Last week I posted an analysis of claims that the late Professor Jason Arday (University of Cambridge) had committed plagiarism. I found different issues - essentially that: (1) Professor Arday’s conferred PhD dissertation and some of his Early Career Academic research had specific limitations (as a lot of research does, including my own), and (2) Professor Arday had used a range of arbitrage-based tips and tricks to accelerate his career trajectory over 8 years from his PhD conferral in 2015 to being appointed in 2013 to his University of Cambridge role. I also commented on some of the institutional aspects of this. Professor Arday’s death is very tragic.
Now, I will do the same for Dr Nathan Cofnas (Ghent University) who accused Professor Arday in a Substack post on 21st July 2026. He is also now faced with a very tragic situation in which a series of Substack blog posts and several YouTube podcast interviews are considered enough to very likely end his Postdoc career, in part due to holding ideological views that place him at conflict with his affiliated institution, and its staff and students. Ghent University this past week suspended Dr Cofnas from his Postdoc role and placed him under formal investigation. This will be compartmentalised, siloed, and highly secretive. A copy of Ghent University’s notification to Dr Cofnas of his suspension, the formal investigation, the specific policies and procedures that he is alleged to have breached, other issues that are in scope, and the claimed adverse impacts to the institution has leaked online. It is not yet been independently authenticated. Ghent University’s notification cites operational, reputation, and psychosocial risks. As the Respondent in this matter Dr Cofnas is unlikely to ever see the full material evidence of these risks.
I proceed as follows. First, I examine Dr Cofnas’ conferred PhD dissertation in 2020 from Oxford University. Next, I address his research program and publications track record to date (“relative to opportunity”) via CV and then research publications informed analysis. This is a standard procedure in a university research office (I have worked in both Faculty and in central Research Offices, and I have a PhD and highly cited published research myself, for what that is worth). Then, I examine in brief some issues that Ghent University has raised about the hereditarian worldview in intelligence studies and the contemporary “race realist” subculture. I do so in part based on as yet unpublished research from 2020-24. Finally, I address what the formal investigation is likely to find. I concur with Dr Cofnas that Ghent University is highly likely to terminate him from his Postdoc employment role. I frame these comments specifically for other Postdocs.
The views expressed here draw on both my MA (2006) and PhD (2020) qualifications in political science, and my research administrative career (2008-26). In part, this is to apply to Dr Cofnas the same evaluative standards that I did to Professor Arday - and that could be done by others to my body of work as well. These are personal views only.
A. The PhD Dissertation.
The University of Oxford conferred Dr Cofnas’ PhD in 2021 for a DPhil in Philosophy (completed in 2020). It is called Evolutionary Explanations and the Debunking of Moral Beliefs. Oxford University awarded the PhD to Dr Cofnas in the area / field of examination of Philosophy rather than Evolutionary Biology or Evolutionary Psychology. His two PhD Supervisors were Professor Guy Kahane (Google Scholar profile) and Dr Andreas Mogensen (Google Scholar search query). Emeritus Professor Jeff McMahan also provided support (Google Scholar profile), with deep expertise in applied ethics. Dr Cofnas also thanks the Duke University academic Dr Jonathan Anomaly (Google Scholar profile) and Dr Neven Sesardic, most recently affiliated with Lingnan University in Hong Kong (CV) (Google Scholar search query). The Acknowledgments section is very brief and does not refer to a broader consultative or social network.
The PhD dissertation is a 207 page document that consists mostly of 5 case study chapters. They are clearly written and formatted (each with separate bibliographies) for publication. Dr Cofnas’ Google Scholar profile reveals that two chapters were published as of 2020—when the University of Oxford conferred his PhD. The chapter topics reflect both Dr Cofnas’ research interests and his PhD Supervisors’ expertise. The PhD dissertation’s writing mechanics are strong: clear argumentation, logical paragraph structure, and clarity.
Chapter 1 examines Edward Westermarck’s incest taboo. Cofnas rejects both natural selection and cultural transmission arguments-highlighting instead that other posited theories (such as sociological) may provide more parsimonious explanations (p. 29-30). In Chapter 2, Cofnas likewise rejects Darwinian and Marxist theories of cultural evolution, and instead sides with the late University of Southern California cultural anthropologist and primatologist Professor Christopher Boehm (Google Scholar profile) in its study of power and group selection in the Paleolithic era and in contemporary society. Cofnas argues that traditional approaches should be revisited (p. 78). This is a theory-building chapter about rival schools of thought and different kinds of causal / explanatory theories. Chapter 3 builds on Boehm’s work to explore the claimed Paleolithic era hunter-gatherer origins of various forms of liberalism, how illiberal hierarchies arise, and why revolutions occur and have contagion based strategic effects. This is also an argumentation and logic-based methodological chapter. Cofnas rejects a truth-tracking claim for liberalism and instead prefers naturalistic form arguments (p. 114). Chapter 4 focuses on the causal mechanism of truth-tracking. Dr Cofnas advances realist social selection as a gene-culture coevolution framework—and argues that due to metaethics and accumulating evidence, this hypothesis in the evolution of morality deserves further empirical investigation (p. 149). Chapter 5 evaluates and rejects the moral philosopher Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) and his utilitarianism claims. More convincing for Dr Cofnas are “how-possibly explanations” that integrate “evolution, history, culture, and psychology” (p. 193).
Does Dr Cofnas advance racist arguments in this PhD dissertation? The first three chapters evaluate and reject Darwinian, Marxist, and longitudinal form cultural transmission based arguments. For Dr Cofnas, morality since the Paleolithic era has advanced primarily in human society via dominant groups that have power and which present specific moral and political philosophies as being natural (including the above, and utilitarianism). Liberal political philosophy is not an evolutionary default; illiberal variants also exist. Realist social selection claims that moral rules are imposed by group-based selection pressures that shape cultural evolution based moral debates and trajectories (p. 120). Collectively, if this argumentation is accepted (and it does not necessarily need to be) then this would challenge the primacy of liberal political philosophy (in both its classical and neoliberal variants). It also would challenge the utilitarian premises of social cohesion policies - instead prioritising realist power and conflict sociology as more plausible and empirically observable explanations.
CWRU lists the University of Oxford as second nationally and seventh internationally in its 2025 rankings. Thus, one significant difference between Professor Arday and Dr Cofnas is that their respective PhD level education (in different fields of knowledge yet both in the social sciences, and thus addressable via transdisciplinary comparative methods) occurred at very different ranked universities.
Finally, is Dr Cofnas’ PhD dissertation plagiarised? I ran it through the free plagiarism checker Dupli Checker and got a partial result (PDF). The software found 56% plagiarism and only 46% originality! However, how university teaching staff actually check and use plagiarism software is more sophisticated than is perhaps understood. (Note the rhetoric I used in the prior sentence - an attempt at three cognitive biases called anchoring, framing, and representativeness.) The detected plagiarism was solely from Dr Cofnas’ own subsequent published work - which originated in the PhD dissertation. Scanning hits of 1-2% are usually discarded as false positives. We also don’t know the quality of the Dupli Checker software and I didn’t pay to check the entire PhD dissertation. However, consistent with other robustness checks noted above, it is highly likely that Dr Cofnas’ conferred PhD dissertation fulfils the criteria of making an “original contribution” to a field / area. Whether or not you normatively agree with either the field / area or his specific argumentation / conclusions is a different point.
B. The Curriculum Vitae and Publications Track Record
Dr Cofnas has a publicly available academic format CV - dated May 2026 (PDF). It lists his areas of research and follows the usual areas. The University of Cambridge terminated Dr Cofnas as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in 2025 for a 2024 blog post articulating what others have described as a “race realist” stance. This termination decision was made because others found “deep offence” at what Dr Cofnas had written - even though the highly confidential disciplinary proceeding did not find that Dr Cofnas had broken any law and that freedom of speech in scholarly debate is affirmed (University of Cambridge statement). In his PhD’s Acknowledgments section, Dr Cofnas had noted: “In the course of writing this thesis, some of my extracurricular work generated intense political controversy” (p. iii). Dr Cofnas began a second Postdoc at Belgium’s Ghent University in 2026.
The CV lists 21 published peer reviewed papers. It includes in some cases download estimates and AltMetrics scores. Many of these papers are either directly from his conferred PhD dissertation or further elaborate and expand on specific argumentation sections. This is what a normal PhD to Postdoc research career trajectory would do. The journals include Biology & Philosophy (ScimargoJR Q1), Philosophia (ScimagoJR Q1), Utilitas (ScimagoJR Q1), Philosophical Quarterly (ScimagoJR Q1), Philosophical Studies (ScimagoJR Q1), Human Nature (ScimagoJR Q1), and Quarterly Review of Biology (ScimagoJR Q1). Dr Cofnas has two co-authored publications (in 2016 and 2018) with Noah Carl (who the University of Cambridge terminated in 2019) and Michael Woodley of Menie (who Vrije Universiteit Brussel terminated in 2022 after a gunman killed 10 Black people in Buffalo in the United States in May 2022 had cited Woodley’s academic research on IQ dysgenics in a manifesto). There are also a couple of co-authored papers on nutrition that do not add to his research program. A number of Dr Cofnas’ papers deal with the controversial evolutionary psychologist and antisemtic, white supremacist Kevin MacDonald, formerly a Professor at California State University, Long Beach. I address this specifically below.
The CV lists 17 popular articles - which shift over time ideologically from the conservative National Review to the libertarian, contrarian Quillette and his Substack newsletter. 10 invited talks and conferences are noted - again showing a topic and ideological shift in terms of scholarly identity. His teaching experience at the University of Cambridge appears to primarily be in assessment marking rather than face to face / online delivery of learning content. Two strengths of the CV are his referee experience, and his 8 referees - which range from George Mason University libertarian economist Professor Garrett Jones (who has contrarian views) and Harvard University psychologist Professor Steven Pinker. Having a range of referees and several noted public intellectuals can frame you as a strategic hire for Postdoc selection committees.
C. Hereditarian Worldviews and the Contemporary “Race Realist” Subculture
The University of Cambridge (in 2025) and Ghent University (in 2026) both allege that Dr Cofnas is a “race realist” who espouses a “hereditarian” worldview. As noted above, the University of Cambridge decided as a rank ordered preference that holding and publicly espousing these ideological beliefs was sufficient for termination (although the wording of its public statement above suggests that a confidential settlement made via Non-Disclosure Agreement may have been made to Dr Cofnas).
Racial theories can be traced historically to Greece and Rome. They also shaped Christian actions in the Crusades in the Middle Ages against Jews (embodying antisemitism) and Muslims. Racialist theories emerged in Europe with Arthur de Gobinau, Max Nordau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and in Nazi Germany, with Adolf Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg, and the Holocaust (Shoah) architect Heinrich Himmler. In the United States, early “race realist” worldviews (that influenced the Nazi Party) were advanced by Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard, later to be eclipsed by Franz Boas in cultural anthropology. They also informed Helena Blavatsky’s Theosophical movement which was involved in part in decolonialist responses in India (where Blavatsky’s hidden Masters allegedly were) versus Great Britain. In the United States and the United Kingdom in the mid to late 20th century, William Shockley, Hans Eysenck, Arthur Jensen, Richard Herrnstein, Charles Murray, Jared Taylor, J. Philippe Rushton, and Steve Sailor amongst others have advanced hereditarian based claims of group-based race-IQ correlations which they believe undermine both contrasting environment-based IQ arguments (notably by the late James Flynn), and liberal meritocratic processes of claimed upward socio-economic mobility. Today, an emerging consensus is that “race realists” are part of an illiberal bloc which is intent on seizing political power and shifting Western societies away from its neoliberal consensus (at least from 1979 to 2024) and into an illiberal, post-liberal, and multipolar order.
How does Dr Cofnas fit within this rapidly evolving milieu?
First, Dr Cofnas’ scholarly identity has evolved since the University of Cambridge conferred his MPhil (Distinction) in 2016, and the University of Oxford conferred his PhD in 2021. Over time, he has moved from a conservative to a stance more aligned with libertarian contrarians. His research program focuses on controversies and taboos in the philosophy of biology and ethics. Dr Cofnas can clearly read, understand, debate, and develop new frameworks in his qualifications area of philosophy. He is not an evolutionary biologist or evolutionary psychologist, and nor is he an anthropologist or sociologist.
Second, Dr Cofnas is on record as having collaborated with two alleged “race realists”: Dr Noah Carl and Dr Michael Woodley of Menie. Dr Carl is cofounder of Aporia Magazine with Dr Bo Winegard, who Ohio’s Marietta College terminated in 2020. As noted above, Dr Woodley also was terminated in 2022. Dr Woodley has collaborated with Dr Edward Dutton (The Jolly Heretic), who the late University of Ulster Professor Richard Lynn mentored (the University of Ulster terminated Professor Lynn before his death, so he founded the independent Ulster Institute to self-publish his hereditarian research). Finland’s Oulu University terminated Dr Dutton from his Docent role in 2019, and removed prior affiliation details from its website in 2020. Dr Cofnas and Dr Dutton both disagree with each-other. You may note an employment outcome pattern here for “race realist” hereditarians that Dr Cofnas has also experienced - and is very likely to do so, again (perhaps: a failure to learn from experience).
Third, what has demonstrably happened in terms of Dr Cofnas’ career trajectory to date is that his “extracurricular work” noted in his PhD’s Acknowledgments have effectively swallowed the rest of his identity. Dr Cofnas has shifted much of his attention online (as per the hereditarian “race realists” noted above who are now independent scholars). The University of Cambridge terminated him after a Substack post made on 6th February 2024 which argued for a “hereditarian revolution”. This philosophical stance was implicit in his 2021 PhD dissertation - but was not foregrounded so much, and nor was it in his identity-based rather than scholarly-based language. But at least he wrote for Quillette, and not for American Renaissance (your choice of outlets to publish in and the specific editors who you choose to work with can be very important, and will shape what audiences you may reach.)
Fourth, Dr Cofnas now faces at Ghent University a repeat of his adverse administrative experiences at the University of Cambridge. This creates some cognitive dissonance (Leon Festinger) with his PhD. On the one hand, Dr Cofnas demonstrably put in a lot of work - an MPhil and a PhD from Oxbridge universities, very strong and broad references, deep engagement with being a referee for blind peer review of academic publications, many academic publications in ScimagoJR Q1 ranked journals, and some teaching, administration, conference presentations, and popular work (Quillette has a specific readership). But now he faces intense scrutiny at Ghent University over his Substack post made on 21st July 2026 - on Professor Jason Arday - which most of his critics likely have not even probably read or properly understood his argumentation and knowledge claims (the same for the “hereditarian revolution” piece as well). According to his Google Scholar profile as of today, Dr Cofnas has a h-index of 11 (good for a Philosophy oriented Postdoc) and 689 citations. Instead, he will now mostly be remembered as the “hereditarian race realist” whose Substack post sparked a cascade that led to Professor Arday’s tragic death.
Fifth, let me go back to the University of Cambridge in 2025 and the Substack piece on his espoused “hereditarian revolution.” Dr Cofnas advanced the claims in his 2021 conferred PhD that liberal worldviews are not solely natural or preordained and that competing illiberal worldviews have their own evolutionary logics. Nor is utilitarianism (which underpins social cohesion and multiculturalism) in his view truly defensible as a source of moral sentiments - this arises in part also due to selection pressures that include power and dominant groups that can impose their preferences on others. Whether you personally agree with it or not, this was considered robust enough to result in a conferred PhD in which Dr Cofnas was independently evaluated (including likely in an external examination or oral defence process) to have made an “original contribution.”
By 2024, Dr Cofnas has rejected “Woke” ideology which he believes is rooted in Christian moral worldviews (Dr Cofnas is Jewish). This is not so much a surprise as Dr Cofnas also rejected some Christian moral arguments in his PhD. Dr Cofnas assembles varied argumentation from Christopher Rufo, Richard Hanania, Herbert Marcuse, Amy Wax, Charles Murray, and Immanuel Kant. One important source for Dr Cofnas is the Michael Levitin book Why Race Matters: Race Differences and What They Mean (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997) which remains likely the most philosophically rigorous argued case for a hereditarian worldview (of which the “race realist” label is applied by Jared Taylor, who reissued the book in 2012). Dr Cognas rejects a number of sources, from the conservative National Review where he began his publishing career to the Perth-based Imperium Press. He rejects Darwinians, historical Nazis, contemporary neo-Nazis, Jared Diamond, and most online race realists. The problem is clear in his Substack article’s final section on Strategy in which for example Dr Cofnas highlights public controversy around Charles Murray, articulates the need for hereditarians to adopt a revolutionary stance in order to counter Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DEI) elites, and then fails to work out the logics of a viable way forward. He is not a specialist in revolutionary insurgency. In citing Rufo, Hanania and Murray, Dr Cofnas also highlights that his Substack post on 21st July 2026 about Professor Arday was an attempt to apply a hereditarian counterrevolutionary playbook (that Rufo used against former Harvard University president Claudine Gay, who resigned from this role in January 2024). We are in tit-for-tat game-theoretic territory in which anti-plagiarism detection software is now open to all.
Sixth, Dr Cofnas highlights that one reason the University of Cambridge terminated him was that his Substack article of 6th February 2024 had sections on race realism that appear to have been hastily written. They did not have the argumentation based clarity of his conferred PhD dissertation or his peer reviewed academic research. It is not clear that University of Cambridge academics, administrators, and protesting students understood at all Dr Cofnas’ stance, either - or if they did, they were able to mobilise both “from below” (the student protesters) and “from above” (the academics and administrators), to control the issue framing, and to use the formal complaints process in order to trigger a formal investigation (disciplinary proceeding) in which Dr Cofnas was terminated. The hereditarian or race realist counterreolutionary playbook can be used to get rid of them (so that they become independent scholars on YouTube, Substack, and elsewhere) as well.
Seventh, and finally, much of his peer reviewed academic publications and popular work involved Dr Cofnas making a significant intervention in hereditarian race realist discourse and intellectual history. I have not seen this commented on. If you are unfamiliar with it, you will miss its theory-building and theory-testing significance. Much of this was a debate about the evolutionary psychologist Kevin MacDonald, who has promoted Life History Theory (also advanced by Michael Woodley of Menie and Edward Dutton, and in a different form, by J. Philippe Rushton, Charles Murray and others). This debate occurred between 2018 and 2023 in peer reviewed academic journals, in Quillette, and elsewhere: Dr Cofnas listed a series of publications from both sides of the exchange on his professional academic website. There is agreement, disagreement, critique of deplatforming and the coordinated campaigns to retract articles, and others like Dr Edward Dutton also weigh in. This is not the consensus view that outsiders may believe. More cynically, it is also a strategy to create more controversy via what functionally is a citation network that advanced different forms of group selection theory (itself a heterodox stance). During the time of this infra-group debate, Springer Nature’s Evolutionary Psychological Science was ScimagoJR ranked Q2. It has now fallen to Q3: some newer journals fluctuate in terms of their editorial and published article quality. It certainly is not of the quality of Dr Cofnas’ published work in ScimagoJR Q1 ranked journals: it is an activist-oriented detour that at best could be described as ‘emic’ oriented translational research in contemporary hereditarian discourse - which Dr Cofnas describes as being “race realist” in his Substack article of 6th February 2024 which directly led to his University of Cambridge termination.
The then Professor Kevin MacDonald is most well known for a trilogy of books—A People That Shall Dwell Alone (1994), Separation and Its Discontents (1998), and The Culture of Critique (1998)—all originally issued by Praeger Publishers, who also published J. Philippe Rushton, Richard Lynn, and others (some of its books were niche and reflected intellectual currents at the time, which now would be disavowed as being too dissident and heterodox). In a 2018 presentation made at the University of Buckhingham (where a number of other cancelled, controversial scholars like Dr Neema Parvini the YouTube self-styled Academic Agent now work), Dr Cofnas rejected MacDonald’s Life History Theory informed framework of Jewish group dominance via influencing cultural evolution strategies. Instead, he advanced a competing, new theory called the Default Hypothesis (Dr Cofnas is Jewish) in which Jewish intellectuals self-select for political and social movements that are not overtly antisemitic. Dr Cofnas is perhaps best described as a Jewish philosopher who gravitated to a more declaratory / espoused hereditarian worldview. The irony is that Dr Cofnas rejects a range of other “race realist” views (such as Nazi, neo-Nazi, and antisemitic). His critics who mobilised to get him fired either don’t understand this, or don’t want to describe in any detail what his values and worldview really are. Kevin MacDonald now runs the antisemitic and white identitarian Occidental Observer. The white identitarian, fascist, and Nazi German oriented Antelope Hill Publishers issued a third edition of MacDonald’s book A Culture of Critique in September 2025.
When you are deplatformed, take Fleetwood Mac’s advice: just go your own way.
D. Ghent University’s Suspension, the Formal Investigation, and the Damage Done.
When Professor Jason Arday died on 14th August 2026, this tragic outcome sent shockwaves around the “small world” network (Duncan Watts & Steven Strogatz) of Western academia. Suicidal ideation is very harrowing to endure and the pathway into making a suicide attempt leaves its psychological scars, whether successful or not. People are understandably deeply upset and angry. The softly spoken and clearly introverted Dr Cofnas did not anticipate this cascade of events—which occurred in part due to a United Kingdom Fleet Street media pile-on called a coordinated flak campaign. On August 20th 2026, Ghent University suspended Dr Cofnas from his role and notified him that he faced a formal investigation (disciplinary proceedings). Text of this notification has leaked online and is not yet independently authenticated. The formal investigation process will be compartmentalised, siloed, and highly confidential: a black box.
In closing, here are some specific comments on this and what is likely to happen.
First, when a university employer notifies you of a formal investigation this is often a significant psychological shock. One reason for this is that internal teams who are tasked to implement this process may attempt to use strategic surprise in a coercive and compellance-based manner. This is a prosecutorial strategy: the team is tasked to gather evidence (which often may also involve the hiring of external legal firms who conduct interviews that are really about attempted legal discovery) from the Respondent against a series of allegations, specific claims, violations of specific policies and procedures, and either misconduct or serious misconduct against the university and its beliefs, culture, norms, traditions, values, and worldview. To be accused of this as a Respondent is to face an existential crisis akin to a halogencore genre film. When Professor Arday died, Dr Cofnas would have known he would be scapegoated. Notification of a formal investigation is not simply an email, a phone call or a meeting. As Dr Cofnas has subsequently related, your university work email and access to IT systems is cut off, you are banned from coming physically onto campus, you are not able to communicate with anyone apart from a designated person on the formal investigation team, and you may never hear from some people ever again.
Second, it is very important to understand the specific claims made against you as the Respondent. There is a “reverse onus of proof” here. The leaked notification text specifically notes a Winston Marshall Show podcast of 9th August 2026 with Dr Cofnas. The leaked text also mentions a David Starkey Talks podcast of 10th August 2026, and a Rob Montz podcast of 14th August 2026. Dr Cofnas explains in his Winston Marshall Show interview that his Substack post of 6th February 2024 (as well as a 3rd January 2024 post on Substack called Why We Need to Talk About The Right’s Stupidity Problems, which Dr Cofnas claims that no-one at the University of Cambridge responded to). The leaked notification text makes no reference to what Dr Cofnas explains about his Substack posts and his research program, but does focus specifically on the “hereditarian revolution” post of 6th February 2024 (the Winston Marshall Show interview with Dr Cofnas was aired on 9th August 2026 before Professor Arday’s tragic death on 14th August 2026).
The leaked notification text cites the Ghent University employment contract and contends that Dr Cofnas has both violated this, and again cites the already well known February 2024 post on the “hereditarian revolution” as being “entirely outside the scope of your official research mandate.” But the Substack post from 6th February 2024 was also published prior to his Ghent University employment in 2026. Ghent University refers specifically to his “research mandate as a study of ‘the future of liberalism’, specifically focusing on political doctrine emphasizing individual freedom and equality’ (note the United States spelling for a Belgium originated notification text).
We don’t have Dr Cofnas’ research proposal or his Postdoc contract; we do have via his CV (May 2026) and other publicly available sources, his published academic research outputs and other outputs (which could fit into a translational research or a non-traditional research outputs based institutional classification for research). I have noted above that Dr Cofnas has shifted much of his attention to “extracurricular activities” which have been problematic. This can also be read and situated - notably in his attempts in 2018-13 to counter Kevin MacDonald (again prior to his Ghent University period of employment) - as a targeted intervention in hereditarian discourse and the “race realist” subculture. A futures studies or strategic foresight practitioner (I have an MSc) would point out that ‘future of . . .’ anything is a single-point forecast; I would add that it assumes ideologically that despite current or near-term problems, the prevailing order (classical liberalism and neoliberal capitalism) will continue. Yet, hereditarian “race realism” is one of several illiberal worldviews that is feared to challenge and to possibly eclipse the continuity and security of the liberal global order. So, this could be handled in a project management based change request - except that few people want to actually include an ‘emic’ based hereditarian “race realist” informed worldview - even if it is by a Jewish scholar who very clearly rejects most of the people that the notification letter assumes he agrees with (again, the 2024 Substack article on the “hereditarian revolution” is summed up as just focusing on “racial barriers and segregation” when it is in fact more like elite and counter-elite based sociological and power circulation).
The leaked notification then cites article 4 of Ghent University’s Work Regulation and article 3 clause 1 of the Disciplinary Regulations of Staff. The focus here is that Dr Cofnas is using his Ghent University role and institutional affiliation to advance “race realism” (the 2024 Substack article would have been known when he was hired in 2026), and that this is unrelated to his Postdoc project. It then invokes article 1.3 of the Ghent University Code of Ethics to claim that a Conflict of Interest exists (at a severe level) and furthermore, that article 1.5 in the same Code of Ethics “prohibits spreading ideas of racial superiority or inciting racial segregation.” These are “cumulative breaches” that are claimed to have involved “deliberate public misrepresentation” to “promote ideologies that conflict with its core values” and that are a “breach of your ethical duties” (here, “hereditarian revolution” is mis-typed as “hereditarian evolution” in a sentence that mentions “race realism” - suggesting that this leaked notification was written quickly and not fact-checked or edited, and that aspects of it might be informed via non-public discussions with others).
Several rhetorical strategies are used here to claim that Dr Cofnas has made “a disciplinary offence committed within the university context.” Non-academic (i.e. public communication not published in a blind peer reviewed academic journal system) material that has been publicly available for two years, that was subject to an 18-month formal investigation at the University of Cambridge and a likely NDA outcome (in which Dr Cofnas was terminated from a different, concurrent role to facilitate his role exit when he was found not to have broken any laws), and that would have been known to Ghent University when they hired him in 2026 is described as “deliberate public misrepresentation”. In the Winston Marshall Show above, Dr Cofnas further clarifies his Substack blog and its posts in terms of public communication of his research program interests, which are listed on his public CV. So, there are three issues here that are embedded in the notification text. Dr Cofnas has engaged in public discussion that is not what some Ghent University staff and students want (and this is outlined at length in terms of the protests made against Dr Cofnas - a form of mobilisational action taken against him).
Rather - and these are legitimate issues - there is scope debate around his Postdoc project on ‘the future of liberalism’, disagreement about what the “core ideologies” of a university are (even if an ideology exists and has an intellectual history, it may be outside the allowable Overton Window or can only be dealt with in specific ways of bounded rationality), and Dr Cofnas wrote his Substack post in 2024 (and made subsequent public communications) on hereditarian “race realist” values and worldview that both got him into trouble, and that give Ghent University administrators the leverage points to pre-frame him. As the philosopher Steven Lukes has observed, after causality and ideology, the third dimension of power is the ability to engage in agenda-setting - or to be the dominant group in a conflict-oriented power based situation who can enforce as a selection pressure its specific moral norms. Thus, the Ghent University administrators have potentially given us a real-life case study that deals with some of the very issues in his PhD dissertation.
In bringing a prosecutorial case, common stratagems used include to scope control of the specific issues raised. To achieve this, primary source documents are usually selectively quoted, and may even be misrepresented (or explained in very simplistic ways to reinforce black and white moral dynamics). The February 2024 post on Substack would already have been known to Ghent University when it made its Postdoc employment offer in 2026 to Dr Cofnas. The catalyst is clearly Dr Arday’s death and the public outcry about it - so this is crisis and reputation management from a cost-benefit perspective. The strategic pretext from a prosecutorial stance is also that in publicly arguing “that racial or ethnic groups differ in intellectual ability for inherited or biological reasons” (what the hereditarian race realist stance is, ontologically and epistemologically) Dr Cofnas may have also violated sections 20 and 21 of Belgian antidiscrimination law (despite this being well known prior to Ghent University hiring him - although past controversies occurred in a United Kingdom rather than a Belgium domiciled legislative context). Significantly, the Ghent University leaked notification describes Dr Cofnas as having engaged in “the systematic personal and professional destruction of colleagues” (i.e. because Dr Arday has died) and in having described him as a “mentally disabled” and “worthless scholar” (I disagree with both descriptions of Dr Arday), Dr Cofnas is claimed to have likely breached Chapter 5 of the Belgian Criminal Code in articles 443 et seq.
These are very serious to invoke. Ghent University further stacks the leaked notification in noting the existence of a Students Against Cofnas group, and a volume of staff and student complaints. (Some will be true, and some will be contagion / rumour based as in a moral panic or a purity crusade.) Dr Cofnas is now described as engaging in the “targeted campaign of professional elimination” (did Dr Cofnas either want or expect Dr Arday to die?), and a causal link is then made to the 2024 Substack article on the “hereditarian revolution” and of the belief that Dr Cofnas is engaging in the “purge” of “ideological enemies” that has resulted in “a climate of severe psychosocial distress.”
This is the kind of description used for a militant ideological extremist, guerrilla, or terrorist - I doubt in having MA and PhD qualifications in counter-terrorism / political science (and 17 years of experience in university Faculty and central Research Offices, including working with over 400 academics on their career trajectories and research programs) that this criminal standard could be met, unless you can show that Dr Cofnas intended to kill Dr Arday (very doubtful). This is cherry-picking, escalation, and compellance based strategic bargaining that is designed to be emotionally confronting to Dr Cofnas (likely, in the hope that he will resign his role, as Dr Arday did at the University of Cambridge when he was faced with his own formal investigation). The outcome variable of “severe psychosocial distress” is both relevant and is (along with staff and student responses) what is crafted prosecution-wise to ensure that the formal investigation reaches a pre-determined outcome. You only bring cases of this magnitude that you can plausibly expect to win. Dr Arday’s death, the staff and student adverse reactions (very understandable as grief and shock), the global awareness of this matter (including possibly lobbying and persuasion from special interest groups or networks), and that this is an employer-driven process means that Dr Cofnas is very unlikely to get an objective and procedurally fair result. Dr Arday’s death will now forever taint (and potentially also endanger) Dr Cofnas (who may face potential retaliation).
Ghent University has a TrustPunt counselling service that frames its operational delivery in terms of countering the unlawful discrimination of protected characteristics as countering “transgressive behavior.” Dr Cofnas is notified that he is under counselling study that will assess the psychosocial risks of his continued employment, and potential adverse impacts on staff and students. Next, Dr Cofnas is notified that his public communication is a “reputational risk” including the withdrawal of a guest lecturer and dangers to “its national and international academic relations.” Dr Cofnas is placed under “preventative suspension” of article 57(2) of the Disciplinary Regulations for Staff, “without hearing you prior to this decision” (i.e. the preventative suspension is the administrative invocation of a policy instrument in order to deal with crisis and reputation management). The scope of this preventative ban (which includes all of the normal restrictions already noted above, and that includes academic conferences) is to last for seven working days until 28th August 2026. Dr Cofnas is able to “give an oral or written response”, and to be supported “by a solicitor, a trade union representative, or an advisor of your choice” as well as “to inspect the file and to obtain an electronic copy of it.” This is all standard procedure for a formal investigation - and this is only the initial notification.
Third, the prosecutorial strategy here is to isolate Dr Cofnas as the Respondent. He is cut-off from university facilities and is unable to communicate with anyone. Formal investigations are subject to confidentiality - and can thus in high-profile cases like this be at risk of being politicised. Goalposts can be shifted: further claims can be added to the list. Ghent University policies and procedures - and specific sub-systems in it can be invoked - such as staff and student concerns (which may also be organised as mobilisation to intimidate specific Respondents). External laws and the threat of criminal prosecution may be invoked psychologically - without ever referring this matter to police or to legal / judicial authorities for them to independently prosecute (which is what should really happen if you genuinely believe that Dr Cofnas had the motive and intent to kill Dr Arday or to impose psychosocial distress - and that Dr Arday’s alleged unethical serial plagiarism and research / publications misconduct then provided Dr Cofnas with the opportunity and the means via his Substack post of 21st July 2026 to kill Dr Arday via a social media campaign.
Ghent University as noted above uses specific argumentation to describe Dr Cofnas as engaging in a “targeted campaign of professional elimination” of Dr Arday. In other words, assassination of a rival. Next, Ghent University alleges that Dr Cofnas’ “hereditarian revolution” (published in 2024 and subject to an 18-month formal investigation at the University of Cambridge - and thus plausibly well known to Ghent University when it hired Dr Cofnas in 2026) is described as a militant campaign of targeting and purging staff (has Dr Cofnas actually done this with anyone at Ghent University or elsewhere?), who cannot be reasoned or negotiated with due to his “race realist” ideological indoctrination, and in causing “severe psychosocial risk” to staff and students (logged via the TrustPoint university counselling service - it is also normal for such services to have their highly confidential Information Technology systems kept completely separate and inaccessible from the rest of the university), and “reputational risk” of an international nature, means that he is a clear and present danger. In an external judicial and legal system these claims would have to be more than asserted: they would have to be documented and verified. But this is a highly confidential and employer-controlled formal investigation process, so the normal rules of the separation of prosecutor (the formal investigation team) and judge (whoever makes the final decision in Ghent University’s senior management) are not separated. Ghent University thus has multiple Conflicts of Interest - as all such politicised cases do. The confidential nature of these formal investigations enables very easy institutional cover-up and the silencing via a climate of fear of other university sub-systems (and the usual non-involvement of a truly independent university sub-system like General Legal Counsel or Audit & Risk: who investigates the formal investigation team if any problems or methodological challenges arise?).
There is very clear language for what Ghent University is describing Dr Cofnas as being and doing - due to Professor Arday’s tragic death. It is something that I am MA and PhD qualified in (and doing another Master degree in), as well as having been mentored by United States political scientists, and having edited and written for the former Disinformation website in New York City, from 1998 to 2008 (for nine years). It is called psychological operations or psychological warfare. It is also the alleged magical casting by Dr Cofnas of a curse or death spell on Dr Arday, via his Substack article of 21st July 2026. Dr Cofnas is a “hereditarian race realist” (whatever that ideology actually is - you won’t know if you don’t read historical primary sources), who has breached his Postdoc research program (the ‘future of liberal’ order cannot include advocating for an illiberal worldview), people are stressed (understandably), and the institution is in crisis (very well possibly). This can be both framed and interpreted in several ways, including what the philosophers Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben would call invoking a “state of exception.”
Ghent University’s invocation of Belgian anti-discrimination law is understandable, however its invocation of Belgian criminal law claiming that Dr Cofnas intended to kill Dr Arday via euphemistic language (a “targeted campaign of professional elimination” and the “purge of ideological enemies”) is probably overreach. The “hereditarian revolution” of Dr Cofnas (which disavows Nazis, neo-Nazis, antisemitic white supremacists, and most of the Alt-Right or Dissident Right, and therefore probably much of its Reactionary and Traditionalist wings as well) is closer to the “revolution” of Thomas Kuhn (trying to revive an old paradigm with new philosophical arguments and causal logics) than of the Bolshevisks in 1917 Russia. For “severe psychosocial risk” (plausible - but forget post-traumatic growth and resilience or being antifragile) or “reputational risk” (definitely - and like much of this for all concerned, possibly also having “owned goal” dimensions), you can tick off Michel Foucault, Ulrich Beck, Charles Perrow, and Axel Honneth, but not Diane Vaughan (who might suggest “organisational deviance”) or Jennifer J. Freyd (who defined DARVO: deny, attack, and reverse victim & offender). You (or I) may find Dr Cofnas and his worldview to be repellant (however, my MA and PhD training lies in how to try and understand people who have different beliefs, norms, values and worldviews to you). But did he actually ever advocate the killing, murder or death of anyone?
Here’s where the ending minutes of Rob Montz’s podcast interview on 15th August 2025 becomes important. At 26:53 minutes, Dr Cofnas states: “This is what happens if you don’t give Dr Cofnas a job.” He clarifies in cross-talk with Montz that he already has a conferred PhD. At 27:07 minutes, Dr Cofnas then states: “I have the job currently [at Ghent University]. I’m still waiting for the revolution to happen. And, I’ll get another job. After the revolution, I’ll be the head of, you know, the Department of Eugenics and Race Science at Harvard.” The final line occurs from 27:17 minutes to 27:25 minutes. It has provoked widespread outrage. Dr Cofnas has claimed that it was a joke. Clearly, the “hereditarian revolution” that Dr Cofnas espouses is about restoring what he believes to be a long discredited and suppressed research area that in the late 19th and the early 20th century was the prior, prevailing orthodoxy. It is not about eliminating or purging academics who would work in different research departments or universities. Nor is it a Charles Manson-like call for a Helter Skelter-style race-war. Dr Cofnas wants what every Postdoc secretly dreams about: a tenured job and the expansion of his research program into a well resourced university department. It’s a case of relative deprivation (Ted Robert Gurr) and not black propaganda facilitated revolutionary uprisings (Paul M. Linebarger) or coup d’etats (Edward N. Luttwak). Any political scientist who is familiar with this literature, and most defence / military personnel would have very different estimative threat assessments (and ways of strategically intervening) than the crisis escalation strategy that Ghent University has very predictably implemented (Thomas Schelling, Herman Kahn, S.M. Amadae, Robert Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow, Scott N. Sagan, and Vipin Narang). Maybe watch the Kathryn Bigelow film on Netflix, A House of Dynamite?
Already, there are international responses to both Ghent University and to Dr Cofnas. In such escalation dynamics, the allowable “zone of possible agreement” begins to disintegrate. The situation destabilises. People become more entrenched in what they believe is position-based bargaining that relies on agenda-setting power, rhetoric, and Machiavellian power games of interpretation. Remember that this is an employer-driven process that is compartmentalised, siloed, and highly confidential - and also very difficult for all parties now concerned to walk back from. A significant problem here procedurally in such cases is Ghent University’s decision to use strategic surprise with Dr Cofnas in issuing a notification letter and a preventative suspension (which has a “reverse onus of proof” that “risk transfers” this like a put option to Dr Cofnas, and which previously, the University of Cambridge did earlier this month to Dr Arday, prompting his resignation on 5th August 2026. It’s a paired case study of two formal investigation processes—at the University of Cambridge and Ghent University (and, actually, a trio case study if you add Dr Cofnas’ prior suspension from the University of Cambridge which intensified his personal frustrations about DEI policies and thus his relative deprivation comparatively when compared to Dr Arday—who at the time of his death, had far less ScimagoJr Q1 ranked articles for example than Dr Cofnas already did at a Postdoc level).
Some people will read this as me defending Dr Cofnas over Dr Arday - and some people have attempted to publicly attack me as such. Others - also very understandably - don’t want to promote Dr Cofnas or his “hereditarian race realist” approach. I can appreciate that. The debate between Dr Cofnas and Dr Arday never even reached the level of Oprah, Sally Jesse Raphael or Jerry Springer - those talk shows actually had far more direct and real debate than what occurs in a university today (note here that I am autistic / neurodiverse, have a publicly disclosed trauma and mental health history, and am a suicide attempt survivor - so I am more firmly in the “lived experience” camp than the far more surface level “trauma-informed care” camp).
If you genuinely believe that the contemporary university is in danger from “hereditarian race realists” like Dr Cofnas then you will have far more credibility if you can explain their worldview factually and engage with them—and not just sum them up as engaging in hatred or a “targeted campaign of professional elimination.” You also have to treat primary sources in terms of what they actually say, and not just cherry-pick arguments that appeal to the prejudices, stereotypes, and interpretations of your target audience. That is called (sociological) propaganda—not what Ghent University claims Dr Cofnas has engaged in against Dr Arday (the “propaganda of the deed” pioneered in the late 19th century by Russian terrorists). Dr Cofnas has likewise made some significant mistakes that could be described as “unforced errors” (due to the selection pressures of far more dominant groups who are able to enforce their preferences for more utilitarian influenced moral norms which must be complied with).
Ghent University’s formal investigation is under way. In my view - shared by Dr Cofnas - he will likely be terminated. That’s the clearly wished-for-outcome - the decision has likely already been made - and so the formal investigation is simply to run through the process, using a stacked deck of allegations and offences. Bill White the United States Ambassador to Belgium has warned Ghent University that it is treating Dr Cofnas as a scapegoat (Freyd’s DARVO framework is very relevant here in how institutional cover-ups occur in politicised formal investigations), and that US agreements with it are now under review. Dr Cofnas told the Wall Street Journal on Friday, 21st August 2026, that he “was an easy scapegoat.” He now faces a double-bind (Gregory Bateson and the Palo Alto Group’s description of multi-level communication that traps the target coercively in an unescapable situation) that Radiohead described in Burn The Witch. It’s all a very stupid waste - that if you are a Postdoc or if you ever want to become one, you can potentially learn from.