Nathan Cofnas, the self-acclaimed “race realist” U.S. academic who accused the late Cambridge professor Jason Arday of plagiarism, has been suspended by Ghent University in Belgium.
Mr Cofnas disclosed his suspension on X Thursday adding that Ghent University has also launched an investigation to determine if he discriminated against Mr Arday when he was alive.
“I was just suspended by Ghent University,” Mr Cofnas wrote in the post. “They will almost certainly fire me.”
Mr Cofnas’s relentless plagiarism accusations against the youngest Black professor triggered a worldwide controversy and scrutiny of Mr Arday’s 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.
Mr Cofnas had said he examined Mr Arday’s works with plagiarism software and discovered multiple plagiarised citations, stating that “many passages are lifted with minimal editing, sometimes retaining copy-editing mistakes from the original source”. Mr Arday denied the allegations.
Cambridge sacked Mr Cofnas from Emmanuel College over backlash stemming from his views that Blacks would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment” under true meritocracy.
