The tragic death of Jason Arday has provoked strong feelings across academia and beyond. The former University of Cambridge professor was found dead nine days after resigning from his post amid allegations of plagiarism and doubts over his life story. At the time of his resignation, he issued a statement saying: “I no longer wish to feel as though I am living under a constant spotlight, where every aspect of my life is subject to public examination and judgement.”
Debate has continued with the publication in the UK of his memoirs.
There was a clear public interest in the allegations against Arday. Yet, as the head of the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University Matt Walsh, recently reflected, “the penalty he paid … was out of all proportion to any offence he may have committed”. Walsh, (a Trustee of The Conversation UK) counted 242 articles about Arday in British newspapers between July 25 and August 20.
Cambridge University Chancellor Chris Smith spoke of a “racist feeding frenzy” that had centred on Arday. A joint statement from Amnesty UK’s anti-racism and disabled people’s networks warned that “accountability cannot become a licence for dehumanisation. Public discussion must not devolve into relentless speculation, humiliation, harassment and digital bullying”.
As a cultural historian, the scapegoat was the archetype that came to mind for me as scrutiny of Arday intensified. Public interest and truth do not operate in a social vacuum, and nor are they doled out equally regardless of colour. Arday’s alleged wrongdoing became a racialised spectacle centred on one visible and vulnerable autistic man.
What does it mean to scapegoat a person? Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, described Arday’s treatment as pre-modern sacrificial behaviour, calling him “the outsider selected for both sacred dignity and ritual humiliation”.
Williams’ intervention is significant because the word “scapegoat” derives from scripture. In the Hebrew Bible, one goat was sacrificed while the community’s sins were placed symbolically upon another. That goat was driven into the wilderness, purifying the community by locating wrongdoing somewhere else. The same process happens symbolically within families, societies and institutions.
When accountability becomes scapegoating
The justifications of those who continually criticised Arday focused on accountability as an excuse – “But he lied…”. But scapegoating isn’t about accountability, though identifying some degree of error or fault makes that an easier claim. Accountability asks what happened, which standards apply and where responsibility lies. Scapegoating expands a specific question into a total judgement of character. As such, it burdens one person with failures extending far beyond their own actions.
Those involved need no shared intention. A journalist may pursue a legitimate question about transparency; a culture-war commentator may attack diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) schemes; an institution might protect their own interests; an anonymous person posting online may enjoy humiliating a stranger. Different motives can converge on one target, and each repetition licenses the next.
What was missing then, and remains missing now, is a recognition of what scapegoating does and why it happens.
In my book, A Biography of Loneliness, I show how loneliness, like scapegoating, emerges when individuals bear the effects of structural failures. Scapegoating can offer lonely or alienated people a false form of belonging through shared condemnation. It is easier to condemn an individual than to confront powerful people or change systems.
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Claims of plagiarism, citation errors and embellishment are normally addressed by academic processes. The University of Cambridge opened an investigation, yet almost immediately Arday came to represent Black academics, DEI schemes, Cambridge’s recruitment practices and even the discipline of sociology. One article in a US tabloid called him a “grifter” produced by “BLM psychosis”.
Scapegoating provides people with a convenient target. When there is fear and perceived powerlessness, attacking someone else offers emotional and social relief. And digital media provides a platform for gut reactions – “moral outrage” – over the slower, harder work of withholding judgement until the evidence is in.
German-American political theorist Hannah Arendt placed loneliness at the heart of totalitarianism: isolation makes people feel powerless and weakens their sense of a shared world. Digital platforms promise community at the same time as they facilitate outrage. Diffuse anger seeks a visible object, and social hierarchies help determine who can plausibly be blamed.
A long history of racism made Arday’s visibility relevant. Only around 1% of the UK’s professors are Black. His long dreadlocks and love of bespoke tailoring made him instantly recognisable, photographed against Cambridge stone in academic regalia. The Black US linguist and professor John H. McWhorter wrote that those who promoted him saw Arday as a “performing monkey”.
How we talk about appearance matters. As the media storm grew, columnists referred to Arday as a “disgraced dreadlocked prof”, and a “smiling assassin”. The features that made him recognisable turned into shorthand for dismissing him.
In another of my books, The Face: A Cultural History, I show how faces have been used for centuries to impose hierarchies of intelligence, character and honesty. Physiognomy and racial science made Black features supposed “evidence” of inferiority, dishonesty or danger.
Popular caricatures made smiles, hair and clothing into signs of servility, absurdity or threat. That history formed the cultural setting in which attention to Arday’s hair and smile reduced him to a racial type.
Racism was a precondition of the scrutiny Arday endured, because it shaped the categories through which his capability and worth were measured. Emotion was the engine, and scapegoating the mechanism.
There are appeals, again, for media reform. But ending the cycle of perceived sin, pile-on and devastation requires institutions to take responsibility for their failings, and individuals to resist disproportionate blame. We do not become more human by denying the humanity of others. And we do not escape our own sins by asking others to carry them.
Fay Bound-Alberti receives research funding from the UKRI with a Future Leaders Fellowship