By Chris Ratcliffe<\/p>\n
LONDON, Aug 17 (Reuters) – Thousands attended a vigil in central London on Monday for Jason Arday, a former University of Cambridge sociology professor who was found dead on Friday \u200cafter weeks of intense scrutiny over accusations of plagiarism and other claims.<\/p>\n
Arday, once hailed as Cambridge’s \u200cyoungest Black professor, resigned on August 5 after a former researcher accused him of plagiarism in his PhD thesis. British Prime Minister Andy \u200bBurnham described his death as “a tragedy on so many levels.”<\/p>\n
Arday denied the allegation but acknowledged making mistakes.<\/p>\n
The plagiarism allegations drew huge media interest, leading to questions about other elements of his life, including claims he made about his career, personal life and medical conditions.<\/p>\n
His family said on Friday that he had been the victim of misinformation and harassment.<\/p>\n
Campaign \u200cgroup Stand up to Racism organised Monday’s \u2060vigil to honour Arday. People carried flowers and placards \u2014 some reading “Rest In Power Professor Jason Arday” \u2014 as they gathered in Trafalgar Square, a historic centre for protest in the \u2060British capital.<\/p>\n
ARDAY BECAME FOCAL POINT<\/p>\n
Before his death, Arday had become a focal point for often polarising commentary about the state of British society, including on race, academic rigour, police interference and media intrusion.<\/p>\n
Cambridge University pledged on Wednesday to investigate the \u200bcircumstances \u200bof his appointment and his academic work.<\/p>\n
Critics have argued the \u200buniversity was so keen to hire a \u200cBlack academic that it failed to check Arday’s credentials sufficiently and did not respond appropriately when the plagiarism claims emerged.<\/p>\n
On Monday, university Chancellor Chris Smith defended the university’s approach.<\/p>\n
“I do believe it is possible to hold to two principles at the same time: to believe in the importance of academic integrity, and where criticisms of plagiarism arise, about any academic, whoever they are, ensure that they are rigorously investigated,” he told the BBC.<\/p>\n
“And also to \u200crefuse to join in a racist feeding frenzy over a \u200bparticular academic.”<\/p>\n
Britain’s Metropolitan Police apologised to a journalist for investigating a \u200bcomplaint against the journalist after he contacted Arday \u200bfor comment on the plagiarism accusations a year before the story was made public.<\/p>\n
The \u200cscrutiny once those accusations were published extended to \u200bquestioning Arday’s accounts of his \u200bchildhood struggles with autism and his sporting achievements \u2014 including that he ran 30 marathons in 35 days.<\/p>\n
“He was being subjected to relentless scrutiny, including ridicule, discrediting absolutely every detail of his life,” Simon Baron-Cohen, \u200ba Cambridge professor and supporter of \u200cArday, told BBC radio on Saturday.<\/p>\n
He said Arday was a vulnerable person since childhood and deserved \u200bsafeguarding and support, adding investigations into the case should assign accountability “at lots of levels”.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Chris \u200bRatcliffe, writing by William James; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Chris Ratcliffe LONDON, Aug 17 (Reuters) – Thousands attended a vigil in central London on Monday for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[26],"tags":[44115,44113,44092,44114,41830,27,44112,2177],"class_list":["post-105536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-academic-rigour","tag-accusations","tag-arday","tag-intense-scrutiny","tag-jason-arday","tag-london","tag-plagiarism","tag-university-of-cambridge"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117113755054160998","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}