Jason Arday, who was diagnosed with autism and global developmental delay as a child, has become the youngest black professor at Cambridge University. Ardy couldn’t read or write until he was eighteen, and only started speaking at 11 years of age. Arday has revealed that as a child, he was told that he will need to live at an assisted living facility. However, he refused to let the diagnosis break his spirit, writing ‘Work at Oxford or Cambridge’ as one of his life goals on his mom’s bedroom wall.
Speaking to the BBC, Arday recalled how reading about Nelson Mandela’s struggles and later witnessing South Africa win the 1995 Rugby World Cup made him determined that if he “didn’t make it as a football player or a snooker player,” then he would “save the world.”
Arday spoke to The Times about the numerous rejections he received from academia because he didn’t have a mentor who taught him how to write.
“Everything I submitted got violently rejected. The peer review process was so cruel, it was almost funny, but I treated it as a learning experience and, perversely, began to enjoy it.”
Eventually, he completed two masters degrees from the University of Surrey and later recieved his PhD from Liverpool John Moores University in 2016.
“A lot of academics say they stumbled into this line of work, but from that moment, I was determined and focused — I knew that this would be my goal. On reflection, this is what I meant to do,” Arday revealed to The Times.
With his position as a Sociology Professor at Cambrdige, Arday said that he hoped to find more ways people from marginalized backgrounds can find acceptance in academia.
“My work focuses primarily on how we can open doors to more people from disadvantaged backgrounds and truly democratize higher education,” he said.
