Jason Arday didn't deserve this...

So if we go back to March, 2023, Jason actually takes up a post as a professor of sociology of education at the University of Cambridge.

He's 37 years old at the time.

He's the youngest black person ever to be appointed to a professorship at that university in his 800 year history.

Now, that was a big deal at the time.

You know, I'm going to be completely honest.

I didn't know who he was until all this news came out.

But I understand at the time it was very, very large news.

And I'm paraphrasing here, but As I researched for this video, I came across some quotes where he basically said he's happy and grateful for it to be what it is in terms of the large scale news that it's become.

And he's grateful for that.

But he wants to get to a point where accolades or being the youngest black person to do something so amazing should be a non-story.

Like it shouldn't be even be news because he wants to see more black people in greater prominent positions.

That was basically his sentiment while being praised for the position that he gained.

the story at the time was a fairly big deal he said he was diagnosed at three years old with autism spectrum disorder and global development delay he said he didn't speak until he was 11 and he said he couldn't read or write until he was 18. he said as a young man he wrote on his bedroom wall that one day he would work at oxford or cambridge All of this is public news.

The BBC ran it.

The Guardian ran it.

And when it comes to America, even CBS and Good Morning America ran it.

So he was on TV.

He was actually a big deal.

Now, personally, I wasn't aware of him, so I won't pretend I was, but I know many people who knew who he was.

His actual academic work, the thing that he was hired to do was about race and racism in British higher education, which is ironic.

He covered the underrepresentation of black academics, decolonizing the curriculum, race and mental health his best known book was one he co-edited with another academic called heidi safia mirza in 2018 called dismantling race in higher education and that book is genuinely well regarded even david lammy endorsed it and the thing he kept banging on about the number he cited constantly is this out of roughly 23 and a half thousand professors in the uk the number who are black is around 250 so that's around one percent and of that 250 70 are women 70 black women professors in the entire country so that's not even in proportion to the country as black people represent about three to four percent of the general population this was some of the work that jason ardy was a proponent for that's what he was pushing for he was trying to get more black people into education that is the world he was operating in he wasn't just a professor He was one of the 250 people and the most visible one of all of them.

And that visibility is what truly mattered.

The question I have to ask is when did things turn a little bit sinister? Because the intensity of what we've seen in the last three weeks has been crazy.