More than £115,000 has been donated to support the family of former Cambridge professor Jason Arday, who was found dead at his home on Friday.
The fundraiser, launched by Windrush campaigner Sir Patrick Vernon, is intended to help cover funeral costs and has drawn more than 2,500 contributions.
In a tribute posted on GoFundMe, Sir Patrick described Mr Arday as a “pioneering academic” and said the page had been created to support his family through “an unimaginably difficult time”.
At Jesus College, Cambridge, where Mr Arday worked, a flag was flown at half-mast as flowers were left in his memory.
Mr Arday made history in 2023 when, at the age of 37, he became Cambridge’s youngest Black professor. He resigned earlier this month after facing allegations of plagiarism.
He was found dead on Friday at his home in Battersea, south-west London, just hours after telling a colleague, Sir Simon Baron-Cohen, that he “could not go on”.
Sir Simon, a fellow professor and director of the Autism Research Centre, told the BBC: “He was being subjected to relentless scrutiny, including ridicule, discrediting absolutely every detail of his life, and he wasn’t coping.”
Mr Arday denied the allegations and, when announcing his resignation on August 5, pointed to “unrelenting public scrutiny” as the reason for leaving his post.
Professor Jason Arday was found dead at his home in Battersea, south west London
In his resignation letter, he added that the ‘personal cost’ of the row had become ‘too great’, and was taking a toll on those close to him.
Cambridge University launched an investigation into Mr Arday’s academic qualifications, saying that ‘new information’ emerged, as did Jesus College.
In recent days, criticism had extended to his memoir, in which Mr Arday wrote that he was non-verbal until he was 11 – a claim challenged by some of his former classmates.
A vigil, held by the campaign group Stand Up To Racism, is set to take place on Monday evening in Trafalgar Square, central London.
It comes after Prime Minister Andy Burnham described Mr Arday’s death as a ‘tragedy on so many levels’.
He told reporters during a visit to Cornwall: ‘It’s not a moment for rushing to judgment.
‘It’s a moment for reflecting on how things came to this.’
In a statement issued by Mr Arday’s publisher Simon & Schuster UK on Friday, his family said they were ‘in shock to have lost this amazing father, partner, brother, uncle, and son’.
They added: ‘Jason was subjected to a campaign of sustained abuse for the more than three years since he accepted the role of professor at Cambridge University by those who would leave no stone unturned in their quest to undermine him.
‘The campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason, who was a gentle man and who always wanted to see the best in everyone.’
Meanwhile, Shadow communities secretary Sir James Cleverly said: ‘The death of Jason Arday is tragic, and makes me so angry.
‘Even the most casual observer could see he was a vulnerable fantasist.
‘A number of people at a number of academic institutions have serious questions to answer. They put him into positions he was clearly not qualified for so they could have a black wunderkind to show off, they pushed him into the spotlight for their own benefit.
‘His exposure was inevitable, a case of when, not if.
‘His whole world fell apart.’
