in case folk outside the UK aren't abreast of our news, the British press just hounded a black academic to death
a rough timeline of events (from memory, there may be inaccuracies, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)
Cambridge professor of sociology Jason Arday is accused of plagiarism by another academic
the accuser is a "race realist" who believes that in a true meritocracy all university professors would be white. this is somehow not acknowledged much during the entire ordeal
this leads to several days of media coverage demanding an investigation, or that Arday is expelled from his post immediately
somehow this accusation that has no effect on the lives of 99.99% of the population becomes FRONT PAGE NEWS in all the newspapers for multiple days, above anything else happening in the UK or the world at large
following intense media scrutiny, Arday resigns his post as a Cambridge professor
today, august 14th, days after resigning, Arday is found dead at his home in Battersea
the British tabloid press remains, and will always be, fucking evil
hey! to anyone reblogging this to argue that Arday plagiarized or lied about things like how many races he ran, quick question: even if that were true, in what world does that justify the brutal hounding of a man by the British press, all spurred by the claims of an open racist?
a few things:
the guy who started all this shit is Nathan Cofnas. he was fired from Cambridge's Emmanuel College for making a blog post that said there shouldn't be black professors. his intentions were in no way related to a care for academic accuracy and honesty. he was angry a black man was working at the school that had fired him.
Cofnas started all this by running Arday's work through a plagiarism machine unprompted. not only are those things infamously inaccurate, but Arady was ultimately cleared and- hey, why was Cofnas driven to do that in the first place?
the British press does not give a fuck about academia 99% of the time. they fucking don't. none of this was about education. they saw an opportunity to attack a black man--notably, one in a position of respect and authority--and took it.
even if he had lied about EVERYTHING he's achieved, if Arday had been white, no one in the press would have given a fuck. he would've, in all likelihood, been fired at most.
to people claiming his claims of racism were false, i just... don't believe that one sorry. this is the UK, we're talking about.
