Jason Arday was found unresponsive at an address in Battersea, south London, on Friday afternoon and pronounced dead at the scene. The Metropolitan Police said only that a 41-year-old man had died, declining to name him in line with its policy, and that the death was being treated as unexpected but was not believed to be suspicious.
Arday had resigned the previous week as Cambridge's professor of sociology of education. He was appointed in 2023 at the age of 37, and the university described him then as its youngest ever Black professor.
The scrutiny that preceded the resignation became public last month. Nathan Cofnas, a former Cambridge philosophy researcher who left the university after his criticism of its diversity programmes drew protests, said he had found instances of plagiarism in Arday's work. On 24 July The Times published an analysis of Arday's 2015 doctoral thesis identifying passages it described as identical or near-identical to an earlier paper by another researcher. Claims about his life outside the academy were questioned too — that he had raised £5.5m for charity, that he had run 600 miles in six days and 30 marathons in 35 days. He later said the 600 miles were covered over twelve days to allow rest, and that the money had been raised with the help of others.
He denied plagiarism throughout while acknowledging errors in his early work, which he attributed in part to autism and to a reliance on mimicry to make sense of information. Liverpool John Moores University, which awarded the 2015 doctorate, concluded that he had not plagiarised. Cambridge initially stood by him on the strength of that finding, then reversed course and opened an investigation, citing new information about his qualifications and honorary appointments. It has since announced an independent investigation into how he came to be appointed and a review of its hiring processes.
Arday's family, in a statement issued through his publisher Simon & Schuster UK, said they were in shock and that a campaign of misinformation had been too much for him. They said he had been subjected to three years of sustained abuse. His memoir, *Great and Unfortunate Things*, was published the same week he died.
Simon Baron-Cohen, who directs Cambridge's Autism Research Centre, said he had spoken to Arday on the morning of his death and that Arday felt unable to leave the house. Eamonn McCrystal, a friend from St Mary's University, Twickenham, said Arday had told him he felt destroyed and that his authorisation to travel to the United States had been revoked.
The prime minister, Andy Burnham, called the death a tragedy on so many levels and said it was a moment for reflection rather than for rushing to judgement. Scotland's first minister, John Swinney, said those who had made hard comments should now consider the impact of their words. The shadow communities secretary, James Cleverly, said a number of academic institutions had serious questions to answer. Jo Grady of the University and College Union and Daniel Kebede of the National Education Union both called for the harassment Arday faced to be investigated.
Why it is on the board
It was the most-read story on the BBC in Britain, and two British news videos about it were among the fastest-climbing in our collection the same morning, at roughly 5,100 and 2,600 views an hour. In the United States it was at the same time the most-read story on the New York Times. It reached two more of the ten lists we read that morning: it was first on Der Spiegel in Germany and tenth on Le Monde in France.
The four countries were not reading the same article. The BBC's most-read piece leads on the prime minister's response and gathers the reaction from unions, parliamentarians and Cambridge colleagues. The New York Times headline puts the questions on Cambridge itself, on race and on hiring. Der Spiegel's headline records only that he was found dead; Le Monde's names him as the university's youngest Black professor and ends on the accusation. CNN opens with the resignation days earlier; NPR opens with the plagiarism accusation.
Sourced from the BBC, CNN and NPR. The New York Times position is from its most-read ranking; that article is behind a paywall and was not read for this piece.