To think 'academic freedom' and whistleblower punishment are misused in those protesting the suspension of Nathan Cofnas

[keepcounsel]

Many posters have cited 'academic freedom' and 'freedom of expression' as well as 'witch-hunt' in terms of Nathan Cofnas being suspended from the University of Ghent. They've also represented the suspension as punishing a whistle-blower due to his being one of the first to publicly communicate concerns about Jason Arday and plagiarism/academic standards. 200+ academics have signed a letter of protest about the suspension and the American ambassador to Belgium as well as Trump have called for him to be re-hired.

The grounds for his appointment seem to be to work as a post-doc on a Professor's project, so not overseen by the University HR department or a committee in the way a lecturer/professorial appointment would happen.
The work/activities of the Professor in question - Bouke De Vries - had been subject to complaints from his colleagues. When colleagues and students protested about Cofnas being hired Ghent's Rector said dissenting opinions should be allowed in the University.

Ghent have now said the grounds for suspension are due to:

a. He didn't conduct the research he was hired for
[they said 'The projects you publicly and repeatedly associate with your affiliation at Gent University, most notably your
'Guide for the Hereditarian Revolution' which advocates for racial barriers and segregation, fall entirely outside the scope of your official research mandate.']

b. He violated the University's ethics code
['prohibits spreading ideas of racial superiority or inciting racial segregation.']

c. He made statements that violate Belgian anti-discrimination legislation

d. He made remarks about Jason Arday that violate Belgian Criminal Code concerning offences against a person's honour or reputation

e. He caused significant unrest in the workplace by advocating a purge of those academics he thought ideologically wrong

My position as an academic invited to sign the letter of protest against his suspension is that academic freedom/freedom of speech is not unlimited, for example if it involves slander or seeks to assert racial supremacy.

Part three.

Final two.

So do explain why his being Jewish is relevant.
Do you think people who reject his racist research do so because of anti-semitism?

Thanks for sharing. Pretty strong grounds for suspension from any university I know.

Both Arday and Cofnas were/are not suited to academic work.

Yes, it’s a real question as I would like to understand why you think NC being Jewish makes him easy pickings. Are you are saying it does in the same way JA was exposed because he was black, ie not at all?

Isn't Cofnas right to the extent that he talks about the existence of a racial hierarchy of intelligence? Surely the significant differences in mean intelligence between races is a long-established fact? This is particularly true in the US (where he's from) where there's a 15 point (i.e. about one standard deviation) difference between the black mean (85) and the white mean (100). One consequence of which is that, because of the bell curve, there's a tail effect which means that a black person is one tenth as likely to be the top 1%. Which, when you factor in population numbers, would mean that fewer than one in a hundred of people in the top 1% are black. (Which actually accords with Harvard's own study, which they were forced to disclose in proceedings bought by Asian students, and which conceded that the number of black students they take would be vastly smaller if admission was decided on academics alone.)

Where Cofnas goes wrong is that he has decided that the IQ difference is due to genetics. In support of which he relies on old studies with poor methodology, and overlooks much better evidence which has effectively discredited his hypothesis for most serious academics in the field, who point towards to environmental factors e.g. parental education, nutrition, etc.. (There are other areas, too, such as the idea that admission should be based on academics/IQ alone, or that the removal of positive discrimination leaves a level playing field.)

It's hard not to conclude that his defence of heredetism is driven by racism (it's too gross to simply be poor scholarship by someone so experienced in academia). And, as such, not to suspect that him going after Arday was (at least in part) motivated by the same (even if what he said i.e. that Arday was a grossly under-qualified diversity hire fantasist and plagiarist, is true).

It's like the police stopping a disproportionate number of black boys. That's almost certainly racist, but it doesn't mean that the ones they do catch with knives are innocent.

All of which said, I do think the way to defeat bad ideas is to pick them apart, rather than to prevent people saying them. Because often the greatest leaps forward are people saying controversial things e.g. Galileo. Academic freedom is important. And the suspicion is that Ghent have created a bit of a pretext now the heat is on, despite knowing who Cornas was and what he thinks before appointing him (at which time they explicitly cited academic freedom)..

I've watched a couple of interviews with Cofnas in the past few days - he has a very strange screen filter which makes his forehead look like it's clipped-on, Lego style. Very odd

Re point (a), is it alleged that he failed to do work he was supposed to, or merely that he also did additional work he wasn't hired to do? Because only the former would be grounds for disciplinary action.

This is so true. History shows us repeatedly people whose genuine research and insight was shutdown, often violently by those who wanted to preserve the status quo for their own means. It's why academic freedom is so important.

What this whole debarcle is showing us is that their appears to be a lack of academic integrity at some of the UK's universities and it is now being exposed. And obviously they don't like it and there is a lot of ass covering going on. Shutting down academic freedom is not the answer.

Scrutinising the quality and integrity of academic discourse is the way to deal with this. But for that to happen, the universities in question would need to behave in a more academically rigorous manner and put the politics aside.

Neither Ardlay or Cofnas produced work that would stand up to rigorous academic scrutiny - but for some reasons multiple universities seemed keen to overlook that fact. Now it's all blown up in their faces, they are trying to minimise. Because, these are not the only substandard academics out and they seriously fear further fallout.

Isn't Cofnas right to the extent that he talks about the existence of a racial hierarchy of intelligence? Surely the significant differences in mean intelligence between races is a long-established fact? This is particularly true in the US (where he's from) where there's a 15 point (i.e. about one standard deviation) difference between the black mean (85) and the white mean (100)

This presumes IQ is a fair measure of intelligence, not impacted by cultural factors. Give someone an IQ test in a language they can[t speak and they[ll do terribly, however smart they are. Cofnas seems to be attributing differences in IQ score in broad populations to race, when there are other variables to control for that he disregards.

Attributing Ashkenazi intelligence to a genetic predisposition for white collar work is, frankly, bonkers.

I have some sympathy for the Galileo argument, but I also think there are limits. I wouldn[t expect a flat earther to have a successful career in astronomy.

The way to whistleblow is to follow standard procedures laid down in law, not go rogue and publish on blogs.

Not according to Ghent. See part of the letter attached - even if the work on race was additional work he publicly associated it with his role in Ghent and that caused reputational damage to the University and is in violation of their disciplinary Code 'which prohibits spreading ideas of racial superiority or inciting racial segregation.'

I think that even 'fair' tests i.e. thise that are language and culture agnostic show different general g figures per race. I think it's a dead-end disputing that truth (however uncomfortable it makes us). Better to ask why. In which regard most experts agree that the evidence repudiate Cofnas's position.

The original whistleblower is whoever it was in Cambridge who contacted Cofnas in the first place and knew Cofnas was keen on publicity - which is why he published his blog. It spread his ideas faster and presented him in public as a hero to people who share his ideology.

He published it on 21 July - Arday resigned 5 August, died the following week.

The extent to which it was actual whistleblowing is interesting to consider - Arday had already been investigated for plagiarism with his PhD and cleared, and had already issued corrections for some dodgy (plagiarised) content in articles.
So was Cofnay actually saying anything new?
Or was it Cofnay's reach and mode of presentation that led to all the scrutiny, resignation and investigation?

Like Arday (but less serious maybe as it wasn't a Professorship) there were many questions raised about Cofnay's appointment in Ghent. The process went completely against the norm in that there were no external interviewers, the decision making was in the hands of one person (Bouke de Vries, who shares some of Cofnay's views on race), and the application materials weren't shared. It's much more typical to have colleagues be part of the process.

The entire letter from Ghent academics about this is at the link below and then the section about the lack of transparency is attached.

www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/t47r5th5i7scx0tjzlkim/Translation-of-Positions-of-the-Department-LW01-Cofnas.pdf?rlkey=c29kijdbeh56f1v5kzb25x3gn&e=3&dl=0

... and, as such, implies that the difference can be eliminated with social changes. Which is why Cofnas can't concede any ground to his critics who say the evidence shows it's environmental rather than genetic. Because that is an argument for DEI, which is what he hates (on the misconception that a world.wothout DEI is meritocratic, which e.g. CV studies have repeatedly shown to be false).

Academic freedom doesn't mean freedom to research or say anything you want to, particularly if it's in conflict with a University's code of ethics.
I don't think it's true that multiple universities overlooked Cofnas's work - Cambridge got rid of him and the hiring of him in Ghent was down to just one man who shared some of his ideology.
I don't know if all of Arday's work has been definitively pronounced as not standing up to scrutiny - but he certainly should have had to resubmit his PhD when the issues with it were identified.

I posted on another thread about the genuine efforts that were made in England to make an 11+ grammar school test that was a genuine test of innate intelligence, couldn’t be tutored for (so wouldn’t advantage children of wealthy parents) and which wouldn’t discriminate against ethnic minorities. They created the test, rolled it out and found that it was actually worse than the previous test at favouring the white and wealthy.

We know that it was discrimination against those groups and not that those groups are less innately intelligent because we could then examine the SATs results of those children. Children with the same SATs scores were less likely to pass the supposedly fair test of intelligence if they were from certain backgrounds.

So it certainly casts doubt on IQ tests as being a fair measure of intelligence if it similarly shows worse results for those backgrounds.

You do realise that black schools in the US have been systematically underfunded since they were freed from slavery. Your comparing apples and oranges. Take children in the same schools, with the same opportunities and the same home lives and the differences would dissappear. Your post is really quite odious and ignorant.

I agree with you that his PhD should have been properly reviewed.
On the issue of academic freedom I disagree. Academic research is about pushing boundaries. People are free to disagree and to push back against it.
Otherwise you end up in a situation where genuine research can be shut down because of ‘ethics’. History shows us this quite clearly. For example, It’s what the Catholic Church did to Galileo. They considered his research blasphemy. But he was right. It’s a dangerous road to go down.

While I don't agree with him and can see why an investigation is required, how is plastering him everywhere any different to the treatment of jason arday.

What if he can't cope with the attention either and the very clear insinuation he is directly responsible for what happened.

You can't jump up and down about the right, press etc and then do exactly the same just because you don't like a person.

Edited to say i realise the OP has put forward a specific question here. My point was about the general focus on him, which mirrors what went before.

That could be explained by e.g. SAT test reflecting (in part) effort by different work ethics in e.g. African and Indian families, such thatthey score higher than their intelligence would suggest.

Also, we need to be careful talking about "innate" intelligence; the evidence is that population level differences are environmental rather than genetic (but that the difference is real).

That is exactly my point! Whereas Cofnas says the opposite: that it's genetic.

Disagree if you like, but it's a fact that academic freedom as defined by (conventional) universities and other research bodies is not defined as untrammelled freedom to research/publish anything an academic wants to.

All universities have codes of research ethics, and won't support researchers who violate them. They're usually couched in terms of respect for human rights including consent, doing no harm, and being against promoting the innate superiority or inferiority of particular protected categories - sometimes in reference to anti-discrimination law. In the case of Cofnas, if he had ever come clean about wanting to do research to prove racial hierarchies he would have been in violation of the ethics codes of the Leverhulme Trust, Cambridge and Ghent. He got funding and two positions and in every case undertook work that violated the code.

Despite Mumsnet being so full of many of the MAGA talking points about DEI and CRT somehow inhibiting academic freedom and research, the current biggest threats to academic freedom in the West is what's happened in the USA under Trump.