The US Government protects FREE SPEECH at Ghent University, Belgium
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Nathan Cofnas is the academic who blew the whistle on the plagiarist professor Jason Arday. As a reward for doing this, he was preventively suspended and expected to be fired from his one year postdoctoral appointment at Ghent University! The good news is that he has now been given a reprieve from dismissal and has thanked Ghent University trans rector Petra De Sutter for allowing him to remain! Cofnas is also on record thanking U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Bill White along with the State Department, for intervening in what he calls a “just outcome.”
Let’s remember what appeared to be happening. Ghent had opened a preliminary disciplinary investigation after Cofnas’s public comments on Cambridge fantasist Jason Arday. Ghent’s rector and vice-rector issued a statement saying they took “recent public statements” by a postdoctoral researcher “very seriously” and had taken “appropriate action.” Isn’t it extraordinary that Ghent would move with such force to protect a Plagiarist? Cofnas has explained that he he was being investigated for “discriminating against Arday.” This is peak Woke Academia in action and I think they would have gotten away with it until this social media post appeared.
This struck fear into the tyrants at Ghent. So they backed off.
But who exactly is Nathan Cofnas? His appointment itself had already been deemed contentious. Nathan was an American philosopher of biology with a DPhil from Oxford and previous posts at Cambridge, and describes himself as a “race realist.” Essentially he argues that genetic differences play a non-trivial role in group differences in intelligence and other traits and he has been a persistent critic of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. To hold such dissenting views in academic is courageous.
As regards the “race realism” for which he is demonised it’s interesting that Harvard’s own expert, economist David Card, modelled what would have happened to the Class of 2019 if Harvard simply stopped considering race while otherwise retaining its admissions system. His estimate was striking: the African-American share of admitted students would have fallen from 14% to about 6%. Asian-American representation would have risen from 24% to 27%, and white representation from 40% to 48% This makes uncomfortable reading for some but this is what HARVARD says about Harvard’s admission process.
When Ghent hired Cofnas in 2026 for a project on liberalism and related questions of demography and ethics, student activists immediately circulated petitions. There were protests and at least one physical incident after a talk he gave. Free Thought and Free Speech don’t mix well in the modern academic environment at Ghent, or Cambridge.
The university initially defended the appointment on academic-freedom grounds. However after Arday’s suicide the temperature rose. Hundreds of academics signed letters on both sides: one group of roughly 800 argued the disciplinary process looked like retaliation for exposing academic misconduct; others defended the university’s right to protect staff and student wellbeing and to keep research within the contracted scope of the post.
Trans Rector De Sutter, a former Green Party politician and Belgium’s first transgender deputy prime minister, later said he supported academic freedom “100 percent” but that those claiming Ghent was restricting it did not know the contents of the file. OK, so tell us what is in the file! Ghent has emphasized that the inquiry must proceed confidentially and that freedom of speech “is not unlimited”. So you can see exactly where this was going.
Ambassador White’s intervention changed the public dynamic. A Trump appointee, he condemned the suspension in strong language, called the university’s actions “scapegoating mob behavior,” and said Washington was reviewing its relationships with Ghent, which holds modest U.S. Department of Defense grants. He contacted De Sutter directly. A few days ago he posted that the parties had “amicably reached an agreement” to lift the suspension so that Cofnas could finish his appointment. Ghent confirmed contact with the ambassador but stressed the disciplinary process remains ongoing.
The practical result is a compromise rather than a full restoration. Whilst the short preventive suspension has ended, the university has imposed a three-month disciplinary measure: mandatory remote work, a ban on teaching, and a requirement that any research done under the Ghent contract stay “strictly limited to the research topics for which the appointment was made.” In other words, Ghent caved through gritted death and you can be pretty sure that once the Cofnas contract is finished it sure as hell won’t be renewed.
There was a time when the defence of free speech was foundational to University life. Not any more. These days, it seems those who run Universities want to close down opinions of which they disapprove. Worse still, they seem focused on protecting fantasists and plagiarists amongst their ranks and punishing those that expose them. In their pursuit of DEI excellence, they have killed the value of their own institutions.
The Trump administration saved the day for Nathan Cofnas but it seems to me that most of elite academic is beyond salvation.
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