Tragic news about Jason Arday
It was heartbreaking to discover the tragic news about Jason Arday.
Regardless of how true or untrue were the accusations and Jason’s responses to those accusations, something I’ve noticed in most of the materials around this story is that they only mention autism as something he was diagnosed with at age of three. But all the discussions about the present situation only mention him as a PhD, a professor or an author, omitting the fact that the autism was still there all this time. This is not something that gets cured just after getting your PhD or professorship.
The academic world is brutally competitive. With the very few senior positions and loads of candidates, even a slightest hint of unfair appointment can lead to a disproportionally massive and cruel campaign that can destroy a person’s career. And considering how hard it is to transfer academic skills anywhere else, destroying someone’s academic career can essentially destroy their whole identity, which is much harder to overcome for people with autism.
While Jason’s reported achievements have made him the first and unique in many ways, he did not necessarily appoint himself as a representative of the black autistic community. Many other people, including myself, did it for various reasons, which inevitably has added much more weight to those achievements and multiplied the crushing power of any attack against this figure of hope, which is much harder to deal with for people with autism.
Autism doesn’t disappear once you become successful. This is perhaps the most important point. His academic achievements didn’t make him neurotypical all of a sudden. When a neurodivergent person masters a particular skill, they can do it flawlessly as long as they have the right environmnet for it, indisnguishable from any of their peers. But as soon as something changes, the difference in response between an autistic and a neurotypical person shows up immediately. And that’s something that I feel that has not received enough attention in this sad story. It didn’t have to be that harsh.
