Ghent University Suspends Researcher Who Accused Late Cambridge Professor of Plagiarism

Ghent University has suspended Nathan Cofnas, a postdoctoral researcher who publicly accused the late Cambridge professor Jason Arday of plagiarism, while it conducts a preliminary disciplinary investigation into alleged discrimination.

Cofnas, a postdoctoral researcher in Ghent's department of philosophy and moral sciences, announced on X on Thursday that he was under investigation for discriminating against Arday and had been suspended. A Ghent University spokesperson confirmed the same day that the university had formally notified the staff member of the launch of a preliminary disciplinary investigation and suspended him as a precautionary measure pending that investigation The Guardian. Reuters separately reported the suspension on August 20 Reuters.

The decision follows a joint statement issued on Wednesday by Ghent's rector Petra De Sutter and vice-rector Herwig Reynaert, in which they said the university takes the recent public statements made by a postdoctoral researcher regarding the matter very seriously and decided to take appropriate action. The suspension is precautionary, meaning it is not itself a finding of misconduct but a step taken while the preliminary investigation proceeds.

Cofnas's accusations against Arday date back to claims he made about running Arday's PhD thesis through plagiarism detection software. In claims reported by The Guardian on August 1, 2026, Cofnas said the software found that "many passages are lifted with minimal editing" The Guardian. Those allegations were never proven in any formal investigation. Arday resigned from his role at the University of Cambridge after Cofnas made the accusations public.

Arday, who became Cambridge's youngest black professor in 2023, was found dead in Battersea, south London, on Friday. More than 30,000 people attended a vigil for him in Trafalgar Square, central London. Cofnas was sacked from his role at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 2024.

Cofnas has also claimed that he advocates for "race realism," a term associated with views asserting biological differences between racial groups The Independent. This self-identification is relevant to Ghent's framing of the disciplinary investigation as one concerned with discrimination, not with the substance of the plagiarism allegations themselves.

The broader context here is one of institutional tension between two distinct norms: the protection of academic whistleblowing on one hand, and the enforcement of anti-discrimination obligations on the other. Whistleblowing in academia refers to the practice of researchers raising concerns about misconduct by colleagues, which universities are generally expected to protect from retaliation. Ghent University's statement does not indicate that the plagiarism claims themselves are under investigation. Rather, the disciplinary process appears to focus on whether Cofnas's public statements about Arday constituted discriminatory conduct. For European universities operating under EU anti-discrimination frameworks, the duty to investigate such conduct can sit uncomfortably alongside expectations that academics should be free to raise research-integrity concerns without retaliation.

The fact that Arday's death followed his resignation from Cambridge, and that the plagiarism allegations against him were never adjudicated through a formal process, adds a further dimension. Institutions that might have been expected to conduct or oversee a plagiarism investigation did not reach a determination before Arday's death. That leaves the underlying claims unresolved, while the institutional response has shifted to the conduct of the accuser rather than the substance of the accusation.

Cofnas's prior dismissal from Emmanuel College in 2024 and his current suspension from Ghent mean that two institutions have now taken employment action against him, though for different reasons and at different stages. The Ghent investigation is preliminary; no finding has been made, and the precautionary suspension does not presuppose its outcome.

Several questions remain open. Ghent's preliminary investigation will need to define what specific statements are under scrutiny and what standard of discriminatory conduct applies. The university has not publicly set a timeline for the investigation's conclusion. Meanwhile, the plagiarism allegations against Arday remain unexamined by any formal body, and with his death, the possibility of a posthumous institutional process is uncertain.