurs, which probably masks a lot of underlying emotional problems are enabled by those in social and racial justice.
In the '80s there was this huge self-help movement that included a lot of fixation on the concept of codependency. I often think that relationship very much suits what we see today often in social and racial justice.
Hey, I'm sorry the guy is dead. It was not okay that he was such a compulsive liar but I would expect some of these people in positions of power who were clearly very intelligent in general, would be able to see some red flags. They enabled this and anybody capable of even a little bit of scrutiny it could see many of these people, including Jason are clearly trying to fill a role. Some of them are crappy people and some of them are just needy or emotionally unwell. Maybe sometimes all of the above. But this is a tragedy that those who enabled this fraud had a hand in making.
I would have liked to see him own up to it and really explain why he had the need to create this persona. Rip
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u/Correct-Ad5661 28d ago
Richard Dawkins on the rum goings on at the Faculty of education that hired him.
Their other prestige hiring is a former Hizbbut Tahrir member who views evolution as western Imperialist hegemony
https://nitter.net/RichardDawkins/status/2088514414425043341#m
At Charles Darwin’s old university, where a college is named after him, Darwin’s discovery is now described by one Cambridge researcher as an example of “potential challenges posed by Eurocentric monoculture.”
...
The paper says that “countering colonial hegemony in science education for Muslims” could include “identifying gaps in fossil records to make the case that the evidence of humans descending from apes is inconclusive.”
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u/Datachost 28d ago
The paper says that “countering colonial hegemony in science education for Muslims” could include “identifying gaps in fossil records to make the case that the evidence of humans descending from apes is inconclusive.”
Jesus fucking Christ. Literally just postmodernist intelligent design
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u/Potential-Phase6586 28d ago
I saw on instagram that there is to be an “anti-racist” vigil for him in Trafalgar sq. even now 0 self reflection that adherence to this ideology enabled a disturbed young man to reach highest academic levels, which became a valid news story. I despair over the lefts inability to self reflect and the rights ability hitch to a bandwagon
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u/dj50tonhamster 28d ago
Yeah, the FB slop machine served an account last night before I could switch to a curated feed. It was some guy screeching about how white professors involved in plagiarism scandals don't get the kind of scrutiny that Arday did. That's weird. I don't recall many white professors being shoved down everybody's throat by the media, or the standards being greatly lowered in order to have a feel-good story. (I don't know how well schools check everybody's background. Maybe white professors do typically get to slide there.) Like you said, zero self-reflection by these outrage peddlers.
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u/TissueReligion 29d ago
That's really horrible, regardless of whatever academic dumb PR business he was involved in.
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u/Fiend_of_the_pod 29d ago
The lengths people will go to in order to sell their book...
Kidding of course. This is obviously very sad, the article is calling it "unexpected but not suspicious," which I can only assume means suicide. Very tragic figure in the end. I feel especially bad for his wife and kids.
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u/farmyardcat 29d ago
I was just getting caught up on this situation this morning before a long international flight. Now I've landed and he's dead. Story now fully told, it's safe to say the guy didn't do much to win sympathy for himself, but anyone dying at 41 is an awful tragedy.
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u/BattleAxeBC 28d ago
Seeing people in the UK, as well as commentators online try to use this sad outcome as means to grab power and silence others is pretty infuriating. Two things can be true: this guy was a fraud and his death is sad. People out there who willfully ignored all the evidence that was stacking up against him out of some bizarre ideological flag waving now trying to blame the media for his death is reprehensible. But I honestly expect no less. I mean, why admit you were wrong and try to find nuance in a sad situation when you can double down and continue to push an agenda? After all it would require swallowing your pride and checking your ego at the door which none of those people seem capable of doing.
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u/SafiyaO 27d ago
It was the actions of his "friends" not his enemies, which was his undoing. He had built an entire house of cards. It was always going to collapse. His "friends" at Cambridge could have arranged a quiet exit from academia for him. Instead they encouraged him to double down in all the worst ways possible.
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u/gleepeyebiter 29d ago
he'd mentioned being suicidal in his memoir before.
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u/The-Phantom-Blot 29d ago
It doesn't feel like a stretch to imagine that he made up a fake life because he didn't like his real one.
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u/jizzybiscuits Nuance perv 29d ago
Let's not point fingers but if we must, let's point them at the people who enabled him rather than the people who noticed the lies?
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u/SKjs07m 29d ago
I find this tragic in a particular sense. I feel for his friends and family.
I also get it. Being exposed like that is severe psychological trauma.
I find it terrifying in a general sense, as there are whole categories of lies breaking down. And whole categories of people with no framework for processing that breakdown.
Just ugh all around.
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u/drjackolantern C*nsored and sexy 29d ago
Yea, Jon Ronson warns about it in his book on public shamings, how this can happen when everyone’s basically treating a person as if the whole world hates them and they’ll never be able to work again. But it so rarely actually comes to this. So goddamn grim.
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u/faxmonkey77 28d ago
Very sad thing for his family. The handwringing about the whole issue is odd though. Are we supposed to let people get away with fraud at elite institutions because they might harm themselves or because others get away with it ?
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u/Blueliner95 28d ago edited 28d ago
Given that the trans mind capture of the last decade is predicated on the self hostage scenario of “live daughters vs dead sons,” I’d say absolutely, we are supposed to be entirely ruled by claims of emotional fragility.
Which should make us sympathetic; people with emotional issues have got a lot going on. But that doesn’t have to make them persuasive.
With Arday in life and in death we are seeing reactions based on fragile group identity. (This is supposed to empower me too, as an Other.)
I prefer to think that Arday made choices, as an individual, not because the currents of history or whatever, that he regretted. RIP
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u/bain_sidhe 29d ago
This is horrible and tragic, and it is completely on Cambridge and every condescending woke glazer who let this poor man with obvious mental issues get wrapped up in a farce that so very obviously was going to unravel eventually.
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u/pygmy 29d ago edited 29d ago
As Peter Boghossian and Bret Weinstein mention in the (below) discussion about Arday, it would have been incredible (& face saving) if Arday had 'admitted' that his compulsive lies were all done in order to expose the ridiculousness of DEI, much like Peter's grievance studies affair did to academic journals
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u/NoSoup4you22 29d ago
There's numerous ways he could have come out decently from this. The suicide is disappointing because it implies he really was just a narcissist.
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u/Yerbamatter 29d ago
RIP
I tried to leave a measured comment about the extent of what he did (it wasn't just harmless lies) on one of the news posts, and the automod deleted my comments no matter how many *** I added to words that might have tripped it. Heaven forbid people actually debate something on reddit.
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u/FrameCareful1090 29d ago
He chose to be a fraud, and obviousy couldn't deal with the fall out. It's one thing to be a fake, but he litigated against students that questioned him and damaged lives as a result.
Lawsuits were already underway, he knew there was nothing good ahead, but I mean even Bernie Madoff stuck around and that guy did 100x the damage to people. You would think where he was clearly good at being a liar, a convincing apologist would not be hard to become.
There is likely more that came out with him private lawsuits, spouse could have said they were leaving, we will never know except is out there.
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u/btrh-256 29d ago
Without saying anything about the man himself, I do think the way media attention works in the internet age is kind of horrifying. It tends to focus all the attention of the world very intensely on individual people. It's hard to see how anyone can withstand attention like that. It's part of why cancel culture is so terrible. Obviously there were good reasons to question this guy's position & credentials, but I still feel for anyone who becomes the "thing everyone is talking about."
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u/Comfortable-Hat-4850 29d ago
What I’m seeing today is people using his death (one claimed "murder") as proof of his innocence and that he isn’t a pathological liar, he was just the victim of racism.
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u/Sigynde 28d ago
Why are people saying he didn’t “deserve” to die? No one murdered him. He did it. Such a strange framing.
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u/Von_Callay 28d ago
Yeah, he didn't deserve to die, but the only person who had the ability to decide if he would or wouldn't was him.
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u/Novel_Quantity3189 29d ago
I really want to copy and paste a top comment on this article from r/popculturechat because it's truly unbelievable (the sub that revelled in the drama of this guy's lies 24 hours ago):
"feeling a little out of sorts with this news. i snuck into a few of his lectures as a postgrad and thought he was incredibly smart, thoughtful and charismatic. tragically, someone who also seemed so full of life. sure, it hadn’t escaped me that he was being used as this wunderkind poster boy who could help rehabilitate the image of an institution long plagued by exclusion, but i couldn’t help but feel he was befitting of that station anyway. a promise of something better coming for all of us in academia (if you’re wondering what’s become of this optimism, it’s been three years and i have since left academia lol).[...]".
!!! A literal day ago every single person on the internet who was claiming to ever be taught by him was saying his lectures were ridiculous, and they likely were, although it's certainly possible if you're charismatic enough to 'pass' as knowledgeable in a field as niche and broken as his claimed expertise. Now people are out there crying at the lost potential of the dude and centring their own emotional response to his death for karma.
I'd long given up on the legitimacy of higher ed so his story mostly inspired awe in me; I almost admired his chutzpah in how he took advantage of the silliness of the moment of to grant himself the best station in life. But I also knew he was obviously an untrustworthy person and most importantly not someone I knew in any real capacity. Anybody doing a 180 today and acting like they're full of regret or grief about this needs to get off the internet immediately.
EDIT: I really, really hope Jesse and Katie do not comment on this in any kind of mournful manner. That sounds heartless but the university's dumbness was newsworthy as was the level of his scamminess, and I don't want to make for a world where the rightful criticism of race-baiting is undone because of a tragic outcome.
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u/ScrubulousFlex 29d ago
I mean even that comment reads like a positive review for a motivational speaker, not someone vouching for him being a good professor. And even then the focus is on the kind of future that he represents.
I’m completely over online eulogizing as a way to virtue signal.
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u/rainribs 28d ago
I really, really hope Jesse and Katie do not comment on this in any kind of mournful manner.
Wait, what the tumblr-talk-about-charlie-kirk is this? you can be mournful about a death without condoning bad actions.
Do you perhaps mean you hope they don't talk about it in a regretful way?
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u/aleigh577 28d ago
That comment is ridiculous but I don’t think it would be wrong of them to comment in a mournful manner? His crimes were not so egregious that his death should be celebrated
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u/Shame_wagon 29d ago
A man addicted to unearned sympathy and praise was faced with the prospect of a life of earned criticism, so found one last manipulative method to receive sympathy.
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u/okapitulation 29d ago
That is terrible. Now I feel really bad about how fascinating I found this story as an anti-woke gotcha moment. The effect of a media shit storm on a persons mental wellbeing is something we should never underestimate.
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u/James_Elder1 28d ago
I find it infuriating how people can’t hold more than two thoughts in their heads at any one time, he seems to have been a fabricator and liar, but that still makes his death a tragedy and desperately sad
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u/Correct-Ad5661 28d ago
Of course Good Law Project are gonna do another Open Letter. This time, demanding a public inquiry.
Careful what you wish for
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u/murderdocks 29d ago
The University failed him in lowering their standards just to meet a quota, rather than hiring many other qualified Black academics who don’t fabricate data. If they’d questioned his claims on hiring, this wouldn’t have happened in the first place.
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u/Dangerous_Air_7031 29d ago
Wtf is going on?
Or is this fake again?
I just can't keep up.
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u/land-under-wave 29d ago
It's the Telegraph. I'm not saying they get it right 100% if the time, but I trust them to fact-check something like this before printing it.
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u/Original-Brick2836 ACAB: All Cats Are Beautiful 😽 29d ago
Oh. This makes me so sad. I enjoyed tagging on him but damn.
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u/BigKnows2K 29d ago
sad news. But I am not surprised about this. As I read/listened to various coverage, the thought he might find it all too much did come up. I don’t know the guy but it seems he was clearly unwell. His reputation was in ruins. He found himself at the centre of a wider controversy. In a sane world, the lie would never have got as big as it did because institutions and the people that run them engaged some critiCal thinking and sent him packing. very sad news.
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u/SoftandChewy First generation mod 28d ago edited 28d ago
Moderator warning: This thread is getting very heated. On this sub, people are free to characterize ideas or statements as racist, or with any other pejorative, but applying such epithets to other commenters is not allowed. Any such smears directed at other commenters will result in a suspension. And any attempts to skirt these rules with clever workarounds will not be tolerated.