I WAS with Professor Jason Arday as recently as Monday the week before last. He was always a lovely, kind, and brilliant man. But by the evening we met, you began to feel that the campaign against him was taking a massive toll. By the Friday, he had passed away.

The death of Professor Arday was an avoidable tragedy. It was also the product of a concerted effort by reactionary and far-right forces to hound him from his public position and to pursue him even after he had resigned.

The reason there has been such an outpouring of both grief and anger following his tragic death is that many people, from a wide variety of communities, understand that this was an attack on all black people who rise to prominence and a warning to all the rest, to know their place and accept their lot, no matter how meagre it is.

That is why an estimated thirty thousand people turned out or a vigil in Trafalgar Square in Professor Arday’s memory on Monday August 17. The vigil was called at extremely short notice, so the very large attendance is a marker of how broadly his loss has been felt.

Arday was hounded to his death, principally by a right-wing media.

It is irrefutable that he was the subject of a vicious and bitter campaign by people who did not believe a black man should be a Cambridge professor.

He must have felt that if he resigned the attacks on him would stop, but in fact they got even worse. From his resignation to his death last week was just a week and a half, but the newspapers continued to hound him.

This was a startlingly vicious campaign, but it was not just a campaign against the professor, it was a campaign against all black people.  

In some ways, it was a death foretold and Jason foretold it.  

Earlier this year, the youngest black professor in Cambridge University’s history delivered a presentation titled Wanted Dead or Alive: the Playbook. He told an audience attending the British Sociological Association’s 75th anniversary conference that the playbook had been instrumental in bringing down some of the most well-known figures in the US higher education system.

Paid right-wing activists were trawling through the works of black academics, looking for anything they could find against them. This could be the slightest error, anything that vaguely resembled another work, mis citations, repetitions. Often, they amounted to little more than a “failure” to cite their own preferred source.

There has also been considerable overlap with the attacks on academics who have spoken out on the genocide in Gaza.

These attacks on black academics are well-funded and relentless. They have led to a string of resignations, including that of Claudine Gay who was briefly president of Harvard, as well as provoking suicides.

Jason warned that this Maga-linked movement had already come to Britain. We know now that one of the chief instigators of the campaign against him was Nathan Cofnas, a self-styled “race realist” who argued that in a meritocracy there would be no black professors at Harvard.

Jason’s death was not an isolated or an inexplicable incident.

At the same time, we all know of prominent figures in British life who have been guilty of plagiarism, who were not prevented from achieving high office after their plagiarism was known. But what all the figures who escaped scandal have in common is that they are white.

Racism is the driving force behind the ruthless campaign against Professor Arday, who in contrast had already been cleared by Liverpool John Moores University, where he wrote his PhD.

This is where the individual tragedy and the disgraceful campaign against Arday interconnect with a broader campaign and the international political situation.

The Trump administration has set out in its National Security Strategy its claim that Europe is facing a “civilisational crisis” because it has permitted high levels of immigration.

It is clear that this is not another spurious argument about resources or the economy. It is a full-throated, racist claim that all “foreigners” are alien and undermine European civilisation, no matter how long they have been here.

Partly in response, Europe’s spineless politicians have increased the level of racism in general and their anti-migrant policies in particular.

This is what lies behind the Asylum and Immigration Bill which is currently going through Parliament. It explains the frenzied attacks on Professor Arday by the Telegraph, the Spectator, the Mail and the Murdoch press. They are now facing a deluge of complaints against them. Should we mention the Guardian here?

At the same time, there is an international network of US-based think tanks, journals, media outlets and academic positions dedicated to recycling Trump’s racist garbage. They are extremely well-funded and quite brazen, as seen in Elon Musk’s support for “Tommy Robinson” shows.

There is accompanied by a widespread official denial that racism even exists for black people. But with the profound level of attacks on us, it is extremely important to disbar anyone who opposes this offensive. Whether they are academics, politicians or other public figures, they must not be allowed to give voice to the reality of racism. They must be shut down and shut up.

Some of us are determined not to let that happen. If the cries for justice at the vigil for Professor Arday are to mean anything, they must include the standing together against the growing racist campaign.

One of the most outlandish claims in the campaign against him was the gleeful verdict that they had brought low “the poster boy for DEI” (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion).

But of course, DEI does not exist in this country in the way they are claiming, and there is precious little evidence of anyone trying to implement it in British academia. About 1 per cent of professors in this country are black, fewer than half that percentage at Cambridge University.

The international far right are attempting to eradicate black people from the academy in their entirety.

But why should academia be allowed to be a self-perpetuating white, upper-class boys’ club? Even the House of Commons, hardly a bastion of equality, has 14 per cent of MPs from ethnic minorities. Judges are about the same, but the police and armed forces are way behind, yet even they have a 3-4-times greater diversity than academia.

As a lasting tribute to Professor Arday, perhaps our aim should be real inclusion in our universities.

Diane Abbott is MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington and Mother of the House of Commons. She writes this column fortnightly.