U.S. condemns suspension of Cofnas over plagiarism claims against Arday

The United States has condemned the suspension of Nathan Cofnas from Ghent University over allegations against the late Cambridge’s youngest Black professor Jason Arday.

In a statement on Friday, Bill White, U.S. ambassador to Belgium, said, “The United States Mission to Belgium condemns, in the strongest terms, Ghent University’s retaliation against an American scholar following his accurate whistleblower reporting on academic fraud.”

Mr Cofnas, the self-acclaimed “race realist” U.S. academic, said he was suspended by the institution in a statement on X on Thursday.

The academic added that the institution had also launched an investigation to determine if he discriminated against Mr Arday when he was alive.

Mr White further noted that the U.S. government regularly funds and supports research, academic exchanges, and other engagements with overseas universities.

He added, ‘Dishonest, corrupt institutions that engage in, or reward, scapegoating mob behavior are not desirable partners for us. This is particularly true where the purpose and effect of the scapegoating is to punish accurate journalism unearthing academic dishonesty. We are therefore reviewing any relationships we have with Ghent University.”

The politician, who accused bad-faith ideologues of trying to make polemical distortions of Mr Cofnas’ scholarship, condemned his suspension as a deliberate attack on free speech.

“Bad-faith idealogues will try to make this a referendum on the content of Cofnas’s scholarship – or polemical distortions of it. That’s wrong. Free speech means that controversial views are protected. And Cofnas’s views were known to Ghent University when he was hired.

“The ultimate purpose of freedom of speech is to overturn lies, fraud, and false ideologies. This is precisely what Cofnas was doing, and precisely the reason his home institution wants to silence him,” Mr White noted.

Mr Cofnas’s relentless plagiarism accusations against Mr Arday triggered a worldwide controversy and scrutiny of his scholarly works.

The Belgian institution in a statement signed by its rector, Petra de Sutter, affirmed its value for human dignity.

“Ghent University stands for respect for human dignity and opposes discrimination, hatred and racism,” the statement said Wednesday. “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.”

Ghent University, which condoled with Mr Arday’s family, further said it was probing Mr Cofnas’s statements and hoped Mr Arday’s demise will prompt reflection in how “we treat one another both within and outside the academic world, particularly when people become the subject of public controversy.”

“The university takes the recent public statements made by a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University regarding this matter very seriously,” it added.

Mr Arday was found dead in his UK residence on Friday, days after he resigned his position at Cambridge University explaining that the backlash from the allegations was too much to bear.