Vernon demands Cambridge culture review after Arday vigil

Cambridge must examine its own culture and not merely the paperwork of an appointment, the Lower Clapton campaigner who set up the memorial fundraiser for Professor Jason Arday’s family has said.

Sir Patrick Vernon, a former Hackney councillor and chair of Hackney Thinking Spaces, told the Citizen that the university’s promised inquiry would be worthless if it examined only how Arday came to be hired, and argued that equality law had failed the professor at every level.

He also called for new legislation on anti-Blackness, and for statutory regulation of newspapers and social media.

“I hope it’s not limited to looking at the process of how Jason was appointed,” he said. “It has to be a deeper culture review of the university — not simply whether they did the right checks and balances and due diligence around his application, but the wider issues around the public sector equality duty, safeguarding, and duty of care as an employer.”

Vigil

Arday, 41, resigned as professor of sociology of education at Cambridge earlier this month, and was found dead last Friday at an address in Battersea, south London. Police have said the death was unexpected but not suspicious, and an inquest is expected to open.

Monday’s vigil, organised by Stand Up To Racism on the steps of the National Gallery, was addressed by the Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP Diane Abbott, who said a vicious media campaign had driven him to his death, alongside Dawn Butler MP, the Good Law Project’s Jo Maugham and Arday’s friend Lord Simon Woolley, who described the coverage as a public execution.

Organisers put the crowd above 30,000; other estimates on the night were lower. Vernon’s own figure was 10,000 to 30,000.

Asked about the way the gathering had since been characterised online, Vernon was firm that it had not been a protest.

“It wasn’t a rally, it was a vigil, and it was about celebrating the life and impact of Professor Jason Arday,” he said. “That’s what it was all about.

“There was peace, there was solidarity, there was love. Of course there was anger as well. The family only agreed to have this vigil because they wanted to recognise Jason.”

The plagiarism allegations, first raised in a post on the Substack platform by the philosopher Nathan Cofnas, were reviewed by Liverpool John Moores University, which awarded Arday his doctorate and concluded he had not plagiarised.

Cambridge has since announced an investigation into the circumstances of his employment. Separate allegations concerning his published papers, first reported by Retraction Watch, remain unresolved.

Vernon said the reopening of a completed doctoral process was indefensible.

“None of us is in a position to try to undermine a process that took place by the university that awarded him his PhD,” he said. “They reviewed it twice, and it wasn’t plagiarism. He made wrong references. For someone to then relook at that is completely outrageous.”

Oxbridge

He said he had spoken at debates in Oxford and Cambridge over many years at the invitation of African Caribbean societies, and knew “some of the challenges that students face”.

“It might be great that we have Black students there. We’ve got Stormzy providing scholarships. But they’ve not dealt with the undercurrents. I use the expression Afrophobia — anti-Blackness is built into those institutions and walls, and that’s what we’re fighting against.

“At the vigil there were tens of thousands of people, Black, white, brown, all coming together to say: we love you, Jason, we’re supporting the family, but we want the truth and we want justice.”

Asked whether Arday’s treatment resembled the abuse directed at Abbott over decades, Vernon drew a distinction.

“Diane is a seasoned politician. She’s got a support network that has helped her for many decades,” he said. “I had a small taste of that when I was a councillor in Hackney. When you go into public life as a politician, that is part of the territory — not to say it should be acceptable to have lots of online abuse, but it’s not for the faint-hearted.

“Jason was not a politician. He wasn’t the chief executive of a major organisation or a university. He was a professor, and he hadn’t reached his full potential. A number of students came down from Cambridge and spoke about how Jason inspired them in their own PhDs, and about neurodiversity and lived experience. He never reached his peak, and people hated that. They didn’t want this young man to succeed.”

Equality duty

Vernon’s central charge is that equality law failed.

“For me, the public sector equality duty didn’t save Jason,” he said, tracing the legislation from the 1965 Race Relations Act to the duties introduced on public bodies after the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

“Did the university follow through the public sector equality duty in relation to Jason? I don’t think so. The public sector equality duty recognises nine protected characteristics. Jason had at least three or four of those. That was completely ignored.”

He also asked whether major press outlets had observed the duty, saying they had been told repeatedly about Arday’s mental health and his autism. The duty in fact applies to public authorities rather than to newspapers, which are regulated separately.

“There’s a whole debate about getting rid of equality legislation when we’re not even implementing it,” he said. “We’ve got the best legislation in theory to protect people in terms of protected characteristics, and on this occasion it failed. But it’s much deeper than that. He was targeted because he was a Black man with neurodiversity. We need stronger legislation now more than ever around anti-Blackness.”

Coverage

Vernon put the volume of coverage at around 230 articles in nine or 10 days. “Not even the average politician — not even Nigel Farage — would get that level of scrutiny,” he said. The most widely cited count, from the monitoring group NewsCord, is 249 articles in 22 days.

Vernon said the failure was one of regulation as much as of individual conduct. “The very fact that the media were willing to go along with this tells you that we need proper regulation of the media — social and newspapers as well,” he said.

Culture

He pointed to the intervention of the university’s chancellor. Lord Chris Smith said institutions should rigorously investigate criticisms of plagiarism about any academic, while refusing to join a “racist feeding frenzy” over a particular one.

“The very fact that the chancellor said that,” Vernon said. “There’s talk of doing some sort of investigation. I hope it’s a deeper culture review.”

Fundraiser

Vernon, who was knighted in the King’s Birthday Honours in June for services to racial equality, launched the memorial fundraiser on Saturday afternoon to cover funeral and family costs. He said it had passed £190,000 in four days. At time of publication, it stood at more than £200,000.

“Britain cares about Jason,” he said. “I’ve been doing these campaigns for a decade. Some people see this as a Black Lives Matter moment. I see it as more akin to a Stephen Lawrence moment, because this is about institutional behaviour, the role of media, smearing, lies, defamation of character. He died five days ago and they’re still smearing him now.”

He said he had also been targeted since setting up the page. “They’re targeting me for raising the money, and still saying horrible things about Jason. There’s no respect at all,” he said. “It’s part of the territory. I recognise that. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last. But when we look for truth and justice, people will try to attack you. It’s a bully boy tactic and harassment.”

Arday’s memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things, is due from Simon & Schuster on 27 August.

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