When the University of Cambridge appoints a new professor, it doesn’t usually make global headlines. But Jason Arday was different. He was just 37 in 2023 when he became Cambridge’s youngest black professor, specialising in the sociology of race and education. The achievement seemed all the more remarkable because of his incredible back story.
Born to Ghanaian parents who moved to the UK in the early 1980s, Arday was diagnosed with global development delay and autism spectrum disorder at three years of age. He said he hadn’t learned to speak until he was 11 and that he couldn’t really read and write until he was 18. But he defied all expectations, and as his star rose, he received honours usually reserved for celebrities.
Yet almost as soon as he began his professorship at Cambridge’s Jesus College, the whispers began. Initially, the focus was on his academic scholarship. But, the Guardian’s arts and culture correspondent Lanre Bakare tells Helen Pidd, the allegations snowballed, and soon every aspect of his life story was put under the microscope. On Wednesday night, he resigned.
But how did this happen? And what does this tell us about how black scholars are treated by academia and the media?
Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian
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First published by The Guardian UK
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