Lascap nails it:

https://x.com/i/status/2088538080600895840

Jason Arday has died, which is a tragic development in the highly publicised plagiarism and fabulism DEI scandal he was in the centre of. We don't know how of why he died, but there's a lot of speculation that it was by suicide. Anyone who followed this scandal will know that none of the people who tried to hold Arday and the institutions that enabled him accountable, have called for such a terrible outcome. Instead, people called for admission of wrongdoing, reflection on the societal mechanisms that allowed it to escalate and go on for so long, and some, who were personally and negatively affected, sought justice. However, blame is already flying around, so I want to say something about this.

Firstly, no suicide has a single cause. There are helpful media guidelines about reporting on this topic and I suggest all journalists read them in order to cover this event responsibly.

Secondly, although loss of life for any reason is shocking and tragic, people need to consider that had Jason Arday not been exposed, he would have continued to lie, draw a large salary from a university and speakers fees, and misuse serious medical conditions for personal gain, while giving seriously sick people and their families a false hope as well as a feeling of being a failure.

Arday also had a history of slinging false racism accusations at anyone who tried to hold him to an account or simply question his dubious claims. He - or perhaps the ecosystem of self-serving people who enabled him, I don't know - even set a highly litigious law firm on journalists who attempted to expose him in the past.

All these are deliberate, systematic and consistent choices.

Coming clean, apologising, taking responsibility for his actions, were also some of the choices that were available to Arday. But this is not what he chose to do. Instead, he doubled down repeatedly, and now he is dead.

In case that this was a suicide, we need to keep in mind that sometimes people choose that way out instead of facing up to consequences of their behaviour.

None of this is the fault of people who exposed the lies, or spoke up about the ways they themselves were affected. People have not just the right but a duty to call out bad behaviour in others, and point out when something is obviously and blatantly wrong. It is not acceptable, or sustainable, to expect others to stay quiet about serious transgressions.

Our society has just gone through two decades of pernicious ideologies and practices, which explicitly use emotional blackmail and threats of suicide to stop others from holding them to an account. This tactic is never sustainable in the long term, because unopposed, harms just end up mounting and spiralling out of control, hurting more and more people.

If this tragic outcome was Jason Arday's choice, I wish he had made a different one. I wish that people who enabled him had de-escalated the situation far earlier and more effectivelly. I have no doubt we will hear more in the coming days, but I sincerely hope that the publishing of Jason Arday's memoir, which has been proven to be largely fiction, will be delayed, because that would be a responsible thing to do under the circumstances. And I hope that the society will engage with this tragedy mindfully, because there are a lot of issues that have been negatively affecting large sections of our society, which have came together in this scandal.

The yew near the river has berries!