Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed
When I saw the news that Jason Arday had died Friday, I went to my text messages to see what our last exchange said. It was from me, in March 2023, congratulating him on his new job at Cambridge. At the age of 37, he had just been named the youngest Black professor at the austere institution. He hadn’t responded. My message must’ve been one of hundreds he received about his new gig. Like most of the academic world, I am shocked and deeply saddened by the news of his death. I knew Jason as a warm, generous and passionate academic committed to solving racial inequality in education and society.
I first reached out to Jason in 2021 while working at Times Higher Education (Inside Higher Ed’s parent company). I was part of the team building Campus, an online space where educators could learn from their peers about how to handle the hard things the pandemic had suddenly thrown on their plates—teaching a full load of classes while homeschooling their kids, adapting their in-person courses for Zoom rooms, coaxing students to turn on their cameras, creating community across digital divides. The aftermath of George Floyd’s murder hung heavy and, like higher ed institutions in the United States, those in Britain were facing their own failures to uplift Black scholars and support the unique needs of minoritized students.
At the time, Jason was an associate professor in sociology at Durham University and had already made a name for himself speaking and writing about antiracism education. I wanted to hear how higher education institutions could better serve Black and ethnic minority students and asked him to write for us.
Journalists send requests like this all the time, and we hope people respond, but sometimes they don’t. Not only did Jason respond, he gave me his number and wanted to speak on the phone. This happens from time to time: An author wants to discuss a piece before they commit. As I dialed his number, I was prepared to make my pitch for what I needed and why I thought he was the person to write it.
Instead, our conversation quickly turned to how we were both coping in the pandemic. We were worried about COVID-19, but also about living with strict lockdowns in London. Jason was immediately trusting, telling me how stressed he was keeping up with work and having two young children. He felt the burden of responsibility to make the most of the moment, when the racial inequalities he spent his career trying to undo were on center stage. I shared that I was struggling with the isolation of lockdowns and being so far away from my family in Oklahoma. I was grateful for my greyhound, Neville, to take on walks. I liked that Jason had spent time in the U.S. at Ohio State University. That gave me a sense of familiarity about him.
He told me the story of being diagnosed with autism at a young age, not speaking until he was 11, not reading until he was 18 and then getting his Ph.D.—a feat that experts in developmental and speech delays say has never been recorded in medical literature. It seemed like an exaggeration at the time, one of the stories you tell about yourself to underline just how far you’ve come. I may not have believed the exact details, but I didn’t doubt that his career as a Black man with autism, in a country where 1 percent of professors are Black, was likely much harder than those of his white peers. And his possible embellishment didn’t take away from his expertise in antiracism education and his experience as a Black scholar. That’s what I wanted to learn from him.
Looking back on our messages, I was reminded of how he often started a text or email with “Hello friend!” In another exchange, I told him I had had COVID. He sent me a voice note saying he hoped my “viral count is low,” and that I enjoyed leaving my flat for the first time in days.
He accepted my invitation to speak on an episode of the THE podcast with three other educators about diversity, equity and inclusion; neurodiversity; and antiracism education. Recorded in the summer of 2021, the conversation, important as it was, is a relic of its time. Tazin Daniels, then the assistant director at the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan, for example, discussed Michigan’s DEI office and the plans to launch its second five-year strategy. That office, along with its strategic plan, was axed in 2025 amid the federal government’s anti-DEI campaign. We also discussed how institutions, slowly emerging from the pandemic, could thoughtfully go back to in-person teaching without losing the lessons they’d learned about equality. I asked Jason how to carry forward the work colleges had done to raise awareness about antiracist education. He acknowledged that the “gears of change turn slowly in the U.K.,” but he was optimistic that it could be done.
“We’re in a really important juncture right now, and we need to center the experience of other people and ensure that we give people the best opportunity to thrive and not [just] survive,” he said. “I think a lot of people at the moment are in a state of survival,” he said, adding that that survival “comes from the fact that people are residing in inequitable spaces, which are compounded by people who don’t share the same semblance of equality that we all strive and yearn for.” He had no reason to believe we—higher ed, society—couldn’t all get to a point where everyone feels a sense of belonging and support no matter their identity, he said: “When you’ve got collective hearts and minds, I think anything is possible.”
A few months later, when the University of Glasgow named Jason a full professor, I got back in touch to say congratulations and to ask if he’d write a piece addressing other young Black scholars hoping to achieve what he had. In that piece, he wrote, “Throughout my academic ascent, I’ve often wondered what it would feel like to finally reach this summit. Now I’m here, I admittedly feel little of the jubilation I expected—more exhaustion and relief just for having made it.”
He told young Black scholars to prioritize their well-being and relationships and to set clear work-life boundaries. He warned them of becoming part of the “wasteland of academics” who dedicate themselves to the “exhausting and often exploitative” effort to disrupt racism in academia and society. He told them, “It’s not about where you end up, it’s how you get there” and encouraged them to “do the work” of uplifting the next generation of scholars.
“Encouraging Black and minority ethnic talent must remain at the axis of our collective activism and endeavors towards anti-racism,” he wrote. “Not to mention, doing this work fosters a sense of humility that preserves our integrity and moral compass.”
We lost touch after he went to Cambridge. I moved on, too, leaving the U.K. and my work on Campus. I share my knowledge of Jason now not to excuse any of the serious questions about his academic work, nor to ignore the fact that his lawyers threatened legal action against THE if it published its investigation into the academic misconduct allegations. But when a person is at the center of a global news story, the contours of their humanness erode until their image fits into a neat, digestible narrative. Racial targeting, too, is most effective when it turns a person into a trope, a blank slate for abhorrent, backward prejudices.
The Jason I knew was a passionate academic and an empath. He cared about his work and thought it mattered. He saw the best in people. He believed academia could be a better, more accepting place. He leaves behind a complex legacy, but this is how I will remember him.
