Investigate How Arday Was Promoted as Cambridge ‘Success Story’, Say Dons

University of Cambridge academics have demanded that the Jason Arday review considers the university’s culpability in promoting him as “a success story”.

In a letter to Chris Smith, Cambridge’s chancellor, more than 40 academics said the decision to make the late professor “highly visible, presenting his race, age, disability and personal biography as part of a major institutional ‘success’ story”, was directly connected to the “racialised, ableist and disproportionate hounding” he received.

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The university’s faculty of education published a 1,500-word press release on its website, heralding his “remarkable” journey in overcoming illiteracy in his late teens and the barriers that neurodivergent black people faced in academia.

Cambridge also invited the BBC to film Arday meeting the head of faculty days before he took up his post.

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In the letter, first reported by The Guardian, more than 40 professors, associate professors and fellows criticised the independent review commissioned by Cambridge following Arday’s death as inadequate.

They said the review “must establish who authorised and directed the university’s public promotion of Prof Arday” as well as “what assessment was made of the risks that accompanied it”.

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The independent review has been split into two parts. The first will examine whether the university could have done more to support Arday, looking at the support, interventions and protections available to him prior to his death.

It will be led by Nazir Afzal, the former prosecutor who took on the Rochdale child grooming gangs in 2012.

The second part will consider the wider context of Arday’s time at the university. This will include the recruitment of senior academic staff, mentoring and support arrangements, the university’s response to allegations of research misconduct, and the support available to academics subjected to “extraordinary public and media scrutiny”.

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