When Jason Arday died, I thought those on the left would want to forget he ever existed. And while that is true for the most part, the top-level grifters are doing what they do. Here is Ibram X Kendi.
While some actually deny he was a plagiarist, it seems more common to acknowledge that Arday screwed up while saying that the media and conservatives on X should be condemned for paying too much attention to the story.
This reminds me of something an old professor told me when I was in graduate school. He was a historian who had grown disgusted with the direction in which academia had gone. In his class, we would dig deep into some of the work of prominent political scientists and expose the flaws in their papers and books. This was effective in puncturing the aura that surrounded high-status figures in academia, and we would wonder how they got away with producing such drivel. He told us that many academics saw their work “like a game.” You don’t care all that much if someone you know cheats in a board game. Who cares? Why start a conflict? We’ve all got a nice thing going here, and it’s better if we all just continue getting along.
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I think that the narratives around his suicide are also a bit too sympathetic. Jason Arday chose to kill himself. He wasn't forced into it, nobody held a gun to his head. I'm certain the media would've leapt on genuine instances of hate crime, but there weren't any, so I think it's safe to assume the guy wasn't afraid for his or his family's life.
He lied, then he got caught. He chose to tell those lies, he chose to accept a position at Cambridge, he chose to threaten people who were trying to expose him with lawyers. Then he got caught. Sure, you can claim that the reaction was disproportionate, it probably was. But implying that a disproportionate reaction and a social media shitstorm is *tantamount to killing someone* is absurd. It's a bit of a sad story, but it's sad because of the actions of one person.
Today Vaclev Havel would’ve set his play “The Garden Party” at a university like Cambridge. The lies they live by and institutional numbing are something to behold. Excellent piece.