Calls for Public Inquiry Into Jason Arday ‘Witch Hunt’

Public figures and friends of Jason Arday have called for a public inquiry into media coverage surrounding the former Cambridge professor before his death.

Labour MP Diane Abbott and actress Jameela Jamil are among 30,000 signatories of a letter to the prime minister, which claims Arday’s death followed “two weeks of relentless harassment”.

The letter issued by group Good Law Project – which had been representing Arday after he stood down from his Cambridge role amid a plagiarism row – said many of its signatories had warned media outlets about the intensity of their reporting.

Lord Woolley, principal of Homerton College at Cambridge, said Arday had been subjected to a “vicious witch hunt”.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski, and Labour MPs Bell Ribiero-Addy, Clive Lewis and Nadia Whittome are among the politicians to have signed the statement, alongside former England footballer Eni Aluko, National Education Union general secretary Daniel Kebede, and broadcaster Carol Vorderman.

{snip}

Arday, 41, was found dead at an address in Battersea, south London, on Friday. He had resigned as a Cambridge professor of sociology of education on 5 August after allegations of plagiarism and questions about some of his achievements. He had denied the claims.

Liverpool John Moores University – which awarded Arday his PhD in 2015 – concluded that he had not plagiarised work.

The row first erupted after another academic – self-defined “race realist” Nathan Cofnas, who was sacked from his Cambridge role in 2024 – said he found numerous instances of plagiarism in the professor’s work. Cofnas’s post had been terminated amid a backlash to his view that under a true meritocracy black people would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment”.

{snip}

On 6 August Cambridge announced an independent investigation into Arday’s appointment.

{snip}

But one of the academic’s friends, Sir Simon Baron-Cohen, told Times Radio on Sunday it should go ahead to “see what we learn from it” because “this is the whole purpose of investigations”.

{snip}