Name, blame and shame the right people

Content warning: this newsletter mentions racism, press harassment, and suicide. Support resources are at the end. ❤️‍🩹

This might sounds strange.

Naming and blaming is a part of inclusive language.

(I know that might sound like we go around blaming people all the time… It really isn’t that! It isn’t normally about blaming individuals. Most of the time you don’t need to blame anyone.)

It’s about putting blame where it actually belongs, so that minoritised people stop being seen as the problem.

Some social groups get harmed, again and again. by design. If we don’t talk about how that happened, by design, then readers will imagine the cause. They assume the people are the problem.

• “The racial attainment gap” makes Black students sound deficient. They’re obviously not. (It’s an awarding gap, and it’s caused by systems outside of the students themselves, and problems like stereotype threat.)

• “Hard to reach communities” makes it sound like people are choosing hardship, and turning down support. Far from it.

• “Global warming” is a really convenient phrase because notice how it sounds natural, pleasant, and it’s got no fossil fuel companies in it?

• Or “violence against women and girls.” Notice how men are missing from that phrase? The people who experience the harm are there, twice. The people doing the violence aren’t in it at all. That’s why many of us now call it male violence against women and girls. A single word changes, and the perpetrator is back in the frame. The first time you hear “male” violence against women and girls it can sound strange. Because we’re so used to the version that hides the perpetrator.

Passive voice isn’t neutral. It protects someone, and usually it’s whoever did the thing.

As k. kennedy Whiters says: “[Passive voice] hides who did what to whom.”

I am sick of nobody knowing the name of any of the actual harassers, abusers, plagiarisers and people who caused massive harm at universities, charities and other organisations in recent years.

I just had to google “who was the Oxfam official + sexual exploitation” because I couldn’t remember his name. It was Roland van Hauwermeiren, by the way.

Did you remember his name?

In fact, do you remember the names of any of the academics who been investigated for plagiarism (and actually found guilty) in the last couple of years?

There are several. But no, very few of us remember their names.

I’m obviously not saying there should be zero accountability for anything.

If we exaggerate or lie, yes, there will be consequences.

I’m just saying: name and blame the right people.

Professor Jason Arday died on 14 August 2026. He was 41. He was an autistic Black academic, the youngest Black person appointed to a professorship at Cambridge, and he resigned 9 days earlier, saying he had reached the limits of what any person should reasonably be expected to endure.

The investigation is open, and no conclusion has been reached about how he died. I’m not going to speculate about that.

What we can say is what was done to him:

• In his final 9 days, the UK press published at least 188 articles about him. (Source: Newscord)

• On 31 July, Professor Sir Simon Baron-Cohen, Arday’s friend and a leading1 autism researcher, publicly asked the media to stop, saying he considered Arday at risk of dying by suicide.

• The coverage increased.

• In March, a misconduct panel at Liverpool John Moores University found the citation problems in his PhD were “honest and reasonable error.”

• His family have described what happened as a campaign of harassment against Jason and against them.

Nova Reid has called it a “digital l*nching” and feral racism.

Reid’s words capture the truth exactly. And acknowledge what really happened, in a way that “tragedy” does not.

The plagiarism accusations were driven by Nathan Cofnas, a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University.

• Cofnas dismissed Arday as “just another DEI hire” before reading his thesis. (Yes, before. This man is a researcher.)

• On 9 August, 5 days before Arday died, he described Arday in an interview with David Starkey using the words “ret*rded”, “illiterate” and “mentally disabled”, while noting that he is Black.

Cofnas is not acting alone. His profile was built by Aporia, an online magazine that is the public-facing arm of the Human Diversity Foundation, itself a relaunch of the Pioneer Fund, the body set up to fund eugenics research. On 8 August, Aporia ran a piece calling Arday’s case the “bitter fruit of equalitarianism”.

Did you know about this? You can read more about it in the Byline Times: The Peter Thiel-Linked Race Science Network that Penetrated Cambridge University and Targeted Jason Arday.

Did you see Aporia mentioned in the mainstream coverage? Was this presented to you as a targeted, strategic attack on a Black academic, from a network and individuals with a public commitment to eugenics?

At least from where I was, the reporting presented itself like an organic, reasonable, proportionate response to allegations of plagiarism and inaccurate biographic claims.2

It was not.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore defines racism as the “production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.”

I first learned this through Nova Reid’s work. Reid has called racism “vulnerability to early death.”

Not vulnerability to rudeness.

Not vulnerability to awkward conversations.

Vulnerability to dying sooner.

That’s what’s at stake when we write “a tragedy” and put our hands in the air.

Somebody chose to make this happen.

Somebody chose to publish.

Somebody chose to fund.

Somebody chose to describe a disabled Black man as “ret*rded” on camera, and somebody chose to platform them.

If your news feed and all your texts haven’t been about Professor Jason’s story, it may have passed you by. (I don’t know any Black people who can say that.)

For minoritised people who already have to be twice, three times as good, Professor Jason’s story is heartbreaking on even more levels. It shows that white supremacy culture does not care about your achievements, and an institution that was proud to show you off will not stand between you and a mob.

I’m not talking to the Black and Brown people whose hearts are broken right now. You don’t need to be told to take action.

I’m talking to everyone who this passed by, or who has thought “oh, how awful” and then moved on with their day.

This is for you: we all have to take action.

1 tiny action to start with? Naming, blaming and shaming appropriately.

• Support the family. If you can, donate to this GoFundMe in Memory of Professor Jason Arday, set up by Sir Patrick Vernon OBE. If you can’t afford to donate, share it.

• File press complaints. Newscord’s one-click action files formal IPSO Editors’ Code complaints against the Daily Mail, The Times, The Telegraph, The Sun and The Spectator, plus letters to each editor and to the Guardian’s readers’ editor. 11 submissions in 1 click.

• Back the call for an inquiry. The Good Law Project petition for a public inquiry into the media’s conduct has been signed by well over 100,000 people now. Add your name.

• Name the perpetrator. Name who did this. Name white supremacy. Name the individuals. Name the networks, like Aporia. Do not let this slide into invisibility. Find every sentence in your organisation’s writing where harm happens to a group with no agent attached. Put the agent back in. It’s small, unglamorous, and will seem pointless on a grey day. Do it anyway.

Rest in power, Professor Jason Arday. ❤️‍🩹

If you’re affected by anything in this newsletter

• Samaritans: 116 123, free, 24 hours, from any phone in the UK and Ireland. Or email jo@samaritans.org. If you’re worried about someone else, you can contact Samaritans about them too.

• Shout: text SHOUT to 85258, free and 24 hours.

• NHS 111, option 2, for urgent mental health support in England.

• International Suicide Hotlines around the world, if you’re not in the UK.

For ongoing support (not crisis support):

• Black Minds Matter UK connects Black individuals and families with free one to one talking therapy delivered by qualified Black therapists.

• The Black, African and Asian Therapy Network holds the UK’s largest directory of counsellors and psychotherapists of Black, African, Asian and Caribbean heritage, including a free services directory.