A former University of Cambridge academic who was drummed out of his post over comments about meritocracy and DEI has now been suspended by his present institution, Ghent University, over his involvement in revealing the alleged plagiarism of Jason Arday, who died last week.
Philosopher Dr Nathan Cofnas has been suspended by Ghent University in Flanders, Belgium as they launch a “preliminary disciplinary investigation” and decide whether there are sufficient grounds to refer him “to the competent disciplinary body” after the death of former Professor Jason Arday, who died last week at his London home days after he resigned from the University of Cambridge over a plagiarism scandal.
Making the University’s position clear, Ghent said:
Over the past few days, Ghent University has received many enquiries following the death of Cambridge professor Jason Arday… we wish to be clear about the values we uphold as a university.
Ghent University stands for respect for human dignity and opposes discrimination, hatred and racism. We attach great importance to academic freedom and to open academic debate, even when views are controversial. However, that freedom is not unlimited. It goes hand in hand with responsibility and may be restricted in order to protect the rights of others.
While the allegations of academic misconduct including plagiarism, embellishment, and even claimed authorship of non-existent books are understood to have been reported to Cambridge years ago, from the time in 2023 when Arday was proclaimed as the University’s youngest-ever black Professor, they weren’t widely publicly known until they were published by Cofnas this year. It is alleged that until the matter entered the public sphere Cambridge had moved to prevent discussion about their hire, that those looking into the matter were smeared as racists, and that police were even set onto journalists working on the story.
Cofnas responded to the Ghent statement on Thursday and wrote: “I am under investigation by my university for discriminating against Arday… I was just suspended by Ghent University. They will almost certainly fire me”. The post-doctoral researcher, who has garnered attention for his discussions on race science, and for reflecting on a Harvard study that stated if full meritocracy to its hiring practices the number of black academics would plummet, also noted the person who took the decision to suspend him was University Rector ‘Petra’ De Sutter, a “former leader of the Green Party”.
Apparently further asserting that Ghent’s politically-left-leaning, transgender rector may have an axe to grind when it comes to those exposing academic malpractice, Cofnas added further remarks to recall that De Sutter had recently been caught making a speech containing fake quotes, the “hallucinations” of an A.I. chat bot that helped write the address. Ghent and De Sutter acknowledged it had happened it had happened at the time, but as stated, hand waved the issue away despite it being a failing a regular student would face serious consequences for committing.
Speaking to Britain’s Times Radio the day after Arday resigned his Cambridge post, Cofnas gave his account of “a story of corruption, of people who knew the truth and covered it up, who used the threat of legal intimidation to silence people including journalists who tried to tell the truth”. He said: “Cambridge flat-out denied the plagiarism charge, even though we can see with our own eyes the texts side-by-side, very extensive examples.
“But they just said no, he’s already been investigated, he’s been vindicated… they said the critics are waging a ‘vile campaign’. What did him in was not the plagiarism, the fraud, not making up data, it was that he was claiming to have affiliations with prestigious universities that he didn’t actually have. Like Ohio State University and Glasgow, and also some of his lies about his private life had become so over-the-top, Cambridge had been hoping to just wait out the news cycle and go back to normal. But it was getting worse and worse.”
Jason Arday resigned his post from the prestigious University of Cambridge and Jesus College Cambridge on August 5th. In his letter of resignation, he decried what he called harassment against him and said his deciding to step down should not be interpreted as a sign of guilt on his part.
Little more than a week later, he was found unresponsive at a London address and declared dead shortly afterwards. The Metropolitan Police say they would be supplying information to the coroner, and no cause of death has yet been made public.