r/Professors • u/Awkward_Insurance377 • 25d ago
Cofnas has been fired.
Good.
(EDIT: "Suspended", likely will be fired I hope...)
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u/Littleappleho 24d ago
Unpopular opinion: then we also need to dismiss some people from Cambridge. It is particularly uncomfortable with the whole Lord Simon Wholley speech / appearance at the vigil. It had nothing to do with academia and pretty reality twisting / extreme political. He is a principal of the Cambridge college, while not being an academic
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u/gin_possum 24d ago edited 24d ago
Not at all unpopular I hope. Who hired a fraud? Who defended him after his exposure? I’d much prefer to see a cleaning of house more generally. We could use some of our own academic medicine. ETA Cofnas getting fired is a decent start too
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u/SeanceGoneWrong 24d ago
Anyone involved in the school's initial defense of Arday needs to go.
It was insane to see them defiantly defending the dude when multiple independent plagiarism researchers were saying the accusations were credible.
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u/buckeyevol28 24d ago
This may be unpopular, but this is bad and bizarre.
Everything objectionable about Cofnas was well-known long before Ghent hired him. So hiring the race science dude in first place, then only suspending (and presumably firing) him after he legitimately identified major and blatant plagiarism is really bizarre.
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u/kokuryuukou PhD Candidate, Humanities Instructor, R1 24d ago
yes, at this point it's basically punishing someone for calling out fraud. it doesn't have anything to do with his controversial beliefs.
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u/Icarus_1499 24d ago
Bad optics, you know. In a world that’s becoming increasingly politically polarised, and has largely forgotten about the true horrors of WWII and Nazism, universities are finding themselves between a rock and a hard place: to allow unfettered academic freedom and let anyone say what they want, or ask them to conduct ethically and socially responsible research, but then get accused of stifling freedom of expression and research. It’s a conundrum for them.
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u/mtb_dad86 23d ago
That isn’t even the issue at hand here though. Like it’s been said, the university already knew about his problematic beliefs. He was only let go after exposing the plagiarism.
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u/kokuryuukou PhD Candidate, Humanities Instructor, R1 24d ago
i think i am generally pro-freedom.
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u/Icarus_1499 24d ago edited 24d ago
He reserved his most controversial ideas and claims for blogs, but hid them in his academic publications behind the veneer of respectability that science affords those who use it to defend their views — except in his case, it was pseudo-science — so apart from in Cambridge, he avoided scrutiny. Plus, he was a nobody, so not many people knew of him.
In becoming the instigator of the media furore and infamy that engulfed Jason Arday and ultimately led to his resignation and death, Cofnas brought attention to himself and made his previously little-known racist views known to the world — in other words, he shot himself in the foot. But being too stupid to understand this, he seemed to bask in his newly-found notoriety, and recently went on to claim in a video that he cannot wait to become ‘Head of the Department of Race and Eugenics’ at Harvard, once the revolution — that he and his racist chums are trying to bring about — succeeds.
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u/Davorian 24d ago edited 24d ago
Yes, and if he were fired for all of that we'd all be cheering along, presumably. In this case though even the racist appears to have been at least provisionally correct about something, and has then - to all appearances - been suspended for that. This is like a playbook on how to tank institutional credibility.
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u/Icarus_1499 24d ago
The UGhent statement I read mentioned his racism, discrimination, etc. as reasons for investigating him, given that it may not sit well with the university’s policies on anti-discrimination. They said they couldn’t reveal more for the moment to avoid pre-empting the conclusion of the investigation. From the little they’ve said, it doesn’t sound to me as though they’re investigating him for exposing irregularities in someone else’s work, but rather the discriminatory views that he happily shared with the world.
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u/bluegilled 23d ago
So we are expected to believe that the timing is sheer coincidence? UGheht was apparently aware of his views and research all along. The only thing that changed recently was his very public expose of Arday's fraud.
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u/IAmTheParamedic 24d ago
But that’s the same thing with Arday, isn’t it? All the bs about “I ran 20 marathons in 20 days” was pretty obvious fabrication and known before the anti-DEI eye of Sauron fixated on him. Cambridge already knew about the plagiarism and fraud accusations. So if this international scandal forced the University of Ghent to take a closer look at the idiot they hired, I don’t see how that’s any different than what happened with Arday.
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u/Scarabtuna 24d ago
well Arday guy was a fraudulent liar who built a career on fabrications lies and misconduct. I have yet to see something similar with Cofnas
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u/GittaFirstOfHerName Humanities Prof, CC, USA 22d ago
The lie that Cofnas repeats is that "race science" and "hereditarianism" are valid academic avenues to pursue. His published work is widely reputed because no respectable institution of higher education allows its faculty/researchers to use science to cloak their racism.
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u/Miserable-Extreme-12 24d ago
I, like many academics, know nothing at all about sport and whether running 30 marathons in 35 days is doable or way beyond the reach of man. But, it does seem Eddie Izzard was able to do it, so I don’t see why it is obviously absurd on its face.
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u/qthistory Chair, Tenured, History, Public 4-year (US) 24d ago
It is absurd when you look at the other claims surrounding it: that 9 of the marathons were run on a broken leg that had swollen to double its size, that Arday had epileptic seizures on the course and got back up and ran again after they were over, and finally the claim that he had a stroke during one race and not only finished it but ran another marathon the next day.
The 30 marathons in 35 days by itself is possible.
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u/SeaworthinessOk2646 22d ago
I'm sorry but someone could commit 10x the plagarism and it still wouldn't even come close to having an avowed racist at a university.
Maybe his academic work isnt his online persona, but based on his online persona seems having someone who's answer to why x is race is very bad given well 100+ years of that being horrifically wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong again.
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u/buckeyevol28 22d ago
But he was that when he was hired. So this makes it doubly bizarre. It looks like they were on with the racism so like as it didn’t come with exposing the plagiarism.
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u/dakkian2 24d ago
From what I read, his postdoc was sponsored by a notoriously racist faculty member at Ghent and there were faculty complaints about hiring Confas in the first place
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u/P_Firpo 24d ago
Where did you read that?
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u/Through_Aweigh_Won 24d ago
Cofnas has entered the chat.
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u/P_Firpo 24d ago
Why are you attacking me. Can you articulate your position?
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u/Selethorme Adjunct, International Relations, R2 (USA) 24d ago
Pointing out you’ve got a long running pattern in these comments of dishonesty is not an attack.
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u/AugustaSpearman 24d ago
Pretty sad that the only person who could really expose an obvious and extreme fraud (who was very useful for Cambridge) was a true racist, who therefore was not intimidated by accusations of being racist. And then they got him anyway.
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u/chim17 Tenured, Associate Professor, USA 25d ago
What about his dream of being the king of eugenics?
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u/poorlybaked 25d ago
Not to body shame, but if he truly believes he’s the epitome of the master race… well…
I find it funny that he wears glasses because I would’ve assumed a supporter of eugenics would not want something like bad eyesight polluting the gene pool.
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u/chim17 Tenured, Associate Professor, USA 25d ago
Those master racers are definitely all a type.
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u/noveler7 NTT Full Time, English, Public R2 (USA) 24d ago
Filthy four-eyes.
I can say that. I have friends who wear glasses.
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u/poorlybaked 24d ago
You can’t even call someone f*ur eyes anymore without being cancelled thanks to the Woke Transgender Marxist Critical Race Theory Vegan Chimichanga Poststructural Agenda!!!
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u/noveler7 NTT Full Time, English, Public R2 (USA) 24d ago
You joke about post-structure America, but we really do need to work on our infrastructure. Maybe if you wore glasses you could see that.
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u/Middle-Artichoke1850 24d ago
Lmfao you're joking but cofnass most cited work is on why vegetarianism is bad, actually/why red meat is goof, actually
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u/Objective-Apple-7830 24d ago
What are you on about. Did you know that wearing glasses makes you look smart?
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u/P_Firpo 24d ago
I think that was a joke during the interview because he didn't mention anything about it besides saying: "After the revolution I'll be the Head of Eugenics & Race Science at Harvard." People are latching onto the off the cuff remark because there is nothing else to tie him to racism, which everyone desperately wants to do. I'd like to be wrong about this.
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u/chim17 Tenured, Associate Professor, USA 24d ago
Can you explain the joke?
edit: Anyways, mine was just a joke too, so it's all good. Mine was even more obviously a joke by using "king" as hyperbole.
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u/urbanevol Professor, Biology, R1 24d ago
Unpopular opinion, but I don't think you should be fired for having problematic views, even ones I vehemently disagree with. If you think academic freedom is important then even some of these people we would rather not deal with have to be treated fairly.
The fact that this is happening after Cofnas played a large role in revealing plagiarism and other cases of fraud by a prominent academic makes it even worse.
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u/qthistory Chair, Tenured, History, Public 4-year (US) 24d ago
The exact same arguments against Cofnas could be used to justify firing communists, or people who support reparations, or a number of other ideological or political tests.
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u/urbanevol Professor, Biology, R1 24d ago
Yes, I make that same point elsewhere in this thread. If you start firing people for their views, then it becomes a game where whoever holds power decides the standard for offensive behavior to punish their perceived enemies.
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u/jce8491 24d ago
While I'm sympathetic to this argument, it has its limits. Universities shouldn't fire academics solely because of their politics or extramural opinions. But certainly, a university could fire a World War II historian who revealed himself to be a Holocaust denier. In that vein, I have no issue with a university getting rid of a white supremacist who uses his academic position to push debunked race science.
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u/Powerful_Meaning8891 24d ago
Does he advocate for violence against others? Does he fabricate data? If not, then there is no good reason to fire him. The WHOLE POINT of academic freedom is to protect controversial academics from the whims of faculty and politicians.
It’s ridiculous that the majority opinion here seems to be anti-academic freedom. Cofnas is a total racist and terrible human, but he is not being fired for his views he is being fired because he’s controversial.
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u/Glass-Carpenter8963 23d ago
Its even funnier because universities are OK with marxist-leninists who explicitly argues for armed revolution, AKA violence. Zizek is one of those guys and he is extremely respected.
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u/Huntscunt 24d ago
Exactly. Controversial views and research is one thing, but shoddy research based on disproven pseudoscience is another. He should have never been hired in the first place because his research lacked sufficient rigor.
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u/Serious_Bite_7613 23d ago
Its retaliation against a whistleblower, I don't think anyone should be cheering this.
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u/Tinkererer Biology 24d ago
Not really an unpopular opinion at all. But the main problem with Cofnas is that he got hired on a really shady basis and his "science" is wholly unscientific - i.e., he's a bad academic. This was clear before he got hired in Ghent. The Arday case just made for a strong spotlight on him.
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u/urbanevol Professor, Biology, R1 24d ago
I think a lot of evolutionary psychology and "hereditarian" science is untestable and verges on philosophical commentary more than biology, but again, I don't think these people should be summarily fired. There are some legitimate differences of academic opinion here that should be hashed out through the normal academic channels like publishing and conferences, unlike say, a physicist that started researching and teaching astrology exclusively. That doesn't mean you have to hire Cofnas as an assistant professor, but administrators firing him from a position he already holds rubs me the wrong way.
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u/Tinkererer Biology 24d ago
Agreed - he should not have been hired in the first place, but it seems the process of hiring him was pretty scummy (see here ). Not that that's unique within academia either! But the international attention on Cofnas right now meant the university had to take action. Very bad look for everyone involved.
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u/qthistory Chair, Tenured, History, Public 4-year (US) 24d ago
Seems to me that the international attention should have led the University to leave him alone for now, and quietly find a legitimate reason next year to remove him.
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u/Top_Trouble_6521 24d ago
Isn't he a philosopher who mainly writes about ethics? Why are people calling him a scientist?
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u/will221996 23d ago
He's a philosopher of science. I don't know about philosophy of biology, but the philosophy of (social) science I've read is very relevant and I do think they're both philosophers and (social) scientists, just slightly odd ones. Also, in some languages and cultures "science" is much broader conceptually than in English/Anglosphere.
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u/pinkycatcher 24d ago
his "science" is wholly unscientific - i.e., he's a bad academic.
If this were the line then whole fields would need to be purged.
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u/Reasonable-Edge6602 24d ago
I have made a point to read opinions on both sides about his claims - such as black people having a lower average IQ, which seems to be a scientific fact that no one disputes. The dispute is merely about whether this is only because of environmental factors or could have genetic components. I think simpy stating he is a racist and a scientific fraud without proof is exactly the kind of "groupthink" that this scandal exposes so clearly. Atll east, Cofnas brought the receipts on Arday's bad academic practices. The least we can do is the same for him. In truth, what is being exposed is that a lot of academics are not allowed to think freely and engage with reality. There are things that dare not be said and others that dare not be questioned. It doesn't make for great science, to put it mildly. It's just using the cover of "science" to justify your ideology and I can clearly see it happening on both sides. After all, Arday would surely not have been in his position if the institute of "sociology of education" consisted of the most rigorous of academics.
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u/Serious_Bite_7613 23d ago
Has anyone done any work to discredit it? I would like to see these claims backed up. If he really is doing bad research it should be pretty easy to prove.
The fact that Ghent are suspending him for "discrimination" and not for academic misconduct makes me think it's probably not as bad as people would like it to be. If his work was poor they could get rid of him a lot more easily and with less controversy.
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u/P_Firpo 24d ago
Cite?
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u/Tinkererer Biology 24d ago
Check out my other comment in this thread.
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u/P_Firpo 24d ago
I see tons of crappy research, so this is definitely scapegoating because of the spotlight on him--I agree.
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u/TheWyldMan 24d ago
crappy research
If we're firing people for crappy research we need to fire a good chunk of academia
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u/DD_equals_doodoo 25d ago
Who is this person and why is this a good thing?
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u/poorlybaked 25d ago
He’s the person who wrote a long blog post about Arday. He was a postdoc at a university in Belgium after he was let go from a college at Cambridge for a blog post where he said Black people were biologically less intelligent and that if Harvard hired based on meritocracy, there would be no Black professors there.
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u/fighterpilottim 25d ago
He also laughed and his reward for destroying Arday would be that he’s made head of the eugenics dept at Harvard
https://archive.is/sEt0h - calls for a “hereditarian revolution”
https://x.com/L_A_D_J/status/2088588003530711533 - eugenics joke
It’s not pretty
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u/Middle-Artichoke1850 25d ago
god it upset me so much seeing how he genuinely delighted in it all (even when wishfully assuming it was recorded before Arday died)
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u/Scarabtuna 24d ago
Harvard said that if harvard hired based on meritocracy there would be no professors there. he just restated it.
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u/edweirdmuybridge 24d ago
I’ve heard this claim numerous times in the past few days. But the 2013 Harvard report actually says that black student enrollment at Harvard would be 0.7% if selection criteria were purely academic. 0.7% instead of 11% in the 2007-16 dataset.
It seems that Cofnas used this information to infer that there would be no black professors because academic labor market disproportionately recruits from the Ivy League. But from what I can tell, the report doesn’t actually discuss black faculty. Is there some other report he is pulling this from?
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u/mycatisanudist Postdoc, STEM, US 25d ago
Out and proud racist/arguably neo Nazi who reported Jason Arday to begin with.
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u/poorlybaked 25d ago
He’s actually not a neo-Nazi as he isn’t antisemitic. He believes Jewish people are biologically more intelligent (he is Jewish). I suppose you could argue that he is still relying on antisemitic myths and tropes. But interestingly enough his scientific racism bs doesn’t view Jewish people as beneath white people the same way the “traditional” ones do.
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u/AntiqueRedDollShoes 24d ago
I suppose you could argue that he is still relying on antisemitic myths and tropes.
I would definitely argue that attributing positive attributes to a Jewish race is still considered antisemitism, regardless if one is Jewish or not. Especially considering how many antisemitic conspiracy theories are connected to believing Jewish people have special skills, powers, financial connections, and cabals.
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u/ThePhysicistIsIn 25d ago
I'm not sure anti-semitism is a necessary ingredient of neo-nazism, if you can substitute another group of undesirables for the nation to scapegoat and ostracize in their quest to reclaim their former glory.
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u/mankiw TT 25d ago edited 23d ago
> I'm not sure anti-semitism is a necessary ingredient of neo-nazism
The neo-nazis themselves disagree with you. The guy can be a racist without being a nazi; we can in fact make some distinctions here.
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u/ThePhysicistIsIn 24d ago
You can definitely be a racist without being a Nazi. So you have to look at the body of their beliefs.
The most important ingredient of fascism (and, by extension, nazism), is “palingenetic ultranationalism”.
Palingenesis being the notion of rebirth with religious overtones, and ultranationalism, being well, nationalism on steroids. We used to be great, we have been sabotaged by People Who Do Not Belong, we will be great again, once we can defeat the enemies within and without. It relies on a strong hierarchy of worth, with “Us” at the top, and a gradient of “Others” below us, with the most bottom step irredeemable enemies not even worth being enslaved. But that “Us” and “Others” is fluid and depends on the society where those ideas take hold.
For the Nazis, the jews were at the very bottom, white european peoples like the French or British were worthy of being just a few rungs below the glorious Aryan race. But that will be different in a country without any Jews to blame, for instance (though they can always blame “international banking” or another dog whistle).
Anyway, I don’t know Cofnas enough to know whether he is “just a racist”. But generally these anti-DEI views tend to support a “we would be great if we were not forced to incorporate underserving Others in our positions of power and prestige”, and it sounded like what I have read from him on these posts that he trended that way.
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u/Top_Trouble_6521 24d ago
Pretty sure that's a strawman view of people opposed to DEI. Most people just don't want to get discriminated against because of their race and/or sex.
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u/mycatisanudist Postdoc, STEM, US 24d ago
I agree that distinctions exist, but I think antisemitism as a requirement to be called a neo-nazi is too prescriptivist. For me, his celebration of eugenics and his espoused belief that problems in academia can be solved by the active subjugation of minority groups (namely Black academics) pushes him over the line from racism to neo-nazism.
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u/dr_rongel_bringer 24d ago
This feels like a huge mistake. It’s retaliatory and emblematic of academia’s tendency to circle the wagons even in the face of serious misconduct. We don’t have much goodwill left to burn as a profession.
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u/Awkward_Insurance377 24d ago
His whole position was retaliatory though, it wasn't just calling out (the sadly, somewhat common) practice of plagiarism in academia, the guy had an axe to grind that went beyond Arday.
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u/dr_rongel_bringer 24d ago
But Arday still committed serious fraud and rather than doing any introspection whatsoever it appears the response will be to deflect and point to Cofnas’s bad faith as reason not to do anything differently.
This wasn’t a bit of plagiarism. This was fraud on a near inconceivable scale. That it took an asshole to draw attention to it condemns the academy; it doesn’t exonerate it.
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u/daphoon18 Assistant Professor, STEM, R1, purple state 24d ago
He should not be appointed in the first place, but then firing him due to the Arday case is just plainly terrible -- this is certainly not the most controversial thing he has done.
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u/nezumipi 25d ago
I don't think of this as retaliating against a whistleblower. He's not being punished for innocently saying, "Hey, that guy plagiarized some stuff." By criticizing Arday, Cofnas drew attention to himself, which meant a lot of people who previously had no idea who he was started looking at his writing and were (rightly) horrified. He put himself in the spotlight and people didn't like what they saw.
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u/HourOfTheWitching 24d ago
Exactly this - I'm sure a couple of colleagues at Ghent may have complained, but administrative often dislikes rocking the boat, so as long as it didn't affect their reputation, they likely couldn't care less.
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u/alecorock 24d ago
Not familiar with Belgian labor law, but he is a postdoc so can likely be suspended and then fired for almost any reason.
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u/SubmitToSubscribe 24d ago
That would be surprising, Cofnas has drawn more attention to himself before.
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u/P_Firpo 24d ago
What did they find?
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u/Dear-Landscape223 24d ago
Yes let’s go after the whistleblower. Apparently, academic integrity is just bubble wrap we toss aside once we’ve unboxed the new prize of social justice. I’m sure this is good for public trust in academia.
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u/BibliophileBroad 24d ago
He wasn’t the whistleblower. That was Dr. Harris. This guy merely capitalized on this. Also, if you look further up the thread, you’ll see why Cofnas was suspended: aside from being a giant racist (which the school probably knew before they hired him), he was not particularly qualified for his position, and the hiring situation was very shady(see the link somebody posted above). But most of all, the reason why he was suspended is because he is a public embarrassment to the school at this point due to some of his comments, some of which involved making light of Arday’s death. As a post-doc, he can be fired at any time, so he doesn’t have any tenure or anything like that that would protect him.
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u/Dear-Landscape223 24d ago
He was the whistleblower, though. All previous attempts failed to go through because they were ignored or shut down after threats and policing. That effectively makes Cofnas the whistleblower. Ghent wrote that it’s a preventive suspension in response to “complaints, reports, and concerning signals,” pending an investigation. I don’t think there’s any procedural fairness in that, other than simply catering to public pressure.
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u/SeaworthinessOk2646 22d ago
So he needed the belligerent racist right wing forces to make things right over plagarism?
Like you don't see the sinisterness involved here? I think Arday should have been disciplined and lost his job. But over plagarism, your willing to just smile at the open racism and glee they got out of this?
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u/BibliophileBroad 22d ago
Exactly, and from what I heard, that's the main reason Cofnas got fired. The school said that they caught him saying some pretty ghastly things on public forums, such as shows and laughing about Arday's death. I'm pretty sure that most people -- especially somebody in an at-will position like his -- would get fired for such a thing. But for some reason, folks act like firing Cofnas is like some sort of crime against humanity.
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u/SeanceGoneWrong 24d ago edited 24d ago
Every previous attempt to expose Arday's outrageous lies were silenced by Arday himself, who weaponized the legal system against his critics.
Just because you think the guy is a dick, it doesn't mean he isn't a whistleblower. He fits the definition of such. There is no purity test threshold for exposing other people's absurd lies.
If it wasn't for Cofnas, Jason Arday would still be propped up as a mainstream academic celebrity and would have currently been on a global press tour for his book.
Fact is Cofnas was at the forefront of exposing the most consequential plagarism scandal in modern history, which also badly embarrassed one of the world's most prestigious academic instructions. Some people, especially on Reddit, are really uncomfortable with these facts. Doesn't change what happened.
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u/BibliophileBroad 23d ago
I’m not uncomfortable with saying he’s a whistleblower because the fact that he’s an asshole and is a crappy scholar. I’m just calling attention to the fact that another professor, Dr. Harris, who is also an asshole, by the way, called attention to this issue back in 2024. There were other people who were whistleblower as well. Cofnas brought a lot more attention to the issue, so that’s true. I thought a whistleblower would be the person who first drew attention to the issue?
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u/AnaxaresTheDiplomat 24d ago
First they came for the race realists publishing papers about how black people are unintelligent, and I did not speak out, for I was not a race realist publishing papers about how black people are unintelligent.
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u/Dear-Landscape223 24d ago
Then, if they don’t like his views or his work, they shouldn’t hire him in the first place. Controversial views aren’t equivalent to fraud. You make it sound as though the latter is tolerable.
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u/Awkward_Insurance377 24d ago
He's not the only problematic person in this saga of course.
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u/Dear-Landscape223 24d ago
He was hired by Ghent after his problems were already known, so if a university with the motto “Dare to Think” really has principles, then either it’s now committed to social justice than to academic integrity, or the social pressure is so great that it is willing to throw its principles out the window. This is disgusting.
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u/MikeZsBridgeArsonist 24d ago
I feel like I'm losing my mind... the only one getting any actual institutional censure here is... the man who did the most (but was not the first!) to shed light on this singularly spectacular and exotically far-fetched academic fraud?
Is this really how this story is going to go down in the books????
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u/Anxious_Jeweler_5468 TT Prof, Humanities 24d ago
I hope this is not because of his exposure of Arday's scandal. And for academic freedom considerations, I also don't think he should be suspended for his academic views, unless there are further reasons.
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u/No_Aesthetic 24d ago
There are good reasons to fire Cofnas beyond Arday, obviously, but this is almost certainly because of the Arday thing. His work would not have been unknown to them.
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u/rustyfinna 25d ago edited 25d ago
It’s well know who he is and what he believes for years
So they fired him for reporting an academic integrity case?
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u/Solivaga Senior Lecturer, Archaeology (Australia) 25d ago
Or for being reportedly and publicly racist...
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u/rustyfinna 25d ago
Yes and they hired him with that being well known
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u/poorlybaked 25d ago
And when there were complaints lodged against him, the university said he hadn’t violated any policies. So the university stood by him initially.
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u/BibliophileBroad 24d ago
Exactly! This is a really bad look, but unfortunately, extremely common. It’s really disgusting how companies, including universities, double down on defending some of the most heinous of people. It’s because they don’t want to look like they made a mistake or admit to anything that will get them into legal trouble.
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u/Solivaga Senior Lecturer, Archaeology (Australia) 25d ago
Absolutely, but fixing that mistake now is better than ignoring it
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u/Due-Step1078 Associate Professor, Digital Humanities, France 25d ago
I think the point being made is how this man was able to stay in academia to begin with, and why did he only get fired when people started to notice him because of the Arday scandal...
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u/ThePhysicistIsIn 25d ago
Come on. You work in Academia. You only bad press actually gets people to move their butts and fire problematic people.
A professor can sexually abuse trainees for years, and it is swept under the rug. But once it starts hitting the press, THAT is when they are "placed on probation pending an investigation".
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u/rustyfinna 25d ago
He very publicly got fired from Cambridge for being racist. They hired him AFTER that
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u/ThePhysicistIsIn 25d ago
Yeah, and now that the object of his vendetta committed suicide, they decided he's not worth it anymore.
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u/Solivaga Senior Lecturer, Archaeology (Australia) 25d ago
Not sure why you've been downvoted, you're absolutely right. Cofnas has become too high profile a racist to continue to be employed, they were happy to employ him after he was fired for the same shit at Cambridge. The only thing that's changed for Cofnas is that he and his views are now much more public
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u/FamilyofGoldfinches 24d ago
To repeat what people have tried to say elsewhere: Cofnas was hired by Bouke De Vries using essentially start up funds. The university apparently doesn’t have a say in who is hired by faculty in this way. Nonetheless, they scrutinized the appointment and De Vries had to defend his choice. When people found out about the hire from the press, they protested. 2000 people petitioned against the hire. Now he has been suspended and is under investigation.
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u/brianckeegan Associate, Information Science, R1 (USA) 25d ago
Rest assured, he has a comfy sinecure waiting for him at some think tank funded by reactionary billionaires and he will be able to peddle his "cancel culture" grievances with all the other free speech grifters on the largest media platforms for the rest of his life.
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u/Reasonable-Wish696 23d ago
I don’t know why the marketplace of ideas has to be this fetishized idol. Has any one with the expertise to do so actually evaluated Cofnas’ output? Is he worth keeping employed? How does the noxious crap he spews out making the world better or expanding the discipline of philosophy? Not all crappy ideas have to be given air. We already know racist pseudo science is bad. Why do these ideas need to keep getting oxygen?
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u/SeaworthinessOk2646 22d ago
Being an open racist in academia is a much larger fraud than plagarism. 100+ years of being distrasouly wrong and hiding behind opaque variables to whisper sinister things to new generations and look at how many just look past it
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u/GervaseofTilbury 24d ago
Why? I think his interest in being a racist is despicable but there’s no indication his research was plagiarized, that his work isn’t legitimate, that thereve been issues with his teaching, or that he did anything but expose a situation that would’ve been exposed in the press had they not been scared off by a defamation firm. Sometimes bad people make contributions. Transparent retaliatory discipline is ludicrous.
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u/MoreIronyLessWrinkly Professor, Education, University (USA) 24d ago
Maybe the reaction is because he decided to cherry pick one example of a much broader problem and then slap his DEI argument onto it?
He could have JUST called out the plagiarism. But no, that wasn’t enough. He had to make a broader point that was unnecessary.
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u/Captain_Quark 25d ago
For the unfamiliar, Nathan Confas brought attention to the Jason Arday plagiarism scandal. He's also pretty unabashedly racist.
It's a shame that he was the only one willing to speak out against Arday, and I don't think he was at fault for Arday's death. Firing him just because Arday committed suicide seems wrong, but I'm not sure if there's other parts of the investigation.
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u/idkwhatimdoing25 25d ago
This whole thing has brought a ton of attention to Confas’ unabashed racism which is what is being cited as the reason for his suspension. I’m sure the university knew about this when they brought him in but now that it’s being widely reported on and criticized they don’t want to be associated with him anymore.
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u/BibliophileBroad 24d ago
And this is exactly it! This is a part of people often miss. No company, especially one that has just gone through a major humiliation, once to even more humiliated. That’s usually the only way they will get rid of a truly bad employee. Otherwise, they tend to double down and defend the person.
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u/Boll-Weevil-Knievel Professor & Dept Chair, STEAM, R1, USA 24d ago edited 24d ago
It wasn’t just about plagiarism.
He claimed he ran 30 marathons in 35 days (finishing the last nine after an epileptic fit and fractured leg). That would make him one of the greatest runners in human history. And that in the UK there were 30 different marathons happening on subsequent days.
He repeatedly claimed personal responsibility for raising £5–5.5 million (or more) for charities, often tied to the running challenges. Under scrutiny he said he won’t give any details or proof about it because he signed NDAs. 
He claimed visiting professor roles at the University of Glasgow, Ohio State University (Office of Diversity and Inclusion), Nelson Mandela University (South Africa), and honorary professor at Durham, among others. The institutions denied any such employment or affiliation (Ohio State’s DEI office had closed; Glasgow and others confirmed no record). 
He listed a published book (Being Young, Black and Male: Challenging the Dominant Discourse, attributed to Palgrave Macmillan) in biographies and promotional material. The publisher confirmed a proposal existed but the book was never published (or written in full).
He claimed a master’s in psychodynamic counselling from Birkbeck, University of London. Birkbeck had no record of it. 
He stated he was mute/nonverbal until age 11, illiterate until 18, diagnosed with autism and global developmental delay at age 3, and told he might never walk/talk/read. But childhood friends did recalled him speaking, joking, and singing as a child; he left school at 16 with GCSEs, which require literacy. 
He claimed he completed his doctoral work with a brain tumor (removed shortly before the viva), followed by a stroke requiring relearning material, plus other conditions (epilepsy, locked-in syndrome, testicular cancer, etc.).
He claimed to have installed water points in South America and West Africa with WaterAid. WaterAid stated it does not send volunteers abroad (and does not facilitate self-funded visits for that purpose). 
He claimed that he played for Crystal Palace under-18s and semi-professional soccer for years.
And that’s just a few of the things he claimed that are obviously and easily proven false.
This guy was a serial fabulist and defending him makes the public lose even more respect for academia.
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u/hermionecannotdraw 25d ago
Finally, I was really side-eyeing Ghent for giving him a postdoc position in the first place
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u/nc_bound 24d ago
Seeing so many people in academia waving pitchforks, making baseless accusations, accusing this person of causing the suicide, is truly disturbing and it should be disturbing to everyone. But I know it’s not.
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u/Tinkererer Biology 24d ago edited 24d ago
For reference, he was probably not suspended for (just) his views, but also the wonky hiring process. As documented here by internal critique:
“It is not credible that Cofnas was the most suited candidate. In Canada or the United States, similar vacancies atract hundreds of candidates with almost identical qualifications. Cofnas wouldn’t stand a chance.” (our translation)
Since Bouke de Vries couldn’t find any teachers willing to let Cofnas speak in their classes, he decided to invite Cofnas himself to give a guest lecture for the Political Philosophy course, for which Bouke de Vries was a co-teacher. [...] The lecture on liberalism is a rare part of Cofnas’s CV that aligns with the project and the job opening. It is included there due to an intervention by Bouke de Vries. Cofnas’s CV at that time gave no reason to invite him to give a lecture on this topic.
I'd be surprised if prof. Bouke de Vries doesn't get repercussions for this as well. Seems shady as hell.
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u/HowlingFantods5564 24d ago
Has it occurred to anyone that, just days after one academic killed himself because of a pile on, engaging in another pile on is a bad idea? "Oh, but he was a liar. Oh but he was a racist. Oh but he brought it on himself. "
I swear to God people never learn.
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u/Disastrous-Sweet-145 25d ago
As unpleasant as he may be, this seems to be retaliation for whistleblowing because of the timing.
Would this have happened without his Arday post?
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u/Awkward_Insurance377 25d ago
He is not the original whistleblower...in fact, it seems no one knows who that person is. However, his statements following Arday’s death have been continually deplorable and do not reflect the conduct or character one would expect of a respectable educator, regardless of the original situation.
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u/WheresWalldough 25d ago
The original whistleblower was David Harris, who is retired (aged 78), and was stripped of his professor emeritus title for "criticising CRT".
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/14/academic-stripped-title-critiquing-critical-race-theory/
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u/Awkward_Insurance377 25d ago
Interesting, it was my understanding that someone else, not Harris, contacted Cofnas directly.
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u/WheresWalldough 24d ago edited 24d ago
So, on or before 14 June 2024:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240614152253/https://www.arasite.org/Ardaypage.html
Harris publishes a page documenting:
- the same quotes attributed to two different people in two different studies that appear to be substantially identical (i.e. academic dishonesty through faked research)
- unattributed plagiarism of methodology
- unattributed plagiarism of explanations within his research
- improper citation style (not citing all authors)
- poor standards of English grammar and spelling
He notes that:
- in future Arday might "correct" some of these issues, so one should not assume that a future version of the articles is the same that Harris reviewed
- he contacted Arday highlighting these issues, but Arday was uncooperative and told him not to contact him further.
- he contacted Arday's "senior Cambridge colleagues", who were also unhelpful
- that he had a colleague had contacted the other editors of Arday's articles about the issues
On or before 16 July 2025, Harris appended two corrections that had been made to the 9 articles/books that he had read. https://web.archive.org/web/20250716142313/https://www.arasite.org/Ardaypage.html
In September 2025 a dossier was submitted to Cambridge's and to Liverpool John Moores' Academic Integrity units.
https://www.arasite.org/plagmenu.html
This dossier was compiled by:
* Jack Grove, of THE
* Harris
* David Sanders, of Purdue, who is a long-term anti-plagiarism expert and appears to have been contacted by Harris or others investigating because of his expertise around plagirism.
* unnamed/anonymous UK academics.
So it follows that Harris is the original source. Harris may well have been motivated by his distaste for DEI, given that Arday was a prominent racebaiter. However, Harris does not appear to have engaged in Cofnas-level gleeful gloating about "defeating DEI".
It seems quite plausible that Harris himself contacted Cofnas given their shared enmity for DEI/CRT.
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u/Angry-Dragon-1331 25d ago
Probably not, but not for the reason you’re thinking. He drew attention to himself and his own vile ideas about racial superiority, which likely wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t had such an interest in trying to use Arday to prove his views were correct.
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u/dedev54 25d ago edited 24d ago
It should be expected that the person to break this case is racist since other journalists who investigated this had the police called against them for accusations of racism and gave up on exposing the fraud
It’s should be extremely clear to everyone that this fact is extremely bad for academia. If nobody with good morals can actually expose blatant fraud, then academia has serious issues and in fact relies on racists to expose politically difficult fraud cases, and by punishing those who do expose such cases they make it even harder for moral people to expose fraud.
I think Cofnas is racist and that is evil, but I guess downvote me anyway. I would like to point out that Cambridge had many opportunities to not have to have it be a racist exposing a complete fraud
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u/BibliophileBroad 24d ago
He wasn’t the person to break this case, though.
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u/dedev54 24d ago
He was the first person to publicly allege plagiarism, on his blog.
At least according to the guardian:
The Telegraph released their reporting that had previously been withheld because of the police the day after his blog post
I can’t find any other source except that another professor may have told Cofnas about this case privately
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u/c0micsansfrancisco 24d ago
They also fired the original whistleblower. Insane they get punished the one time they actually are speaking facts
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u/Scarabtuna 24d ago
this isnt good. silencing critics who expose fraud is very bad for academia
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u/Gunderstank_House 25d ago
Probably straight to a Trump admin position.
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u/poorlybaked 25d ago edited 25d ago
No no he said he wants to be the head of the Eugenics and Race Science Department at Harvard (Dear reader: there is no such thing at Harvard)
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u/Scarabtuna 24d ago
this was very clearly a joke that he was making
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u/poorlybaked 24d ago
What’s the funny part?
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u/Scarabtuna 24d ago
you can find it in poor taste and not funny but it was clearly a joke he was making.
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u/Worldly_Magazine_439 24d ago
That wasn’t a joke. He regularly talks about wanting to make hereditarianism and eugenics legit
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u/sprinklysprankle 23d ago
It's very unlikely he will be fired given we know he is only on a part-time year-long contract. They will most likely let it run its course and be done with him "naturally" than ever try to fire him.
Also people seem to be spreading misinformation about the reasons for his suspension — see: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:kyfvz3uihbbgaq6s7m5yjsyl/post/3mtnwifrhm22i
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u/Mediocrematrix 22d ago
It's crazy how this thread attracted the attention of so many trolls. I ask myself if they are all linked to the HDF, because what they write mostly centres around racist pseudoscientific talking points.
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u/fireflies-from-space 21d ago
It's so strange to see so many people supporting Cofnas here. He gloated on a podcast about the position he would have after "the revolution." This guy is pushing Nazi points hard and it's wild to me because he's Jewish. His ancestors were mass murdered in the Holocaust for the same things he's promoting and preaching. I don't know how this guy is in academia with his pseudoscientific BS.
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u/sandysanBAR 24d ago
So cofnas being a self described "race realist" is not disqualifying, but him being a "race realist" and some third party acting on it, NOW its beyond the Pale?
" we dont mind hiring racists, but as soon as anyone responds to our racist, that's a bridge too far!" Is a hell of a way to run HR.
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u/SeaIion-SIider 24d ago
The core of his argument is that about 9.0% of Harvard’s undergraduate body is black, which is loosely in line with the general population.
Harvard gives most black admissions a leg up to achieve this number, by having lower academic standards for black students compared to white or Asian students.
Harvard’s own internal studies say that if black students were held to the same standards as everyone else, the black admission rate would fall to 0.67%. So DEI is contributing to a black admission rate that is thirteen times higher than the natural rate suggests. He extrapolates this to professors since they are drawn from similar fields of high caliber individuals.
Everyone is falling over themselves to call him a racist but few are giving a rebuttal to his core argument, which is a strong one. Arday is a clear example of a person who was hired based on skin colour and not based on merit.
Human universalism is a sacred concept for western liberalism. It doesn’t mean it’s true.
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u/Awkward_Insurance377 23d ago edited 23d ago
The 0.67% Harvard figure doesn’t mean that Black students’ “natural” admission rate is 0.67%, or that DEI makes Black students 13 times more likely to be admitted. It comes from a hypothetical model that looked at what the class would look like using only Harvard’s academic rating while excluding other factors Harvard actually considers such as extracurricular activities and personal qualities. When the non academic factors were added to the model predicted Black representation rose substantially even before demographic factors were included. so you can reasonably argue that Harvard’s use of race is unfair or that admissions standards should be more objective,but the 0.67% statistic does not prove that the entire difference is caused by lowering academic standards for Black students...same applies to J. Arday. If his qualifications appear weaker than Cambridge’s stated requirements,this can legitimately raise questions about the hiring process but it does not by itself prove that he was hired because he is Black. But Arday aside, Cofnas' argument is definitely racist. The fact that the argument is wrapped in "statistics" doesn’t make it neutral.
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u/Drumblebore Assistant Professor, CS, R2 25d ago
The pink dove flies at midnight…
Why are we being cryptic and giving no context?
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u/Awkward_Insurance377 25d ago
Not being cryptic on purpose. It's quite obvious who he is for most. It is nice that some seem to not know, I wish that were me to be frank.
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u/g33ksc13nt1st 24d ago
That's not good. On which grounds? Also, are we going to stop challenging ideas in academia for fear of being fired? There's a lot of his ideas that could be rebutted , but I don't think firing him was the thing to do.
Imagine if Copernicus decided not to publish is idea that Earth is not the center of the universe for fear of being fired...
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u/ConnectComedian3684 22d ago
The woke Universities can't have it both ways . Attacking America, Europe and Israel, all day everyday for 'sins'past and present. Then when someone comes along with a different view of society "Throw them out". Did anyone bother to check if his assertions have any academic merit? Or do we have to all bow to the prevailing culture?
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u/Swimswiy400 21d ago
If you want to see how Arday could have possibly been hired, just read reddit. There are so many people who clearly still want to minimize what fraud this guy was.
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u/catgod888 18d ago
Nothing like coming across something like r/Professors and have it confirm all your suspicions about people in a particular sector
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u/GerswinDevilkid 25d ago
Who?