Early this year, we were in Manchester to attend the British Sociological Association’s 75th annual conference. Sitting among hundreds of academics, we were deeply intrigued by the title of Professor Jason Arday, the former Cambridge scholar’s plenary talk – ‘Wanted dead or alive: The playbook’. Arday, with great enthusiasm but also visible pain, laid it out for all of us. In a chillingly prophetic way, he discussed how Black, Asian, Minority and Ethnic community scholars who could establish themselves across elite educational institutions within the UK and the US have been on the academic ‘hitlist’ of far-right racist attacks, discrediting and hounding.
In his speech, he remembered his Black colleagues who were subjected to institutional racism and media trials. Subsequently, some were forced to leave their prestigious jobs, while some took their own lives. His arguments warned us not to treat these experiences in isolation. Instead, through the ‘playbook’, he exposed the mechanisms of systemic hatred disguised as merit, scrutiny, procedures and academic standards.
