In Defense of Nathan Cofnas

The tragic death of Jason Arday has sparked calls to punish Ghent University researcher Nathan Cofnas, who first exposed Arday’s plagiarism and deceptions. Cofnas has now been suspended by Ghent University and says that he expects to be fired. Many people rightly find Cofnas’s racist views abhorrent and his personal attacks on Arday distasteful. But Cofnas’s critiques of Arday were completely legitimate, regardless of his motives. And the attempt to punish him because Arday died by suicide is a threat to academic freedom. Professors should not be investigated or punished for their political views merely because they express controversial ideas publicly, as I argued here two decades ago when Ward Churchill (who died earlier this month) was fired by the University of Colorado after making offensive comments about Sept. 11.

One blogger described a letter supporting Cofnas’s academic freedom as “the Arday Lynching Letter Defending Cofnas.”

Of course, Arday was not lynched; he reportedly died by suicide. Suicide is caused by mental illness, not by criticism. And we must not ban criticism in the name of protecting the mentally ill; suicidal thoughts are so widespread across a vast range of views that a “suicidal” exemption to free speech would have to encompass any critiques of anyone.

Punishing Cofnas might only encourage more mentally ill people to commit suicide, hoping in the midst of their despair that their enemies would be punished if they kill themselves.

Instead of the destructive response of censorship, the best answer to suicide is better mental health treatment.

Ghent University’s letter to Cofnas declared, “You explicitly stated that you are currently continuing your work on ‘race realism’ and the ‘hereditarian revolution,’” which Ghent claims is a “manifest violation of your professional obligations towards this University.” According to Ghent, Cofnas’s “research mandate” is “a study of ‘the future of liberalism,’ specifically focusing on liberalism as a political doctrine emphasizing individual freedom and equality,” and “race realism” would “fall entirely outside the scope of your official research mandate.” But it’s simply not true that issues of race and racial equality are “entirely outside the scope” of “the future of liberalism.” Asking questions about racial inequality is entirely legitimate, especially for a philosophy scholar. Trying to ban certain answers to these questions is wrong, whether the answer is an unsupported claim of genetic racial differences by Cofnas or an accurate explanation about racism that the Trump regime and its allies seek to prohibit as too critical of America.
Ghent also accuses Cofnas of “misuse of the University’s reputation to promote ideologies that conflict with its core values.” A university can have core values, but it cannot ban ideologies that question or conflict with those values.

Ghent argues that Cofnas’s criticism of Arday as “mentally disabled” and a “worthless scholar” was “an intentional and serious disturbance of the peace” that may violate “the Belgian Criminal Code.” It is ludicrous (and dangerous) to suggest that accurately accusing a scholar of plagiarism and expressing mean opinions could ever be considered a crime.

Ghent’s letter alleges that Cofnas has caused “a notably negative impact on the functioning of the University and on the well-being of, and cooperation with, students and other members of staff.” But the fact that a professor is controversial or is imagined by some to cause a “negative impact” cannot justify suppression.

Ghent’s letter also claims, “by publicly calling to ‘purge’ institutions of those you label as ideological enemies, you have created a climate of severe psychosocial distress.” But by that logic, Ghent’s administration is equally guilty of causing distress by actually purging its institution of an ideological enemy. I oppose Cofnas’s embrace of censorship, just as I oppose those who want to censor Cofnas, but I defend the freedom of all to argue for censorship.

Ghent argues that “your continued physical presence in the workplace would lead to confrontations, further disruption of the University’s activities, or a deterioration of the working and learning environment.” This is the heckler veto: the idea that scholars can be banned because protesters might violate the law to attack them. It is a bankrupt concept, one that blames the victim rather than protecting the public.

Both the heckler veto and Ghent’s alleged concern for the “psychosocial wellbeing of members of its community” are used to justify the immediate suspension of Cofnas. As I have argued, interim suspensions and banishments from campus are a form of punishment, and they must not be used except when there is an immediate targeted threat of violence from the individual being suspended. A vague worry about “current unrest”—none of which Cofnas is accused of doing—cannot justify a suspension.

Some responses to Ghent University are also wrong. U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Bill White condemned Ghent University “in the strongest terms” and issued this threat: “The United States government regularly funds and supports research, academic exchanges, and other engagements with overseas universities. 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.”

Of course, the dishonest, corrupt Trump regime scapegoats scholars and accurate journalism on a daily basis and on a grand scale thousands of times worse than this investigation of one professor. But this is more than just grotesque hypocrisy: The academic boycott threatened by White is itself an attack on academic freedom, because it promises to ban any academic exchanges or research connected with a university merely because of one misguided investigation. No American college could survive this standard, considering the vast number of violations of free speech (many aimed at critics of Trump) administrators have committed. This is why government retaliation against colleges deemed (even correctly) to have violated free speech is such a dangerous power, because it can be abused to target political enemies.

Arday is not the only professor who has died by suicide after facing severe criticism and threats. University of North Carolina at Wilmington professor Michael Adams, who won a famous victory for academic freedom, died by suicide shortly after being pressured to retire, and his critics have faced attacks. In the book he co-wrote, The Canceling of the American Mind, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression President Greg Lukianoff denounced Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth (the authors of It’s Not Free Speech) as “nothing short of despicable” because they opposed the $500,000 settlement given to Adams, who was a friend of Lukianoff’s. He accused Bérubé and Ruth of being “callous” and concealing Adams’s suicide in a footnote. But Lukianoff probably also opposes colleges silencing controversial professors by paying them to retire.

I don’t see anything Adams did that could justify his firing, but Bérubé and Ruth are correct that if professors commit misconduct, they deserve punishment, not payoffs. We shouldn’t change our core values because a high-profile figure in a dispute commits suicide, and we shouldn’t denounce people who stand on sound principles in these cases.

The Adams case shows that all sides can make angry responses when sympathetic people die by suicide. Unlike Adams, the Arday suicide followed a much larger public campaign of attacks that could be traced back to one particularly offensive professor: Cofnas. But the core principles of academic freedom still hold.

Of course, we should do more to protect people who face an online mob of attackers. We can expose and prosecute criminals who make violent threats against controversial professors. We can offer protection and aid to faculty facing online harassment. We can defend their academic freedom and due process rights and reject demands for institutional denunciations. But what we must not do is abandon academic freedom and punish anyone for being a harsh critic, even when there are tragic results.