Truth, shame & the search for blame

There was a stream of articles and commentary in the weeks leading up to Jason Arday’s resignation as Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge; the stream became a deluge in the weeks following, and the deluge almost an ocean in the wake of his death. I followed the story avidly—did you?

First, I laughed: stories of inflated achievements invited ridicule, and the pomposity of an elite institution was put on display. The academic emperor was exposed as decidedly underdressed.

Then, I cried: who can imagine the loneliness, the humiliation and the intolerable burden of shame Arday experienced in his final days, and the darkness of his final hours?

In much of the writing, before and after the moment of tragedy, a question was asked: who is responsible? Many writing before Arday’s death took the academic guild to task for appearing to elevate someone beyond what their published work merited. In an outpouring of grief after Arday’s death, various speakers at a vigil described it as a "murder" and a "lynching"—evocative language that played on the racial aspect of this story.

Arday’s tenure at Cambridge began with the institution drawing attention to his appointment as the youngest black Professor in its long history; it ended after allegations of plagiarism put forward by a fellow academic known for extremely controversial comments about race.

The pressure

Some, like Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury and former Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, have written of the uncomfortable pressure those of us from minority ethnic backgrounds experience when elevated to high-status positions within elite institutions. As he observes, "tokenism sets people up to fail".

And, Williams continues, we play our part in that: "'Be exceptional! Astonish us!' is the cry that goes up from media and public when someone from a "non-standard" background arrives in the spotlight."

Many in our nation, acutely aware of the wrongness of racism, longing for feel-good stories of success from sectors of society which have known discrimination, wanted Jason Arday in the limelight. In Williams’s telling, this resembles nothing so much as a line from the U2 song, "Who’s gonna ride your wild horses?"

"Well you stole it, ’cause I needed the cash
And you killed it, ’cause I wanted revenge
Well you lied to me, ’cause I asked you to
But baby, can we still be friends?"

There is more than a grain of truth to this.

The media

Others, like Will Self, have turned their anger against those in the media who wrote the stories, and those of us who read them.

It is in addressing the latter that Self’s piece—at times disjointed by its own fury—is most perceptive, uncomfortable and revealing. Writers need readers, and readers desire stories of a certain kind, and the remorseless escalation of revelations around Arday’s academic work and personal narrative resulted in a pressure too great to bear.

For Self, Arday’s mental health, and vulnerabilities as a neurodiverse person, were ignored, and both writers and readers are culpable. As he points out, "the public interest is not the same thing as the public being interested."

But we ought to be very, very concerned with where this anger leads. Even as Self, and many others with him, identify the brutal public shaming at work around Arday’s downfall and death, they perpetuate it in turning their anger on journalists and writers. Self correctly diagnoses the problem: because of our evil hearts, what the public is interested in is not the same as the public interest. His solution—impounding journalists’ laptops, accusing writers by name with a degree of vitriol—endangers those he attacks. More than that, it is incoherent.

Self pledges himself to a scrutiny of this situation, and all those who contributed to it, in a stirring peroration:

"…we will pursue this story for as long as necessary, we will follow the chronology, we will identify the participants, we will examine the comparators. Most importantly: we will distinguish facts from allegations and allegations from fantasies."

What else does he think the journalists involved in reporting on Arday were themselves doing?

Complicating any straightforward narrative of racism, it was The Guardian, and not just right-leaning publications, who carried some of the most important investigations; it was Lanre Bakare, a minority ethnic journalist, who contributed some well-researched and well-crafted pieces. They were using the tools we expect and need journalists to use: dispassionate investigation, verifying stories rather than simply taking people at their word, searching for evidence. Language of "murder" and "lynching", though emotionally understandable, goes far too far.

And at this point, conversations about who is responsible cannot minimise Arday’s agency, positioning him merely as a cipher for a wider conversation about racial equality or neurodiversity. Neither Williams nor Self do this, to their credit—indeed, they cannot.

What redress will there be for Paula Zwozdiak-Myers, whose work Arday appears to have plagiarised in his doctoral thesis? Or for Jack Grove, a Times Higher Education Supplement writer whose enquiries into Arday’s work resulted in being reported to the police?

Circulating on social media has been Arday’s wish that, to change the world, he would "take a thread and a needle and… interweave love into our society." Amen to that, but, as the Black Eyed Peas once sang, "If you never know truth, then you never know love."

Seeking to know and communicate the truth of a situation cannot be wrong, and those who did that as part of their journalistic calling must not be blamed.

Words matter

Our words matter, and cutting corners with the truth is never acceptable, not even when other people do it. I tremble at the words of the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 12v36: "But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken." And thought, and typed, and posted on social media, and submitted as part of academic work, and said out loud in media interviews.

In our empathy, sorrow and grief at a tragic death, we must not act as if empty words don’t really count, or as if truth is an acceptable casualty in daily life.

Who is responsible? Williams and Self are not wrong to leave us asking what part we have played, as media consumers in an algorithm-driven, click-seeking attention economy. Elite institutions, in the world of academia and media, are undoubtedly asking those questions—as will all those close to or connected with Jason Arday, whose family and loved ones must be in our prayers.

And prayer is the place I found myself left in, a couple of mornings ago.

Morning Prayer begins with confession of sin—I position myself before God as the miserable offender I really am, in whom there is no health. And immediately after that prayer, the words of absolution begin: "Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who desires not the death of a sinner…"

Psalm 102 was the psalm appointed for that morning. The psalmist laments, in verse 8: "All day long my enemies taunt me; those who rail against me use my name as a curse." The experience of public shaming is a horror. Who can we turn to? The Lord, who, in verse 17, "will respond to the prayer of the destitute; he will not despise their plea."

He does not desire the death of a sinner, but rather that they may turn from their wickedness and live.

Lord, have mercy on us, and on our culture, that we may turn to Him, and discover the consolation and freedom and life that He offers in Christ.