Why the Right-Wing Press Couldn't Let Jason Arday Be (ft. Dr. Jenn Jackson)

Katelyn Burns (0:00)

Before we get started, I just wanted to say that this episode will feature discussion about self-harm and suicide. So if that is a sensitive subject for you, we just wanted to let you know that that is coming.

Jenn Jackson (0:14)

You saying that he in some ways predicted his own death, to me is absolutely right, right? Even throughout the book, as he writes about his experiences, he literally says, I worry that this will be the thing that does me in. I worry that I'm not going to have enough left. He had a very catastrophic experience of autistic burnout around the age of 35, where he was essentially catatonic.

He couldn't talk, he couldn't move, he was so overwhelmed that was when he had his first attempt. And so I think when we think about what he's spoken about since then, right? That came from a place of a deep wisdom, right? It came from a deep knowledge of having had to endure these experiences for so long, and having to constantly come back and save himself over and over and over again.

Katelyn Burns (1:09)

Christine, we are going back to our roots.

So the show when it first started was all about cancel culture. Honestly, we just mostly mocked right wingers the whole time. This is a more serious episode today, but it is going back to cancel culture with a lot of talk about the media. And we are going to be talking about the tragic death of Jason Arday, a British academic who was basically hounded by British and right wing American media into taking his own life from this.

Christine Grimaldi (1:50)

And it features that kind of cancelation to grift or pipeline that we talk about so often on the podcast. When you have embittered white men who are mediocre and think that they deserve something that someone else, particularly someone who comes from a marginalized background has.

Katelyn Burns (2:09)

So who are we canceling today? Embittered white men?

Christine Grimaldi (2:14)

Yeah, that works.

Katelyn Burns (2:15)

Works for me. Hey, everyone. I'm Katelyn Burns.

Christine Grimaldi (2:19)

And I'm Christine Grimaldi.

Katelyn Burns (2:20)

And you're listening to Cancel Me, Daddy.

Christine Grimaldi (2:24)

The show where we take a closer look at all the panic around political media.

Katelyn Burns (2:28)

With thoughtful analysis.

Christine Grimaldi (2:30)

And verbal shitposting. So Kate, who do we have on the podcast today?

Katelyn Burns (2:37)

We have Jenn M. Jackson, who is a Black academic themself. They use they them pronouns. And they are the amazing author of the book Black Women Taught Us. And we'll have more on that book later. But let's get into the interview.

Jenn, welcome to Cancel Me, Daddy.

Jenn Jackson (2:58)

Thank you for having me.

Katelyn Burns (3:00)

So we wanted to have you on to talk about everything that happened with the death of Jason Arday, who is a Black British academic who I don't know the right words to describe this, but was basically hounded relentlessly by the both British press and I think the right wing American press here as they frequently collaborate together, as we know from previous discussions on the show.

And I understand that you have been following that very closely and have been posting about it. So can you for people who are listening, who maybe don't know anything about this or maybe just got one or two posts here and there from other people, can you give us like a quick recap of what went down? Yeah.

Jenn Jackson (3:53)

So in preparation for this conversation, I actually read his entire memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things. It's a really beautiful and profound story. The reason why I wanted to read the memoir is because the primary contention that folks had about Dr. Arday was the idea that he had been making up his life story, that he had plagiarized his work, and that the version of himself that he was presenting to the University of Cambridge was inaccurate and somehow a farce.

Before I really said a lot about it publicly, I wanted to make sure I knew what I was talking about. What I will say about Jason Arday and what I got from the memoir and also what I got from the news media, it's really, really, really disappointing and really, really very tragic. This was a young man who did not speak until he was 11 years old. He was diagnosed autistic very, very young. He has two brothers and he was raised with his father and his mother, but mostly by his mother, who was a Ghanaian immigrant in London.

What that meant for their childhood experience was his mother, who was a primary character in this memoir, ends up essentially guiding him through a system that denies him full access to education, that denies him human dignity, and she is the catalyst behind pretty much all of his major life accomplishments. So when he begins speaking, she essentially had to teach the doctors how to help him, how to support him. He has a brother who also has neurodiversities as well. And they're like, we want to just apply the same blanket techniques to both kids. And she would say, no, they're different people. Jason is his own person. Treat Jason in the ways that he needs. And what was really, I think, that set with me most in the book was that, although he faced a lot of challenges with institutions that just simply didn't believe him or didn't have the resources and didn't actually try, he had incredible community support, incredible community support. He had comrades and classmates who would sit with him and teach him how to read. He had a coach who, and he admitted in the book, he didn't always step up and do what he needed to do. But when he was pushed, he showed up. He had a coach who stayed with him all the way through his Ph.D. journey, who supported him as he was learning how to speak publicly. And he had a hard time with reading even to his own children. So his daughter would often read books to him. So just a beautiful community of people around him. But what's really, I think, profound about the book is throughout the book. And this is before any of this happened, that he wrote it. Throughout the book, he explains how hard it is to be a Black neurodiverse person in a society that says that Black people are always trying to get a leg up or trying to aim the system. He mentioned specifically that going into academia, he learned very quickly that people assume that you are there because someone did a favor, right? Because someone pitied you and felt bad for you. So reading the book, that brings us to what happens in the news media in the past year or so. Essentially, it was a witch hunt, I would say, by colleagues as he continued to go to more and more prestigious universities and get incredible jobs. They would go to the research boards, they would go to the administrations of those institutions and essentially say, this person doesn't deserve to be here, they've plagiarized all of their work. What we also know about folks with autism, and the book makes this clear too, there are certain ways that for those of us who, I say those of us, I also am autistic, those of us who navigate complex neurodiversity, the ways that we see the world are very different, the ways that we articulate our understanding of the world is very different. He also had dyslexia and dyscalculia, so all these ways of seeing the world that were very nuanced. But from the colleague's perspective, it was this person doesn't deserve to be here, we should scrutinize everything that he's ever published, everything he's ever written, let's go through every line of his dissertation. This went on his entire career. What we saw in the media in the last few months is actually just a internationalizing of that, right? That had been going on from the moment he mentioned wanting to go into academia. So in these last few months that unfortunately ended with him passing away, what happened is that it blew up out of control to the point where hundreds of articles are being published about this person, and the level of scrutiny and harassment hit such a grand stage. He had already been very much struggling with suicidal ideation throughout his life, which is also very clear in the book. He actually talks about his primary attempt, and how again, a community member saved him from that attempt.