LONDON—A few months ago, Nathan Cofnas was at a low ebb.
“The British media published 249 articles about Arday in a 22-day period. I published one article, which was 100% factual,” he said. The U.S. has for years had raging debates over race and merit, with the Supreme Court ending affirmative action based on race in college admissions in 2023 and the Trump administration attempting to eliminate DEI programs and policies. There were protests, and 58 students launched formal complaints against him for discrimination. Helped by £85,000 in donations, Cofnas sued Cambridge’s Emmanuel College alleging discrimination.
Cambridge said it provided Arday with mental health support, and has launched an investigation into its hiring practices. The university confirmed the suspension of Cofnas on its website. He lost.
Cofnas, speaking from Belgium in one of his first interviews since Arday’s death, said he doesn’t regret publishing his Substack post. But he also said Arday was unfairly hounded by the press and let down by Cambridge University, which overpromoted him then abandoned him when under scrutiny. “I was part of a series of causes that led to that outcome,” but “you have to be allowed to criticize powerful people,” Cofnas said of Arday and his death. A petition citing Cofnas’s “abhorrent research” and calling for his dismissal gained more than 1,200 signatures. “I think he’s dangerously tactless in a radioactive topic” and “should exercise more caution,” Steven Pinker, author and Harvard University evolutionary psychologist, says of Cofnas’s rhetoric on genetics’ role in intelligence. Pinker said examining potential racial discrepancies in intelligence “could cause harm to African Americans” and lead to discrimination against them. “There’s times in science where the best policy is don’t go there,” he said in an interview. ” it also concluded that the way Cofnas had expressed it didn’t “abide with the college’s culture of respect While the Cambridge County Court found that hereditarianism is a “protected philosophical belief.
The case has thrown Cofnas—and his controversial research on race and intelligence—to the forefront of a debate on diversity. Cofnas is both blamed for the tragic end to Arday’s life and praised for calling out Arday’s promotion when Cambridge colleagues and the British press didn’t. He has received death threats and a wave of hate mail. “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,” wrote Rector Petra De Sutter and Vice-Rector Herwig Reynaert. Increasingly, this debate has spread to the U.K., where traditionally class, not race, has proved the main barrier to social mobility. His work was picked up by both Cambridge student journalists and English tabloids, who questioned why the illustrious institution had hired him. Cofnas is appealing the decision.
