Jason Arday shouldn’t be dead. But he is dead - because he didn’t tell the truth. And Cambridge University didn’t look for the truth - because he’s black. And fellow black professors didn’t ask for the truth - because he is black. Jason lied repeatedly. And he told the exact lies that allow one to excel in the system that elite universities have adopted. A system that factors in race, hardship, and lived experience under the banner of equity, instead of pure performance. Nearly everyone in these institutions ignored Jason’s lies, to try and protect black people. They called the people seeking the truth racists. Of course there were some racists. But the majority of people just wanted the truth. Avoiding the truth didn’t help black people. Double standards in academia aren’t helping black people. They hurt the perception of black people who are truly the best, and would have held prestigious positions at elite schools, solely off the merits of their performance. Double standards always backfire. Even when well intentioned. Even when intended to correct for past oppression. Race-conscious hiring and admissions have created a situation where it is rational to wonder whether a black person has achieved their position because they were simply the best, or because they were good enough, and black. This is not a racist thought. It’s a rational thing to wonder when a system promotes people based on race. It’s a thing I’ve wondered about myself, as someone who graduated from Harvard - which had race-conscious admissions. No amount of insistence that it’s racist will make it racist. It’s no more racist than it would be to wonder whether a white player got into the NBA off of just performance, if the NBA decided to focus on “fixing” the underrepresentation of white people. This is the logical downside of race-conscious hiring and admissions. You can think the downside is worth the upside. But the downside remains. Calling people with legitimate concerns racist didn’t protect black people. It didn’t protect Jason. It hurt black people who have earned their positions. And it allowed a troubled man who built his career on lies to rise to a height so great that his fall from grace killed him. We could have just had the truth. Instead, we have a tragedy.