Simon Baron-Cohen, the distinguished Cambridge autism specialist, has been speaking movingly about his friend, Jason Arday, in a BBC radio interview. Baron-Cohen said the last contact he had with Arday was hours before he was found dead at an address in south London yesterday afternoon: “He really wasn’t coping. He was being subjected to relentless scrutiny…ridicule, discrediting every detail of his life… He wasn’t coping with the loss of his career, the loss of his reputation. He felt he couldn’t go on.”
Jason Arday was a victim, but not in the way that his political champions suggest
Baron-Cohen went on to talk about him as “an incredibly kind and gentle and caring and generous man”. From his own perspective, he observed, “at the heart of all this was a man who was diagnosed with autism and language differences…he needed support every step of the way. [Yet] after the allegations of plagiarism, (the) media didn’t leave him alone.”
It is good to be reminded of Jason Arday as a friend, by a friend. For in death we all should be remembered in our humanity, even in our flawed humanity. And Jason Arday was very human; he bled. He was not just a totem of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), but as the Prof said, a vulnerable man. It’s sometimes hard for pundits, self included, to remember how terrifying it is to be at the heart of a media firestorm. Jason Arday isn’t the first to feel the pressure to be unbearable. We may not feel exactly guilt at participating in the row, but it would be strange if we didn’t feel sober, chastened, by his tragic end.
