MEET THE PROFESSOR WHO COULDN’T READ AND WRITE

The man who was diagnosed with autism and global developmental delay as a child has now become the youngest black professor at Cambridge University, USA. He could not speak or write when he was a child and was diagnosed with the disability that he will have to live with an assisted living facility.



He is Jason Arday of the USA who was diagnosed with the disease but he did not give up and continued to work hard. He refused to let the diagnosis break his high spirits.

Speaking to the British Broadcasting Council (BBC), the professor Jason Arday recalled that first he was motivated by the South African Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandel struggle against apartheid and then later on witnessing South Africa winning the 1995 Rugby World Cup pushed him towards his goal to “Work at Oxford or Cambridge”.

He was determined that if he did not make it as a football or snooker player, then he would save the world by going towards the Education Sector.

He spoke to The Times and shared some detailed experiences he came across through his professional and academic career.

“Everything I submitted got violently rejected. The peer review process was so cruel that it appeared to me a bit funny but I took it as a learning experience.”

He outlined that how numerous times he has been rejected by the academia as he did not have a mentor who taught him how to write.

He was never meant to give up and thus eventually, he completed two Masters degrees from the University of Surrey and later received his PhD from Liverpool John Moores University in 2016.
Now the man being a source of motivation for millions of people around the world is working as a Sociology Professor at Cambridge University. In this position, Jason Arday said that he hoped to find more ways people from marginalized backgrounds can find acceptance in academia. He expressed his desire to work for the people as;

“My work focuses primarily on how we can open doors to more people from disadvantaged backgrounds and truly democratize higher education,”