Jason Arday's Death and the Age of Digital Racial Terror

What Jason Arday's death by media mob says about the old machinery of anti-Black terror in the algorithmic age.

Jason Arday.

Cadaqués, Spain— On Monday, I was sitting on the beach in Cadaqués, a beautiful village north of Barcelona. I watched families with little children squealing with delight in the clear water. Glamorous older women in sunning themselves topless.

Wednesday, August 12th, was my 40th birthday, the same day as the long-awaited solar eclipse.

Despite the scenes of joy, play and sensual ease, I found myself wondering all week what, or who, I had left to live for, to fight for. The Washington Post wrongfully fired me last September. And then in February, my sweet Daddy died.

I planned to write about turning 40 as a single woman, and what rebellion, reinvention, and strategy might look like for a Black woman entering the second half of her life.

I had also been thinking about the solar eclipse of February 12, 1831 (my half birthday), which Nat Turner interpreted as a sign to prepare for the slave revolt he would lead that August.

But the midlife reflections will have to wait. Because yet another Black intellectual has been destroyed by white institutions.

The world is waking up to the news of the death of 41-year-old Black sociologist Jason Arday, who was once celebrated as the youngest Black academic at Cambridge. In the last several weeks, after allegations of plagiarism, the British media whipped itself into a frenzy of digital bloodlust, focusing on Arday at a velocity amplified by social media algorithms. I remember wondering why my social media feeds, all the way in the United States, were suddenly filled with posts about a British academic I had never heard of.

The allegations trace back to Liverpool John Moores University, which awarded Arday’s doctorate, previously investigated plagiarism claims, and did not uphold them. The latest campaign was reignited in part by Nathan Cofnas, a prominent anti-DEI academic who published his accusations under the headline “DEI Fraud and Cover-Up at Cambridge.”

Arday resigned on August 5th from his dream position at Cambridge, citing that “relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary” had taken a “profound toll” on him.

Nine days later, he was dead.

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We still don’t know the official details of Arday’s death.

His family said in a statement: “Jason was subjected to a campaign of sustained abuse for more than three years since he accepted the role of professor at Cambridge University by those who would leave no stone unturned in their quest to undermine him…“The campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason, who was a gentleman and who always wanted to see the best in everyone.”

According to Newscord, the British media wrote 249 articles in 22 days—188 of those coming in the last days of his life, after he requested to be left alone.

Across the pond, the Telegraph in particular sent a phalanx of writers, editors, and political commentators against Arday, flooding the pages with disparaging articles. In three weeks, the Telegraph published at least a dozen adverse articles and commentaries about Arday. On July 24th, a Telegraph associate editor called Arday “Cambridge’s diversity poster boy” in an article. Annabel Durham called Jason Arday a symptom of “academia’s moral disease” in an August 3rd piece. “A PhD is no longer a sign of brilliance – take it from Dr Arday” reads a headline from a piece from Daniel Sokol in The Telegraph in the hours before Arday’s death. And Stephen Daisely, a day after Arday’s resignation, wrote an article on August 6th with the headline, ‘Jason Arday is proof you reap what you sow”.

And now Arday is dead.

At least nine of the twelve stories were published between August 2 and August 14—less than two weeks. Several appeared after he resigned, a sign that his stepping down was not enough to satiate their bloodlust.

Many stories focused on the controversy and allegations, not his contributions or scholarship. On Instagram, acaedmic and philosopher Jason Stanley asserted that by completely ignoring Arday’s impact on scholarship, the distorted media narrative is to blame for his death.

It is important to highlight Arday’s impact. But the media harm isn’t just in the ignoring. In fact, I would argue the opposite: Arday’s impact is precisely what made him—and what makes Black intellectuals like him—targets for elimination.

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When journalism scrutiny beceomes digital terrorism

Throughout history, American and British media especially —have repeatedly shown the world their lust for the blood of Black people, especially ones they have deemed to be too powerful or influential for their liking. Black people who transgress the racial hierarchy are targets to be “put back in their place”.

In my online Race, Media and International Affairs class, my students and I examine the history of white media’s role in whipping up or justifying murderous frenzies against newly freed Black people, or African colonial subjects, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the United States, that often meant lynching, pogroms, and racial massacres; in the British context, it often operated through imperial war and colonial repression.

In the United States in the late 1800s, white newspapers made a habit of justifying lynching, even going so far as to inciting mobs to go after Black people and white abolitionists. Edward Carmack, a Tennessee newspaper editor and later senator, used his newspaper to incite a white mob to attack and destroy the offices of pioneering Black journalist Ida B. Wells. Her “crime”? She had dared call out the white media’s complicity in the wave of lynchings of Black people, including her friend.

The British colonial media had a history of justifying violent campaigns of bloodshed and looting in its colonies in Africa, arguing that Africans were savage, prone to cannibalism, and deserving of overwhelming retribution. When Britain invaded Benin in 1897, white newspapers in British colonies thousands of miles away in New Zealand justified Britain “carrying the sword” into the “dark continent” to eliminate cannibalism and slavery.

The racial media ecosystem was global long before the internet; the English-speaking press circulated narratives of Black savagery, danger and insubordination across imperial borders.

Today, these campaigns are not just limited to Black people, but to the white allies or institutions that dare hire or support Black people. In the 1800s, white newspapers incited mobs against white abolitionists.

Today, the British media didn’t just attack Arday; they sustained an attack on Cambridge. In the end, after standing by Arday at first, the institution agreed to do an investigation of Arday’s work.

In the digital era, British and American media’s epigenetic habit of anti-Black hysteria has not waned, even if actual vigilante mob violence against black people has receded, at the moment, at least.

However, with social media and the algorithms, the sheer speed and volume with which a person can be subject to global hate has never been seen before in history. A Black person in the United States can hear about what happened to Arday, and feel terrified for his or her job. A professor or researcher that would have otherwise used or citied Arday’s work in another country, now is afraid.

Digital terror campaigns have a global reach that localized mobs historically could not muster. Algorithms can now turn the punishment of a single person into a global demonstration of power, delivering a lightning-fast warning to successful Black people in white institutions around the world: Don't aim too high. What happened to Arday can happen to you. Behave accordingly.

And yet, when it comes to media, we still tend to use the words, or “cyber-bullying”, or “digital harassment”, as if these actions aren’t a part of a larger historical political project with clear tactics and objectives. It feels like we need much stronger frameworks to reflect the historically severe consequences of when the media goes after visible Black voices.

Given the history of white media’s key role in terror against Black people, at what point do we call such actions of journalism outlets digital terror campaigns?

Terror is not only violence. Historically, its power has come from fear, spectacle, and punishment used to enforce a political or social order, or a specific objective. Bad and hostile journalism alone doesn’t equate to terrorism. But this is a moment to examine the media’s role in creating the permission structures for the political objective: removing Black people from positions of influence and power.

In this global anti-DEI age, removing Black people from public life has become an explicit political project, orchestrated at the highest levels of government, academia, and media, and embedded into policy. We then started seeing high-profile news of Black college presidents being pressured to resign (Claudine Gay of Harvard), prominent Black journalists being forced out of their positions (Don Lemon, Joy Reid, and myself), and corporations stepping back from funding or supporting anything that looks like diversity initiatives.

The last point is important— Terror campaigns also act as a social deterrent, in that they are designed to cause enough fear in institutions and allies: If you support Black people, we will come for you, anywhere you are, 24/7. The target may be one person or one institution, but the audience is everyone. And the fear comes straight to your phone, inbox, and social media feeds.

At the most extreme levels, this psychological terror results in death or causes the victim to want to kill themselves.

We saw this as the British tabloids hounded Meghan Markle, to the point where she also struggled with suicidal thoughts; she and her husband Prince Harry eventually left the United Kingdom. And as I sit here in Spain, I wonder if any place in the world is safe if you are a Black person who has transgressed the racial order. The British media kept hounding her even in another country. At least she lived to tell her tale.

I decided to fight the Washington Post, and to keep going so I can tell more stories too.

But Arday is dead.

And there’s no guarantee that the media vultures will stop feeding on him, even now.