End of Arday’s Days

Oh, what a hard day!

Jason jettisoned from an ancient throne

stoned and thrown,

a bridge, ‘ca’m’ caustic waters

What a bleeding blue day!

bright Knight, brutus knives

white parchment soaks black blood

pressed, persistent, pursuing

Oh, the evil Empire that knows no setting sun

high Noon in the Wild Wild West

rage, rage, rising from the slave code tomb, eye wide shut we gaze

an eclipse of an African son.

The public destruction of the living and life of this young, accomplished scholar has resonated globally as a gruesome, networked catastrophe. It comes in the aftermath of the United Nations General Assembly’s resolution that deemed chattelisation of enslaved Africans the gravest crime against humanity.

It is impossible to separate the loss of Professor Jason Arday’s life from the truth embedded in the resolution. Anti-black racism, at its most inhumane and life-destroying intensity, has always been implemented by the minds and mostly invisible hands within public institutions. Such a ferocious force is not random. It finds enemies by targeting elevated persons for public humiliation and elimination. First, your living is destroyed; then life is stripped of sustaining support. Individuals and institutions join in an unrelenting orgy of brutus-like frenzy until breathlessness is assured.

The university cannot easily set aside the tangled web of warfare unleashed upon its member. The gauntlet has befallen Cambridge University today, but it will fall elsewhere tomorrow. One only has to remember how the vice-chancellor at Liverpool University in 1947 did not support the recommendation that Dr Arthur Lewis be appointed professor of economics, having erupted as an erstwhile London University doctoral graduate and lecturer. Britain had no black professors, and he did not wish Liverpool to be the first. Manchester University grabbed him. He went on to win a Nobel Prize in Economics.

The systemic problem remains. Many older British universities are seeking to come to terms with truths about their active intellectual support for slavery, colonisation, and apartheid. Research and run rather than repair has become a common policy response. The challenge before us is to answer the question of whether a university can claim excellence with an unethical race ceiling at the core of its collegial culture. Excellence is no longer seen as confined to curriculum, teaching, research ranking, and student satisfaction. It is equally about the ethical values of pedagogy and genuine commitment to the enlightenment of humanity.

The ending of Arday’s life resonates everywhere as evidence of the lack of institutional and public support for a human who deserved a right to public help. This is not a ‘who done it’ mystery. Collective ownership is the place to begin looking for the weapon. His body will join the million others buried in the colonial casket.

When Bob Marley asked that we emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, black folks embraced it as a message for them. Truth is, he was singing to colonisers as well.

Professor Sir Hilary Beckles is the eighth vice-chancellor of The University of the W
est Indies (The UWI).