A Retired Rector's Reflections

“I would take a thread and a needle and I’d interweave love into our society”

“I think, in my humble opinion, we have lost our way in our society…”

“We all have the capacity to do great and wonderful things”

Those are words of Professor Jason Arday, whose recent tragic death shows starkly the uncontrolled power of the press to hound and destroy people, and how racism in our society is very close to the surface in everyday life. I’m sure that like me and everyone else he made mistakes, and if that was in his academic work then universities have established procedures to deal with such matters, and it is not through speculative press villification. It is clear to me that he was particularly targetted because of the colour of his skin.

A friend, herself a black woman priest, Mtr Angela Gbebikan, reflected on Jason Arday’s death with these words (thank you to her for allowing me to quote them):

“…anger, sadness, disillusionment, disbelief, I don’t think I want to live here anymore. it is all so very very troubling the way that the media are leading the agenda these days…. in reality, who on earth is interested in whether a professor at Oxbridge has plagiarised his/her work (if it even was plagiarised). Thinking of a young man, who could have been my own child, literally hounded to death by trolls and right wing parasites and media (but not just right wing media)… I remember well the racism of the 70s and 80s and this would not have been acceptable even in those dark days. As I said in a sermon today….things that we should find absolutely shocking have become the norm. Don’t even know where to go with this, I am so overwhelmed by it.”

Where do we go with this?

For now we speak out and name it for what it is.

For myself I also fall silent to reflect and pray in solidarity with my black brothers and sisters.