THE death of the sociologist and former Cambridge professor Dr Jason Arday was “not about clickbait or trying to score political points in a culture war”, the director of Theos, Chine McDonald, said on Sunday, after Dr Arday had been found unresponsive at his home on Friday.
Dr Arday, 41, who had been accused of plagiarism and had been closely scrutinised in widespread press coverage over the past few weeks, had resigned on 5 August as Professor of the Sociology of Education and as a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.
On his appointment in 2023, at the age of 37, he became the youngest Black professor in the university’s history.
In a post on social media, Ms McDonald wrote that she had met him “very briefly” when he spoke at the Greenbelt festival in 2024.
“I didn’t know him. But I hardly slept last night thinking about the horror of what’s happened and the heartbreak I feel for his family,” she wrote. “A wife now without her husband, two children without their dad. This is not a game to them, not about clickbait or trying to score political points in a culture war. This is their real life: life that is now changed forever.”
Ms McDonald concluded: “I hope and pray that God will bring them love and light and comfort, and people to hold them as they weep. I pray too for all those who reached out to Jason at his lowest and now must feel this tragedy so acutely.”
In a statement on its website, Greenbelt said that, in the middle of last month, Dr Arday had requested that references to him and his talk be removed from the website. “It was clear he was under intense pressure. We did so immediately out of respect for him and to honour his wishes. We are devastated by what has unfolded over the last month.”
On Sunday on Radio 4, a clip from one of Dr Arday’s 2021 Lent Talks, in which he spoke about his Christian faith, was played.
“My own outlook on life has very much been shaped by the belief that a greater power has cradled my hopes, dreams, fears and aspirations and brought them all to fruition,” he said.
“For me personally, hope has been a strong tenet in my life, particularly when I think about how I navigate difficulty. My faith very much guides me in the mantra that no two days are the same, and that hope can always be found in a new day. As with any human being who walks in faith, there have been times when I have questioned the presence of God, particularly in dark moments when challenges have seemed insurmountable.”
Dr Arday served on the board of the Oasis Charitable Trust from January 2022 to March 2023. The charity’s founder, the Revd Steve Chalke, wrote on social media on Saturday: “Though his time as a board member with us was only brief, on stepping down, he kindly continued to support our work as an ambassador and through creating opportunities for our students. So thank you gentle Jason. Our prayer is that you will find peace in the arms of the God of love and acceptance — in your escape from the whirlpool of misinformation, media scrutiny and public judgement with no sense of compassion or thought for its impact on you.”
The Moderator of the United Reformed Church (URC), the Revd Neil Thorogood, said in a statement on Saturday: “Critical thinking and seeking to get to the truth are fundamentals to our God-given desire to discover and learn. Many will need to understand how fair such scrutiny of Jason Arday’s work was. When does reasonable questioning become something brutal and cruel?”
More than 20,100 people signed a now-closed petition, “Stand in solidarity with Jason Arday”, on the website of the Good Law Project.
A statement read: “His remarkable journey, scholarship and leadership should be celebrated, not overshadowed by campaigns built on allegations that have been comprehensively rejected.” It continued to describe the accusations of plagiarism as “entirely false” and a “smear campaign”.
“When a distinguished Black academic is repeatedly subjected to baseless allegations after being fully exonerated, it signals there is an attempt to undermine Black people who hold positions of influence,” it read.
Signatories include the theologian Professor Robert Beckford; the cross-bencher Lord Hastings; Lord Boateng, the former politician who chaired the Archbishops’ Racial Justice Commission; and Lord Rees of Easton, a former Mayor of Bristol.
Since Dr Arday’s death, a letter to the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, and the Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, demanding a public inquiry, has been published on the website. It has so far attracted more than 80,000 signatories.
It says: “There cannot be any doubt that Dr Arday’s tragic death was the direct, foreseeable and foreseen result of press harassment. A significant element in that harassment was the colour of his skin. Self-regulation of the press has comprehensively failed.
“Several weeks ago, Simon Baron-Cohen, director of Cambridge University’s Autism Research centre, warned publicly that ‘1 in 4 autistic people have planned or attempted suicide’ and talked of the ‘relentless bullying of a vulnerable autistic man’ which ‘raises safe-guarding issues’. Many of the signatories to this letter warned multiple media outlets privately that their relentless pursuit of Dr Arday risked his suicide.
“Two weeks of relentless harassment followed, continuing even after his resignation as a Professor when the reasonable public interest in the story had diminished or evaporated. Yesterday, Dr Arday died in the most tragic circumstances. His tragic death did not result from the allegations of plagiarism but from the press coverage.
“There cannot be any doubt that racism lay at the heart of this story.”
In an interview on Saturday, Mr Burnham described the death as “a tragedy on so many levels. It’s not a moment for any rushing to judgement. It’s a moment for reflection, I would say, reflecting on how things came to this.”