UK academic’s death exposes the ills of trial by media

The unfortunate loss of a life last week has taken the UK by storm. The death of Jason Arday, once Cambridge University’s youngest Black professor, after he became the subject of hounding by the media is a tragedy by all measures.

His story attracted media interest as allegations were made that he plagiarized parts of his Ph.D. thesis. As Cambridge University started to review the plagiarism and the tenure it afforded him, race and merit married with hate and the case attracted widespread media attention, even after he resigned his post. Arday was found dead last Friday.

The origins of the hounding of the professor, which helped ignite the media frenzy, were publicized in a blog post by Nathan Cofnas, who was sacked by Cambridge’s Emmanuel College two years ago for writing that there would be close to zero Black professors at Harvard if they were appointed purely on intellectual merit.

Forensic scrutiny of Arday’s academic work, his appointment, his qualifications and later his race, his childhood, his charity work, his health and even his timekeeping became part of an onslaught that the professor — or likely any other person — could not handle. The legitimate public interest questions could surely have been asked in ways that focused more on the standards of Cambridge University and its obligations to its students, rather than focusing on Arday’s life.

Until it is clarified what happened in the run-up to Arday’s death, we must be wary and wake up to the new world we live in. Trial by media and, worse, by social media has become the norm. It appears likely that the verdict of the crowd will overpower and replace due diligence and the legal process. The old norm of everyone being innocent until proven guilty is under threat. Empathy and humanity are in increasingly short supply in the age of the megaphone of social media.

Arday had denied the allegations against him but acknowledged making mistakes. He resigned from his job in early August. Yet the allegations continued to draw huge media interest and, as his family explained, this metamorphosed into a campaign of misinformation and harassment that was clearly too much.

Cambridge University rushed to condemn the attacks on Arday, with Chancellor Chris Smith maintaining that, while it was important to investigate the allegations of plagiarism “rigorously,” people should “refuse to join in a racist feeding frenzy over a particular academic.”

A crowd of thousands participated in a vigil for Arday in London this week. Many there were more critical of the handling of the investigation into the professor’s work and saw his demise as a matter that goes beyond academic accountability. Instead, it opened a Pandora’s box and revealed an extremely polarized British society, with race, academic rigor and media intrusion all playing a role in Arday’s death.

Empathy and humanity are in increasingly short supply in the age of the megaphone of social media.

Mohamed Chebaro

Some pointed out that maybe the university was so keen to ‌hire a Black academic that it failed to properly check Arday’s credentials and accused Cambridge of being slow to respond when the plagiarism claims first emerged. But there were also other failures that call for reflection. UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham said that Arday’s death was “a tragedy on so many levels” and was not a moment to rush to any judgment.

Yet it seems that societies around the world, not just Britain, are firmly in the grip of populism and there is a toxic rush to judge. This facilitates a cruel public takedown via open and unmoderated online platforms, with content churned out both by humans and machines. This is a world that has accepted racist thoughts and their verbalization, as well as having a long-standing hostility to equality, diversity and inclusion policies at universities and other institutions.

One should question the media interest in the Arday story and his professorship at Cambridge University. A media monitoring organization, NewsCord, tallied 249 articles about Arday published in the national press in the 22 days before his death. Maybe there was a story that was in the public interest, but did it warrant 188 articles about Arday in the last nine days of his life?

It would be difficult for anyone to wake up and see their photograph on the front pages of national newspapers or all over social media and not despair.

Societies around the world, not just Britain, are firmly in the grip of populism and there is a toxic rush to judge.

Mohamed Chebaro

Reporting a complaint and the subsequent investigation to see whether an institution or a person has bent the rules is legitimate. But equally, compassion and kindness should always be part of any exercise that ultimately touches the human life behind the headline.

The story of Arday could be titled “death by a thousand headlines,” as Alan Rusbridger put it in an article this week. He added that Arday was a “victim of the worst kind of media pile-on,” reminding everyone that “his death can offer us lessons in not rushing to glib judgements; in not joining the unthinking pack; and — above all — in keeping a sense of proportion and plain humanity.”

Rage, grief and lessons learned will not bring Arday back. But his death should be a warning about how a witch hunt, facilitated by a permissive digital realm, can be weaponized by a cocktail of extreme-right hate, culture wars and legitimate journalism seeking the truth. In this case, these factors collided to create a tragedy. In today’s world, there are many Jason Ardays that we do not hear about and the scene is set for more, as toxic debates gain ground and scrutiny diminishes, with critical thinking increasingly marginalized.

• Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs, and diplomacy.