Gesilayefa @ Lightplay Society

What an awful, and terribly predictable, tragedy. The original charge against Jason Arday was that he had plagiarised another academic’s work in his PhD. He denied it, Liverpool John Moores University investigated, and it upheld the award of the doctorate. That should have been the end of it. But the witch hunt simply moved on: to his charity fundraising, to his long-distance running, to details of his early life, none of which had anything to do with his academic career. Whatever Jason Arday did or didn’t do, which other professor has been subjected to this level of forensic public investigation? Academia is not exactly short of embellished CVs and creative grant applications. But as far as this country’s institutions and media are concerned, the rules are different if you’re black. This is the reality of liberal white supremacy. A young black professor gets appointed, and Cambridge congratulates itself for being wonderfully progressive (of course not acknowledging this as the result of decades of mass anti-racist struggle). But it’s only a loan and can be taken away at any time, on the basis of an overtly racist press campaign designed to undermine the legitimacy of all non-white intellectuals and send a message to all young black people: you are not as good as us, and you’re only here under sufferance. Racism killed Jason Arday. As capitalism moves deeper and deeper into long-term crisis and as living conditions continue to deteriorate, white supremacism will play an increasingly important role for the ruling class, dividing the oppressed and isolating those communities that are least invested in imperialism. This is the trajectory – unless we do something about it.