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.

So the tiny handful of genes that control pigmentation also shape the brain? How does it work for people of mixed ethnicity?

The "science" doesn't show anything of the kind.

You are spreading racism.

All you know is single value for the mean average of a sample of people, broken down by ethnicity labels, which themselves are largely subjective. It's not science, it's fantasy.

You don't even know the standard deviation for each subsample, let alone what the circumstances of the test were.
I t is actually impossible to design a study that would eliminate bias.

We live, we need to cooperate to survive. We organise ourselves into communities that require a range of skills, abilities and knowledge.

I know the science doesn't show it's genetic; in the post you quoted I was saying that IF it did, we ought not hidd from that, but I didn't believe it did.

The fact that race is hard to pin down genetically doesn't mean it's not real - just ask any victim of racism!

If you can access it, I think the standard deviations are shown in Table 1 of this paper.

Mediators of IQ test score differences across racial and ethnic groups: The case for environmental and social justice
Author links open overlay panelLawrence G. Weiss (Conceptualization; Methodology; Writing – original draft) a, Donald H. Saklofske (Writing – reviewing & editing) b

Not sure what your evidence is for the impossibility of bias-free testing.

But I agree with your last paragraph.

The fact that race is hard to pin down genetically doesn't mean it's not real - just ask any victim of racism!
That's completely skewed reasoning

It's really not. There's a great book called 'Racecraft' by the Fields sisters (one is a sociologist, the other a historian), which explains why. Essentially that race follows racism, not the other way round.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racecraft

Right - I mean it's a cultural category

Yes. I don't think I've said anything to suggest otherwise.

I totally agree with you that establishing a genetic basis for racial differences in intelligence absolutely would create/reinforce a hierarchy of esteem and respect, even if that weren’t the intention. But I think there’s a more fundamental question here: why should establishing such a difference be regarded as a meaningful or worthwhile scientific objective in the first place?

while we might study sex differences in particular cognitive abilities, we don’t generally regard the question “are men or women more intelligent?” as a particularly coherent or useful scientific question. Intelligence is multidimensional, the distributions overlap enormously, and average group differences tell us very little about individuals. I think similar considerations apply to racial comparisons, with the additional problem that racial categories are socially constructed and genetically heterogeneous.

Race isn’t a set of discrete, genetically coherent biological categories. There is enormous genetic and phenotypic variation within racial categories, and they don’t map neatly onto underlying population structure. So the question of whether an observed difference between socially defined racial groups is “genetic” is already a scientifically shaky hypothesis to pursue.

So to me the burden here is on those proposing this line of enquiry to first explain why this particular comparison is even scientifically meaningful, what it would actually tell us, and what value there is in pursuing it, rather than assuming that the possibility of a genetic difference makes the question intrinsically worth asking.

That is a very interesting username dune you follow the prophet?

I think you're right to be cautious. The only socially useful reason I can see for investigating the causes of different mean IQ between races would be to demonstrate that it ISN'T genetic, thereby demonstrating the efficacy and social/moral good of trying to level the playing field.

Cofnas openly admits that he wants to see an end to DEI, which end would be served by proving it's genetic.

Environmental theories dominated early 20th C thinking about autism (“refrigerator mothers”).

For a long time, being gay was taken to be a product of culture, bad parenting or bad choices.

Would you say that understanding the genetic influence on both of those has undermined esteem or respect for autistic people, gay people and those around them who were previously “blamed”?

Would you put that knowledge back in the box?

No, I wouldn't want that knowledge back in the box. And, no, I don't think that knowledge has led to a fall in esteem and respect for those groups. But I'm not sure they're analogous. I'm sure that a genetic cause for lower IQ would be ruthlessly weaponised by racists.

He's a common or garden racist. Might be academic and book smart but his 'theories' are sick.

This article suggests that you may have been over-optimistic.

Also his ideas and conclusions are so utterly foolish and so obviously flawed that it's difficult to reconcile this with even the idea that he is "book smart"...

Which is why, even leaving aside the ideas of academic freedom, it's better to dismantle his arguments than to try to cancel him. The latter would make him a martyr to wokeism in the eyes of some who'd be convinced that his ideas had some truth and so had to be suppressed.

Don't you think some people will just want to believe in what he says anyway - and feel it's a tenet of faith that white people are superior?

Sadly, I'm sure they will. I still think the effects of stopping him talking would be worse than those of pointing out he's talking bollocks.

Agree, and I think this is the problem: we live in a society structured around institutionalised authority, so the fact that someone holds a particular position inevitably lends credibility to their arguments. I do think that, in general, it’s better to challenge ideas rather than attack the person. But in this case, I think there is very strong evidence that Cofnas has behaved in an irresponsible and discriminatory manner. In particular, the way he targeted a specific individual because of his race, with devastating consequences, is extremely serious. I think his conduct has brought both himself and the universities he has been associated with into disrepute, and that he should therefore lose his position.

There's a difference between stopping him talking and not boosting what he's saying though.

He can talk all he likes still, he has his substack, but without the backing of a university. I mean, why amplify him and give him credibility?

Because when we try to kick academics we don't agree with out of academia we set a very dangerous precedent. Really, he should see out his current post, then not got another one due to his poor scholarship. Rather than Ghent concocting some convoluted charge to get rid of him when the real reason is that they're caving to public pressure to sack him now for stuff they nlknew he was saying before he was even appointed.

I don't think Cofnas should be kicked out because we disagree with him, but rather because his actions- particularly is personal targeting of Arday, violated the university's own code of ethical conduct.

Cofnas himself has written blog posts about how we should be kicking people he disagrees with out of academia.

If he's broken the terms of his contract, should we just overlook that?

He alleged plagiarism, seemingly with some reasonsble basis. There would have to be a strong case that he was motivated by racism to justify sacking him for making that allegation. Because the chilling effect of holding those who report wrongdoing responsible for the alleged wrongdoer's fragile state of mind would would likely deter good faith and well-founded criticisms. (Personally, I suspect racism did come into it, but I doubt that could be proven.)