Sorry I cannot feel
Former Cambridge professor Jason Arday is dead by his own hand. It seems that a lifetime of lies, once they caught up with him, was too much for him to handle. The disgrace was more than he could bear.
While I don’t like to see the needless loss of human life, I’m not able to muster a great deal of sympathy for Mr. Arday. I may understand why he felt he had no other choice, mind you. I can even see that, unlike most people, he might actually have been right to believe he could never continue on with the disgrace.
But I cannot feel bad about it, if for no other reason than he brought it all on himself.
When Arday was just a PE teacher, no one cared about his lies. They were probably inspirational to the kids who were struggling, and they hurt no one. Had he stayed a PE teacher, no one would have given a damn, really, so long as he did his job.
Instead, he used those lies to enter the most revered halls of academia, where he apparently taught in only the loosest sense of the word, and then nearly got a book published as he recounted his so-called struggles.
In other words, the man tried to profit from his lies, got caught, and somehow I can’t feel all that terrible that he couldn’t deal with the fallout.
I never wished the man dead, and even now I wish he were still breathing, but only because I don’t like to see suicide as an answer for anyone. Instead, he should have stepped up and suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous truth like an adult.
Throughout the internet, though, we all heard about how he used the police to try to silence critics, using his mental health as justification. What that means in my mind is that the mental health issues were, in fact, real, and it never amounted to a hill of beans (on toast) in any way.
See, all of this spawned from his own misdeeds. He lied about his inability to communicate until an advanced age, his inability to read until he was 18, his super marathoning abilities, the works.
He brought everything on himself, and now he’s hit the eject button on life because he couldn’t deal with the aftermath of his lies.
But the problem with Jason Arday goes even farther than his own life and fabulism. No, he’s managed to hurt every intelligent black man and woman in Western society.
See, the problem now will be that the next time Cambridge brings on someone with an amazing story as a member of their faculty, particularly if they’re black or some other minority, there will be questions asked. There will be doubts as to whether the person deserves to be there.
Why?
Because Jason Arday made it clear that Cambridge prefers a good story to an actual background. If they did it once, there is a chance they’ll do it again.
And, to be fair, those questions will be asked of any bright, young black man or woman who gets a prestigious job in academia. Affirmative Action already did much of that here in the United States, but now we have Arday’s “example” to add fuel to the fire.
Yet Arday wasn’t just a diversity hire. He was a case of storytelling mattering more than ability, and the role he filled was one that some deserving soul never got.
But between the diversity hires who can barely do the job, if that much, and Arday’s serial fabulism and pathetically bad teaching, according to former students, then even more damage has been done.
Now every black professor who gets hired at somewhere like Cambridge will be viewed with skepticism that they shouldn’t have to endure…unless they’re about diversity, story, or something other than actual ability.
Meritocracy is claimed to be racist, but the truth is that refusing to hire on merit just makes it so no one believes those not subject to the meritocracy deserve the accolades until they prove it.
If they fail to do so, well…
So Jason Arday is dead, and while I do not celebrate it, I also cannot mourn him, nor can I find it in myself to empathize with his loved ones who joined in on perpetuating the charade.
There may be pity, but not for their loss. It’s for living a life where this looked like a viable plan.
I never want to be so devoid of morals as to consider such a thing.
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Truth.