Arday. A young man who tinkered with his credentials in such a way that he was selected to be a professor at Cambridge University. The selectors for his professorship were also under the sway of the ruling concept of diversity, so they say. Slowly, through circumstances, he was exposed, and there was a tirade against him on social media and in newspapers. People began to think that Cambridge University’s standards were diluted by these social positions. This is what we gather as news, but ….
At this point, the whole of society, academia, the powers that be, the bosses of this concept of DEI, and its detractors forgot that they were dealing with a human being. They were thinking in a Darwinian way of what benefits us and what harms us. The brutal media and social media outrage—driven by our relentless, algorithmic emotional outbursts—must have haunted him at the time of his death.
Arday resigned from his position as professor of sociology of education. He was not available for any interview and was not on any social media. The news yesterday was that he was found dead.
Who is responsible for this? I am not name-calling. I am questioning the human sensitivity in society now. Is society at large not treating individuals as its own children? If one of our children goes astray, do we ostracise them? Do we puncture them and polarise them into depression and ending life?
He was living with his partner and two children, and my thoughts immediately go to the ones who are left behind. They are the ones carrying this unbearable weight now. Are these heads of society—who are in academia, the media, and positions of influence—looking into their hearts to check whether everything is in the right place and in shipshape?
The death of Arday is very tragic. It is a shame on society and the current civilisation of strife—not military strife, but the strife of emotions and ideologies. That Darwinian strife, I must say, must be looked into more deeply. The death of Arday should make us look more profoundly at things and lay down new rules of living for society so that such a tragedy does not occur again.
Investigation, assessment, and resolution should be redemptive, empathetic, and supportive. That is the approach one should have taken.
Matcha
