Scrutiny of Arday was legitimate

This is the full text of a letter published in The Times on 25 August 2025. The letter was initiated by Dr Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert, director of Don’t Divide Us with editorial contributions from many free speech groups, academics and journalists.

We write to express our disagreement with those blaming Professor Jason Arday’s death on the academics and journalists who subjected his academic work, and/or his claimed life achievements and history to public scrutiny. In addition to being a Cambridge professor, Professor Arday was a fellow of Jesus College, a trustee of the Runnymede Trust and the British Sociological Association; a patron of the Adult Literacy Trust and Get Further; and sat on various committees, including ITV’s Cultural Advisory Council and the NHS Race and Health Observatory Academic Reference Group. Subjecting his work and apparently untrue claims to public scrutiny was therefore entirely legitimate. Professor Paul Wragg, writing for Hacked Off, endorsed Dawn Butler MP’s un-evidenced assertion that various newspapers and magazines — although not curiously the Guardian, the New York Times or the Atlantic, all of which also wrote about these issues — played a central role in “hounding Arday to his death”, and called for greater censorship of the press. In a similar vein, Lord Woolley, the Principal of Cambridge University’s Homerton College, addressing a public crowd at the vigil for Professor Arday, claimed that “Jason had felt hounded by those rabid wolves” and, shockingly, compared the press’s scrutiny to a “lynching”. Some of the speakers at that vigil, including Diane Abbott MP, blamed Professor Arday’s death on individual academics who publicly exposed Professor Arday’s plagiarism and other flaws in his work. This is reckless and deflects attention from where it should be placed: the practices and standards at Cambridge University and/or its Faculty of Education. Also reckless (at best) is the circulation on social media of a hit list of journalists who supposedly contributed to Professor Arday’s death, and there is now a petition calling for limits on the number of articles the press can publish about someone within a specified period.

These calls go beyond mourning a death; they are calls for the censorship of the press and the curbing of free speech and academic freedom. We do not accept that the scrutiny of Professor Arday’s work and claims faced amounted to ‘harassment’ or that the impact such scrutiny might have had on his mental health was a good reason to turn a blind eye to his apparent academic misconduct and other failings. Nor that future wrongdoing by equally prominent people should be overlooked to protect the mental health of the wrongdoers. While Professor Arday’s death was desperately sad, emotional vulnerability cannot be given priority over the need to hold the powerful and influential to account in the interest of truth. Two questions relating to this matter require the fullest and deepest investigation to ensure our academic institutions maintain the standards for which they are justly famous. Firstly, what were the recruitment processes and standards used by the board of electors who, according to the Head of the Faculty of Education, Professor Hilary Cremin, were unanimous in their appointment of Professor Arday: how did they reach the decision they did, and were usual standards of inquiry and assessment maintained? Secondly, there is the broader question of whether the Faculty of Education’s apparent sacrificing of academic standards and due diligence in its zeal to prove its commitment to ‘anti-racism’ and inclusivity is replicated in other university faculties both in Cambridge and elsewhere in the UK university sector.

Dr Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert, Director of Don’t Divide Us

Supported by:

Lord Andrew Roberts of Belgravia

The Rt Hon. the Lord Biggar of Castle Douglas, CBE

Baroness Fox of Buckley, Director of the Academy of Ideas

Tess Ashen, Student Academics For Academic Freedom

Ben Cobley, Author ‘The Progress Trap’

Dr Wendy Earle, Convenor of the Academy of Ideas Arts and Society Forum

Emeritus Professor Frank Furedi

Professor Dennis Hayes, Director of Academics For Academic Freedom

Professor Eric Kauffman

Dr Marie Kawthar Daouda, lecturer and author ‘Not Your Victim’

Edward Skidelsky, Director of the Committee for Academic Freedom

William Macksey and Andrew Neish KC, Co-founders of Alumni For Free Speech and Best Free Speech Practice

Dr Lisa McKenzie, Senior Lecturer in Sociology

Bijan Omrani, Author ‘God is an Englishman’

Professor Ian Pace, City St George’s, University of London, AFAF, London Universities’ Council for Academic Freedom

Revd Dr Ian Paul, member of General Synod, Church of England

Tom Slater, Editor of Spiked

Hardeep Singh, journalist and author

Dr Stuart Waiton, Chair of Scottish Union for Education

Ella Whelan, journalist

Dr Joanna Williams, Author ‘Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity’, journalist

Lord Young of Acton, Director of the Free Speech Union

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