Post by @jonasty@awful.systems

2026-09-01 10:06 UTC

Here in Belgium some investigative journalists have been reporting on Cofnas since his appointment in March. They recently translated one of their pieces to English and made it available for non-subscribers: apache.be/…/self-declared-race-realist-nathan-cof… The UGent philosophy department is also not without controversy. Maarten Boudry, a former employee there, is one of the main people in this country pushing ‘climate realism’, ‘concerns about Islam’ and ‘cultural marxism was a Nazi conspiracy theory but right now we itnis actually happening in our institutions’. He’s very buddy buddy with Steven Pinker and likely trying to get more international reach. Apart from that, plagiarism issues never make news headlines because they happen very often at universities. The only cases I’m aware of are Arday and Claudine Gay. Probably because they have a political skin color.

Replies (2)

@Soyweiser@awful.systems 2026-09-01 10:24

Without having read that specific article From what I heard Cofnas research is quite bad (it has cases of him seemingly not having read the sources he cites as those say the opposite of what he claims they do, and that is above the normal badness of race science shit. Some of his tweets (I think it was tweets, could also have been facebook posts or something) certainly read as ‘intended for internal racist fights’ and not intended for academics). And the guy who appointed him is also being looked at with suspicion. So hope they also take a good look at the guy who hired him (without using the normal process for it apparently).

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@CinnasVerses@awful.systems 2026-09-01 15:42

Also a German Minister of Defense. My impression is that Arday was a fabulist, but so are many academics at wealthy research institutions, and the global campaign against him was clearly motivated by racism. Not sure about the plagiarism because I am not on Cambridge’s academic integrity committee.

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