by Gavin Ashenden on Substack
Where does the responsibility lie?
The death of Professor Jason Arday is a great tragedy, and those who pray will immediately want to pray for his soul, but not just for his own soul, but for the souls of those who manipulated, used and abused him by finding in him a useful instrument for the progressive fantasy of diversity, inclusion and equity.
Suicide always leaves anybody touched by it, which includes those who read about it, with a sense of guilt. We cannot escape the question of whether or not there was anything we could have done to save a life from despair, or whether there was anything we did to contribute to the despair?
And so, in order to face those questions, many of the people who found in Professor Arday a useful tool for their propagandisation of progressive ideology need to divert and deflect the blame to others.
Already the accusations have been made that those who asked questions about the truth were to blame for placing a fragile man under pressure, as if there is some kind of trade-off between personal fragility and claims for truth.
When Scrutiny Becomes the Enemy
Inevitably, the facts of the situation show aggression on both sides.
Professor Arday invoked the most litigious and aggressive law firm specialising in defamation, Carter-Ruck, against academics and journalists who raised all the legitimate questions about the integrity of his research.
He was not going down without a fight, and in one tragic moment he expressed his surprise to a previous ally in the media who raised questions about his truthfulness and why he had thought he would get away with it, to which the reply was, “I just thought you would automatically believe me.”
The police did his bidding and harassed anyone asking legitimate questions about his professional credentials – which, as it happened, turned out to be bogus. Bogus as in shallow, borrowed, derivative and in too many places, stolen.
Read also: Jason Arday’s death is dreadful – and enraging by Brendan O’Neill, Spectator. ‘This is the poison chalice of the state religion of diversity. It lays traps for the very people it celebrates. It handpicks members of ‘the oppressed’ for moral anointment and institutional gushing while leaving them open to exposure as others start to query their credentials. That’s the toxic bargain of identity politics: it builds teetering pedestals for ethnic-minority thinkers, meaning their fall from grace is often twice as fatal.’
When Identity is More Important Than Truth – Jason Arday and the Protective Brain by Melanie Gill, Right Times