Ezra Levant: Cambridge's DEI success story collapses under scrutiny
Once hailed as the youngest Black professor ever appointed at the University of Cambridge, Jason Arday was found dead in Battersea, south London, on Friday — just a week after he resigned amid a swirl of plagiarism allegations.
On Friday's episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra Levant touched on the tragic story of Professor Jason Arday, the world's most famous DEI academic. Once hailed as the youngest Black professor ever appointed at the University of Cambridge, Arday was found dead in Battersea, south London, on Friday — just a week after he resigned amid a swirl of plagiarism allegations.
Arday was hired at Cambridge in 2023 to widespread fanfare. Cambridge's website, at the time this report was written, still described him as a "highly respected scholar of race, inequality and education," at 37, the youngest Black person ever appointed to a professorship at the university. His personal story was extraordinary on its own terms: diagnosed with autism at age three, unable to speak until 11, unable to read or write until 18.
But the story kept getting more extraordinary, past the point of belief. The Atlantic's recent investigation into Arday's memoir found claims that strained credulity: that he'd once run 300 miles in three days for charity, then on another occasion 600 miles in six days — a near world-record feat that, as it turned out, never happened as described. He later told The Guardian the 600-mile run actually took 12 days, with rest periods.
Then there was the story about the boys who mugged him at a bus stop as a teenager, whom he allegedly asked the judge not to punish. Years later, Arday wrote, two of them turned up as his students at a London university, so moved by his mercy toward them that they'd turned their lives around and were now mentoring at-risk youth themselves. One, he said, asked him to be his child's godfather. The Atlantic found his book proposal told the same story with different dates, different details, and different ages for the attackers.
His memoir claimed he'd survived two brain tumours. His book proposal said testicular cancer. Neither illness appears in the other document.
Ezra drew the comparison to Jussie Smollett, the actor who claimed he was jumped in Chicago by MAGA supporters carrying a noose at 4 a.m., a story nobody with common sense believed for a second.
The deeper scandal, in Ezra's telling, wasn't the tall tales but what Cambridge was willing to overlook to keep its perfect specimen. When Jack Grove, a reporter for Times Higher Education, emailed Arday questions about his academic record, Scotland Yard got involved. Officers reportedly told Grove to stop contacting the professor, citing his mental health. Arday's law firm, Carter Ruck, suggested to Times Higher Education that the scrutiny "may be racially motivated."
The Metropolitan Police spent four months on the harassment complaint before closing the case in February with no action taken.
The Met now says a 41-year-old man was found unresponsive at a property in Battersea on Friday afternoon and pronounced dead at the scene. His death is being described as unexpected but "not believed to be suspicious," with next of kin notified. Cambridge Vice-Chancellor Deborah Prentice called it "tragic news."
Whether Arday took his own life has not been officially confirmed in the reporting so far. But in Ezra's view, that's the clear implication — and that if it is true, Arday didn't get there alone.
"He was built up into a superman, an impossible thing," Ezra said. "The more he embroidered, the more beloved he was."
The value Cambridge prized, said Ezra, was never really the scholarship. It was the optics: the youngest Black professor, the dreadlocks swishing across the quad, proof positive that Cambridge was tolerant.
When the plagiarism questions surfaced, and the conflicting stories collapsed, Ezra said there was nothing left to hold the myth up.
"It is a tragedy what happened to him," Ezra said, "but it didn't just happen by his own hand. In a way, the whole system pushed him to that."
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Ezra Levant
Rebel Commander
Ezra Levant is the founder and owner of Rebel News and the host of The Ezra Levant Show. He is the author of multiple best-selling books, including Ethical Oil, The Libranos, China Virus, and most recently, Trudeau's Secret Plan.
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