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ANALYSIS: Kendi finds racism after accused plagiarist, serial liar found dead
“The media lynched Jason Arday,” so argues Ibram Kendi.
Authorities found Arday, the controversial Cambridge University professor, dead on Saturday.
The tragic suicide followed a wave of criticism over his academic work, including publicized incidents of plagiarism. He also appeared to frequently lie, previously claiming he ran 30 marathons in 35 days, taught at Ohio State University, and had been the victim of racist attacks.
Kendi, now at Howard University, said Arday was “lynched” for being black.
Writing at his own publication, The Emancipator, Kendi said:
As a prominent Black scholar, you know the attacks haunt and hunt you like a lynch mob.
And then, one day, the attacks are at your door.
The attacks are wielded by racist propagandists, resenting you for shining a light on anti-Black racism. They hope everyone finally picks up their baseless claims. They know that to dim your light is to dim the light on their anti-Blackness.
Kendi said the attacks come due to a belief in “great replacement theory.” The Howard professor recently wrote a book where he connects most conservative beliefs to “great replacement theory,” as The College Fix previously covered.
The scholar compared the attacks on Arday’s highly questionable academic record to the own criticism he faced from his (mostly black) staffers for his poor management of a racism research center at Boston University.
He wrote:
A similar media pile-on happened to me in the fall of 2023 when I was a professor at Boston University. We had to let some staff go to ensure the financial sustainability of the Center for Antiracist Research, after huge declines in fundraising at a time when many antiracist organizations were being compelled to let people go amid major dips in funding. We gave our staff three months’ notice and severance, and allowed them to spend those next three months looking for a new place of employment. Enraged at me for the layoffs, some staffers retaliated by baselessly accusing me of mismanaging the center.
(The center often failed to meet its promises and burned through money at an astonishing rate).
Independent commentators criticized Kendi’s rush to find racism.
“Kendi thinks Blackness exempts one from amassing data, drawing connections, and presenting novel insights,” Columbia University Professor John McWhorter wrote.
Responding to Kendi, he said: “You’re the real thing in just showing racism exists, despite that this is a rote exercise. We don’t have to be actually smart, and in fact shouldn’t (too ‘Western’). We are authentic in eternally ‘contesting,'” McWhorter, a black linguist, wrote.
No engagement with the arrant lies, the massive plagiarism, the airy public addresses. Kendi thinks all of that is okay if you're Black (and have dreadlocks) and that Arday was still a legitimate academic seized upon because of his color.
Kendi thinks Blackness exempts one from… https://t.co/BvUtVe2M1B
— John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) August 16, 2026
“I wish Arday were alive. But this take on Arday as lynched is performance art. American academia should hesitate to embrace it,” McWhorter wrote on X.
MORE: Kendi praises pedophile as ‘antiracist demonstrator’
