In Memory of Jason Arday, We Choose Each Other.

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 institution in the United States. I have usually understood that anniversary as a marker of achievement. This year, following Arday's death, it feels more complicated. It reminds me how many of us carry both achievement and exhaustion inside the same institutional story, and how difficult it can be to reconcile our successes within institutions with the knowledge that Black achievement can so quickly coexist with ridicule, demoralization and dehumanization.

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 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.