I do not think anybody is denying that Arday was a fraudulent sleaze, and that it rightfully caught up with him, but it should end with going after his career, not calling him up with death threats or whatever it was that made him kill himself.
I’m curious: how was he as a teacher? What was his research, and did he contribute meaningfully to his field?
So he deserved to die?
I’m not saying he was a saint. I’m saying he already got a punishment that fit his crime. Cheering his death seems cruel.
And that starting from being badly out of shape.
What a ridiculous response.
The point being addressed was that “hounding” was a two-way street, in particular complaining to the police about “harassment” by a reporter who e-mailed him questions, and getting Carter-Ruck to go after Times Higher Education to suppress a story about Arday, which seems to be part of a pattern for that law firm.
Carter-Ruck is also notorious for representing the Church of Scientology.
That does put a crimp in the narrative that Arday was a poor friendless victim of tabloid frenzy.
…this sort of coverage would explain why he killed himself.
You don’t seem to understand how vicious the British Tabloid press is.
Over a hundred articles in two weeks because of this? This utterly outside-of-academia non-story?
Those articles in turn drive both online and real-life hate campaigns.
It wasn’t just about a “reporter asking him questions.” What choice do you think he had? Do you really think this was a case of “hounding being a two way street?” Because that wasn’t what happened.
In the meantime, people like Farage and Rowling get away with fucking murder, and they get ignored. Because the British tabloid press are fucking arseholes who have blood on their hands. Not just Arday. This has been going on for decades.
One of the folks who was instrumental in this whole ordeal was Nathan Confas, who is an out and out racist apparently bitter at his own ouster. Whatever you may think of Arday, we can’t really view this tragic outcome in isolation of the larger political context.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/17/nathan-cofnas-end-the-tyranny-of-wokeism-cambridge/
The post you replied to said this:
He plagiarized. He made up stuff about himself. He lost his job. Fine, that’s an appropriate punishment. Hounding him to suicide was not.
So saying that in reply to this post is clearly an attempt at tu quoque, acting like it’s okay to hound a guy to suicide because one of the reporters also faced backlash.
Refuting that is entirely valid. One does not make the other okay.
Wow, that Cofnas guy sure sounds like a fine human gentleman …
Congrats, dude, on succesfully destroying someone as payback for your own grievance.
To get un-dismissed, does he not risk having his sketchy racist scholarship subject to fine-combed scrutiny? Is he that confident in the rigor of his methods (he should not be)? Or was he sacked for moral turpitude?
Um, no.
It was a reply to the “hounding” claim.
Perfectly legitimate to note that Arday was engaging in “hounding” himself.
One might wonder how much the media response was due to targeting of *Times Higher Education and its reporter (other journalists tend to react negatively to that sort of thing), and the stubborn denials of impropriety by Arday and Cambridge (which called revelations about him “vile” and inaccurate, before later retreating).
As many other such scandals have showed, it’s not the initial offense, but the coverup that gets you. Coming clean in the beginning would’ve prevented much of the negative publicity.
I said “hounding to suicide”. Not just “hounding”.
Not that any sort of hounding is a great idea.
Arday’s suicide is a tragedy. It’s very clear from this whole thing that there are several major cornerstones who bear the blame:
Arday himself, as he clearly did wrong
Racism, in academia and in general, because that’s probably a factor in having Arday’s psychological issues go untreated for so long, and in both the rapid promotion and the hounding.
Academia, for not doing its job in vetting properly; for not identifying the psychological issues once Arday was a student / hired and getting him some help; for being so fucking racist; for some of the incredibly unrealistic work expectations detailed above that prevent people from having the time to do these more nebulous yet important parts of the job.
Tabloid media and the resultant hounding and public shaming, which help no one but the coffers of the tabloids.
I don’t know. But his plan seems to be bigger than getting un-dismissed. He says he wants to start a revolution (and then become head of a department of eugenics and race science at Harvard).
Here’s a different Cambridge professor who was credibly accused of plagiarism, but who did not lose his job or get relentlessly hounded by the media.
(For the record, I do not think this guy deserves to be hounded to death, either. But it’s hard to believe that justice has been served in either case)
Has it been confirmed that Arday committed suicide? I find lots of articles quoting the official police statement, but is there official confirmation of suicide? I can’t find any.
Yes, but that professor wasn’t as famous as Arday was before the plagiarism broke. Also, his claims of his life (outside of his research) weren’t as wild either - O’Reilly didn’t claim to have cancer, run 30 marathons in 35 days, be in a coma for months, be mute, etc. - hence why he got less attention.
I can think of at least one other significant difference.
Yeah, really.