Nathan Cofnas has been suspended from his postdoctoral philosophy position at Ghent University.
In a July 21st post on his newsletter, Cofnas accused Jason Arday, professor of sociology of education at the University of Cambridge, of plagiarism and fraudulent scholarship, and accused the university of covering this up.
Am international media blitz followed, with hundreds of articles reporting on Cofnas’s accusations and investigating Arday’s work and his autobiographical claims. Eventually, on August 5th, Cambridge announced it had decided to investigate Arday. Arday resigned shortly thereafter. The worldwide pile-on continued. On August 14th, Arday was found dead, presumably by suicide.
This past Thursday, Cofnas stated on X.com that he had been suspended from Ghent University and is being investigated.
Many had objected to his being hired there in the first place.
Most of the text of the suspension letter can be found here. Among the main reasons for the suspension, according to the letter, are the following:
- Cofnas’s continued work on “race realism” and the “hereditarian revolution” at Ghent “are fundamentally inconsistent with the contractual scope of your employment and constitute a manifest violation of your professional obligations towards this University”. Apparently, when he applied for the position, Cofnas had described the research he’d be engaging in as being about “the future of liberalism” and “liberalism as a political doctrine emphasizing individual liberty and equality,” not about “race realism” and “hereditarianism”.
- Cofnas’s ideas conflict with the Ghent University Code of Ethics, which “prohibits spreading ideas of racial superiority or inciting racial segregation.”
- “The current situation poses a risk to the proper functioning of the university and to the psychosocial wellbeing of members of its community”
Meanwhile, a Trump administration official has called for Cofnas to be reinstated, and others are defending him as a “whistleblower.”
Since Arday’s tragic death, Cofnas has defended himself in assorted public writings and appearances (for example).
Cofnas’s current suspension is until August 28th.
UPDATE 1 (8/25/26): I’ve been asked by a couple of readers to share my thoughts about this case. Here are some of them:
1. In Which I First Make It All About Me
The other week, some person on the internet who has never met or conversed with me (though he has commented here at Daily Nous) wrote in a post on social media:
Whether or not I’m a spineless fool, as a few respondents pointed out, a much better explanation for the fact that I hadn’t posted about this stuff—and the correct explanation, I can confirm—is that Daily Nous focuses on philosophers and philosophy news, and neither of the people mentioned in the post are philosophers. I’ll go to the trouble of hosting discussions of the controversial issues of the day if they’re sufficiently related to academic philosophy, or perhaps if I think I have something distinctive to say, but otherwise, I’m happy to pass.
Two days after post, Jason Arday was dead, apparently from suicide. Days upon days of humiliating worldwide attention from news organizations, commentators, and people on social media probably drove him to it (alongside other factors).
It felt terribly sad to me, as it did to pretty much everyone.
I felt fortunate that I hadn’t posted about those accusations of plagiarism and dishonesty against Arday, that I hadn’t contributed to the pile-on. If I had, I would have felt really awful, and wracked with guilt—even though whatever I would have written would likely have had no effect, given the volume of writing about it elsewhere and DN’s relatively small audience.
But that was not much consolation, since I knew the following: had Arday been a philosopher, I would have posted about those accusations. And thus I would have contributed to the pile-on that led to his death. And since putting something on DN puts it in front of much of the academic philosophy world, in this counterfactual in which Arday is a philosopher I wouldn’t be able to tell myself that what I had written likely had no effect.
Arday was not a philosopher, so I got lucky. But I still felt awful, and I did not want to touch this story at all. The problem is that the latest development—Cofnas being suspended—is unavoidably an academic philosophy news story, and so, though I could barely bring myself to write about it, I did, with the minimal post to which this update is attached.
I have tried to be careful over the years about the risks of posting negative news stories or expressing negative opinions here, but Arday’s suicide has made we wonder whether I have been careful enough. There have been stories I have decided to not report on because the potential harm to the “wrongdoer” that might come from me doing so seemed to outweigh its benefits to the profession. And in cases in which the cost-benefit analysis went the other way, I’ve sometimes tried to frame things in a way to minimize villainization, but it is unclear how well that has worked. And sometimes I’ve been quite forthright in expressing negative views about what someone has done. Have I made the right calls? Probably not all the time. The policy here cannot be “don’t ever express negative judgments about what people do.” But perhaps I need to be more careful about when and how I choose to do so.
And that concern makes posting my views about this situation difficult. Arday did not deserve to die for his plagiarism and exaggerations. And Cofnas does not deserve to die for his racist research projects and the role he played in the events that led to Arday’s suicide. So I’m reluctant to say anything to add to the pile-on Cofnas is currently facing, even though I have quite negative opinions about his work and about his public behavior since Arday’s death.
2. The Academic Freedom Question
I am not knowledgeable about the norms regarding academic freedom in Belgium, nor the norms there regarding the contractual obligations of temporary employees. I do not know whether the university was convinced to hire Cofnas on the mutual understanding that he would be adhering to a research project distinct from the ones that have made him infamous. Perhaps the investigative and disciplinary powers that the university rector, Petra De Sutter, is claiming to have in regard to Cofnas are not unusual at Ghent University or other Belgian universities. This is all to say that for all I know, in terms of laws and policies and norms and expectations in Belgium and at Ghent specifically, to which, presumably, Cofnas agreed when taking a position there, suspending or firing him is not all that problematic. I don’t know, and I’m not at this time going to research it. I have other things to do. If you want to look it up and email me the details, feel free, but I have a pretty busy week and it may take me a while to get back to you.
“But Justin,” some might say, “the contractual claims are just pretext. They’re really firing him because they’re succumbing to massive social media outrage and political pressure to get rid of the guy who made the initial accusations against Arday and that led to the worldwide pile-on against him. No one should be fired for pointing out academic misconduct, and universities shouldn’t make personnel decisions based on social media outrage or political pressure.”
OK, I agree with that last sentence.
(Are the contractual claims just a pretext, or did the publicity Cofnas brought upon himself make it impossible for the university to continue to look the other way when it came to him violating his contractual obligations about his research? I don’t know.)
And if Cofnas happened to instead be employed at a US university? In that case it would be clear that investigating, disciplining, or firing him because of the subject matter of his research or the views he expresses would be a violation of his academic freedom, as would investigating, disciplining, or firing him because he exposed another academic’s plagiarism.
This has nothing to do with whether I want Cofnas and others doing similar work to remain in the academy. I’m not a fan. The guy has argued for racial segregation in education based on so called “race science” and has said that in a “meritocracy” (whatever he thinks that is), “black people would disappear from virtually all high-ranking positions.” As Millian as I tend to be, there are limits. I don’t want flat-earthers or Ptolemists in there, either. There are only so many jobs, and only so much attention to go around.
But there are better and worse means towards desirable ends, and violating academic freedom is one of the worse ones. It doesn’t matter where on the political spectrum you are: when the norms of academic freedom are eroded, you are more at risk. We should know this by now (especially after the past decade).
If not by limiting academic freedom or making exceptions for its protections, then what should the academy do about racist research projects? One possibility: higher standards. Yes, this can be hard to implement, owing in part to the problem of finding competent referees for “controversial” ideas. (And journals should not lower their refereeing standards just to be able to find a referee for a paper, as happened here—see update 3.) Another possibility: rebuttal. Another: ignore them and let them languish in obscurity. I know these are incomplete and imperfect suggestions. They have costs, but I don’t think their costs are as great as those that accompany the erosion of academic freedom.
3. I’m Keeping The Comments Off On This Post
Because you and I both know the shitshow it would be.
UPDATE 2 (8/25/26): “We, colleagues of Nathan Cofnas—supported by many colleagues internationally—want to respond to the negative and incorrect framing of Ghent University’s decision to suspend Nathan Cofnas. With this letter we want to support Ghent’s decision to start an investigation, resist the framing of this investigation as a punishment for “whistleblowing”, and urge Ghent University not to let itself be instrumentalized by people and networks attempting to use the institution to give credibility to racist pseudoscience.”
An open letter in support of Ghent University’s investigation of Cofnas.
UPDATE 3 (8/25/26): “What would you call someone who claims that blacks are innately dumber than whites and we should orient society around this ‘fact’, only to concede that they are just spinning out an adaptive story? I would call that person a racist.” Sasha Gushev, professor of medicine at Harvard and statistical geneticist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, breaks down the supposed “science” in Cofnas’s scientific racism in this thread on X.com.
UPDATE 4 (8/27/26): Ghent University has decided that for three months, Cofnas must work remotely, not engage in teaching activities, and limit his research “to the topics for which the appointment was made.” Further, a “preliminary inquiry is also under way to determine if further disciplinary action is warranted.” They say:
As part of an ongoing personnel case, Ghent University has imposed a disciplinary measure on a member of its research staff for a period of three months. A preliminary inquiry is also under way to determine if further disciplinary action is warranted. Under the disciplinary measure, the staff member is required to work remotely and may not carry out any teaching activities. In addition, any research activities undertaken as part of the staff member’s appointment at Ghent University must be strictly limited to the research topics for which the appointment was made.
Ghent University does not wish to comment further on the controversy surrounding this matter. This is not because the University wishes to avoid public debate, but because ongoing preliminary disciplinary inquiries must be allowed to proceed calmly, independently and with full respect for the rights of all those involved. It would be inconsistent to safeguard the confidentiality of these procedures on the one hand while, on the other, commenting through the media in a way that could pre-empt the investigation, the positions of the parties involved or its possible outcome. All parties concerned will have the opportunity, through the appropriate procedures, to set out their position and exercise their right of defence.
Ghent University will therefore limit itself to confirming the disciplinary measure and the fact that investigations are ongoing, and will await their outcome. We expressly ask that the confidentiality of the proceedings be respected and that the matter be allowed to proceed in a calm and orderly manner.
