On Friday evening, just before I went to bed, the news came through that Jason Arday had died at the age of 41. I have to admit, the news affected me quite a bit. I did not know him personally, but barely a week earlier I had written a rather critical blog post about him. And as I read the first reports of his death, and then saw the first accusations appearing on social media, I found myself thinking of the old saying: of the dead, speak no ill.

But is that actually right?

For those who have really been on holiday and somehow missed the whole discussion, a quick recap. Jason Arday was a British academic who attracted considerable attention in 2023 when, at 37, he became the youngest Black professor ever to be appointed at the University of Cambridge. The rest of his life story was also remarkable, to say the least. It also received a great deal of attention in its own right. According to his own account (his own account being key), he did not learn to speak until he was 11 and learned to read and write relatively late. Yet he eventually became a professor at one of the world’s most prestigious universities.

Over the past few weeks, everything took a very different turn. Serious questions emerged about plagiarism in his PhD thesis and other publications, but also about several elements of his CV and life story. Arday denied deliberately plagiarising work, but acknowledged mistakes, referring among other things to his autism by way of explanation. That prompted me to write a post of my own. Cambridge, and later the University of Glasgow, announced independent investigations into his appointments, and Arday resigned. For those wanting to read more, The NYTimes published a detailed reconstruction.

Another blog post I wrote was not really about Arday alone. My point was precisely that his case did not prove that the whole of academia was rotten. Don’t get me wrong, academia does have problems with fraud, plagiarism and, at times, poor quality control. But Arday was hardly the first academic around whom such questions had arisen. Jumping from one spectacular case to academia is rotten to the bone seemed, and still seems, several bridges too far.

And then, suddenly, the person you have been writing about dies.

I went back and read my own posts. To be clear, I think the facts haven’t changed. Someone’s death does not alter what happened before it. If plagiarism occurred, it does not suddenly become proper citation just because the person concerned has died, although I did see somebody trying to change this online already. Legitimate questions about an academic appointment do not disappear either, as Cambridge is noticing already. Imagine if we adopted that as a general rule. Writing history or biographies would become rather difficult. Or perhaps you end up with a film about Michael Jackson like Michael.

Still, it feels different now.

Perhaps that is why the old saying about speaking ill of the dead exists in the first place. I don’t think it means that after someone dies, we suddenly have to pretend they only ever did good things. But perhaps it reminds us that behind a case, a scandal, or a public debate, there is always an actual human being. In Arday’s case, he was also a partner and a father of two children.

After his death, his family described in a statement a sustained campaign of harassment and misinformation. According to them, the pressure on Arday had become too much. I do think their account deserves to be heard. At the same time, at the time of writing this post, we do not know what caused his death. It would therefore be wrong for us to draw a causal line between the criticism he received and his death. Attempts to attribute his death already to Cambridge, DEI, racism or the media are premature and, for now, poorly supported.

Over the past few weeks, Jason Arday had increasingly become less of a person and more of an argument. The irony is that his death now seems to be becoming an argument too.  For some, his story proved that universities had abandoned academic standards in the name of diversity. For others, the way he was treated demonstrated the racism that Black academics still face. Meanwhile, I do think there really were serious substantive questions that needed to be investigated.

Perhaps of the dead, speak no ill does not mean that we should stop talking about what went wrong once somebody dies. Perhaps it means that there are moments when not everything that is true or relevant needs to be said immediately. I wrote this post on Saturday morning, but found it too early to post.

The facts have not changed since Friday.

Sadly, the context has.