Dr. Jason Atta Kwei Arday, a Black man with a doctorate, should still be here today.
In 2023, Arday became the University of Cambridge's youngest-ever Black professor, a historic appointment after years spent building a career against considerable barriers. On August 5, he resigned amid allegations concerning his academic work and an escalating wave of public scrutiny.
He was found dead the following week at age 41. Cambridge and police have described the death as unexpected and not suspicious, and a public cause has not been established.
As a Black man with a doctorate, I feel a responsibility to honor his impact. Six years ago, I received my doctorate from a public research
His death should not require us to resolve every allegation surrounding his career before affirming something more basic: no scholar's humanity should depend on the perfection of their record. Solidarity does not require silence, nor does it exempt any of us from accountability. It does, however, require us to insist that accountability never become dehumanization.
As public scrutiny around Arday intensified in late July, many of us across the Atlantic recognized something familiar: the scrutiny that turns one Black academic into a representative for an entire group; the questioning of credentials; the suggestion that achievement can be attributed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) rather than intellect; the code-switching, identity negotiation and psychic tax of institutional life.
Others have begun naming the forces that surrounded Arday in his final weeks. I find myself asking familiar questions, but one keeps replaying in my heart: what will those of us who recognize something of ourselves in this moment do for one another now?
Arday spent part of his scholarly life studying the very institutions in which he worked. He wrote about the scarcity of Black professors in British higher education and the structural conditions that constrain Black academics' progression through the academy. That work now reads with a painful resonance. His scholarship asked institutions to consider what they had built for Black people to enter. His death leaves me asking what we have built for one another once we arrive.
We have learned how to survive institutions individually. It is time to become more intentional about sustaining one another collectively.
The doctoral process itself is a shared experience that allows Black men across very different professional lives to recognize something in one another. You do not have to be faculty to understand it. A graduate student still inside the process, an administrator, a nonprofit professional, a consultant, or someone who left academe entirely can recognize something of this terrain. We have all entered an institutional process in which our intellect, writing, legitimacy and, ultimately, our names are subjected to formal judgment.
We know what it means to produce work that becomes attached to our names. We know what it means to submit that work for judgment, revision, defense, approval and, eventually, public scrutiny.
Doctoral training teaches us to become individual experts. Tenure rewards individuals. Awards celebrate singular distinction. The dissertation becomes a lasting artifact of our expertise, attached to our names long after the degree is conferred. Our CVs record individual accomplishment. Academic prestige teaches scarcity.
The doctorate may teach us to establish expertise individually. Black life has taught us something different about survival: it has never been an individual project. Our survival has historically depended on community. As Black men with doctorates, our presence is itself a testament to survival. But survival is not the same as thriving, and neither is a solitary project. Isolation is antithetical to our shared histories. Our degrees make us visible to people we may never know are watching. They do not make us invulnerable.
Brothers, it is time to coalesce. We need more of this: checking in on one another, citing one another, opening doors, defending someone's humanity even when we disagree with their choices, refusing to participate in spectacle, sharing opportunities and, most importantly, remembering that professional achievement does not eliminate the need for community.
Many of us have spent our careers studying and writing about belonging, developing grants and initiatives intended to foster it, and working to create it for others. Arday's death asks whether we have built enough of it for ourselves. We have spent enough time learning how to endure these institutions alone. What would it look like to become intentional about sustaining one another?
If you recognize something of yourself here, let your sharing of this letter be an act of solidarity. Add your name if you wish. Send it to another Black man pursuing or holding a doctorate. Let him know that achievement does not require isolation and that none of us should have to carry the weight of being exceptional alone.
Branden D. Elmore, Ph.D., earned his doctorate in Higher Education from The Pennsylvania State University.
