Ghent University Professors Challenged Nathan Cofnas's Credentials Months Before His Suspension
Professors in Ghent University's philosophy department formally questioned Nathan Cofnas's qualifications and hiring months before the university suspended him, according to a report published August 27 by The Guardian.
Cofnas was appointed to a postdoctoral research position — a research role held after completing a PhD — studying "the future of liberalism" at the Belgian university in March 2026. Within weeks, Ghent's philosophy department produced a 19-page internal statement arguing it was "improbable" that Cofnas had been the strongest of 14 candidates. A formal departmental position, approved by the department council on May 27, stated that Cofnas possessed "only very limited expertise" in the project's core subjects: political philosophy, liberalism, and demography. The department found that the job posting's requirement of a "strong research interest in liberalism" was not supported by his publication record or CV The Guardian.
The departmental critique went further. Its official statement said Cofnas had never conducted research on intelligence and that views he shared in blogposts were not grounded in his own scientific research or sound methodology. A "large majority" of department staff reportedly suspected his appointment had been "an ideological choice ... decided in advance," pointing to a lack of transparency in the hiring process. The department described his profile as aligned with a "far-right agenda" The Guardian.
The internal opposition was substantial. An email sent in March to Ghent's university leaders and governors, signed by 48 department staff, 73 students, and 367 academics from Ghent and other institutions, expressed "astonishment and indignation" at the appointment. On May 28, the department sent its statement directly to the rector, reinforcing its assessment The Guardian.
Ghent University subsequently suspended Cofnas pending a "preliminary investigation," without specifying whether the suspension pertained to allegations surrounding his appointment. In a joint statement, rector Petra De Sutter and vice-rector Herwig Reynaert affirmed that academic freedom, while important, is "not unlimited" and may be restricted to protect the rights of others. They also stated the university "opposes discrimination, hatred and racism" and was taking Cofnas's recent public statements on the matter "very seriously" The Guardian. A university spokesperson declined to comment on specific details of the disciplinary case or its underlying arguments. Cofnas himself, in posts on X, said he was under investigation for discriminating against Jason Arday and predicted he would "almost certainly" be fired The Guardian.
The suspension intersects with the trajectory of Cofnas's plagiarism allegations against Jason Arday, the University of Cambridge sociology professor who became the institution's youngest black professor in 2023 at age 41. Plagiarism — presenting someone else's work or ideas as your own without proper attribution — was what Cofnas accused Arday of. Cofnas claimed he had run Arday's PhD thesis through plagiarism detection software and found that "many passages are lifted with minimal editing" The Guardian. Arday denied the allegations but acknowledged errors in his own work Times Higher Education. The accusations were never proven through a formal investigation.
The scrutiny proved devastating. Arday resigned from Cambridge on August 5, 2026. He was found dead in Battersea, south London, on August 14 The Guardian. Cambridge chancellor Chris Smith described the surrounding media coverage as a "racist feeding frenzy" The Guardian. More than 30,000 people attended a vigil for Arday in Trafalgar Square The Guardian.
The case has drawn international diplomatic attention. U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Bill White condemned Ghent's decision to suspend Cofnas over the plagiarism accusations The Hill. Cofnas was previously dismissed from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 2024 The Guardian. Liverpool John Moores University also investigated the plagiarism allegations against Arday Times Higher Education.
The broader context here involves a collision of several forces that European universities have been navigating with increasing difficulty: the boundary between academic freedom and institutional responsibility for discriminatory harm; the integrity of hiring processes when ideological affinity is suspected to override scholarly merit; and the human consequences of unproven allegations amplified through media and social platforms. Ghent's philosophy department mounted its challenge on procedural and qualitative grounds, arguing from Cofnas's publication record and research history that he lacked the qualifications the position required. The university's leadership, in turn, framed its suspension decision around the limits of academic freedom when the rights of others are at stake. These are not merely Belgian administrative questions. The intervention by a sitting U.S. ambassador into a European university's internal disciplinary process elevates the case into the diplomatic domain, and raises questions about the appropriate boundaries of governmental pressure on academic institutions.
The unproven nature of Cofnas's plagiarism allegations against Arday is central to the moral and institutional weight of the case. Arday acknowledged errors in his work but denied plagiarism. No formal investigation concluded that plagiarism occurred. Yet the allegations, amplified through media coverage that one senior Cambridge figure characterized in racial terms, preceded the resignation and death of a scholar whose appointment had itself been a landmark. The Ghent faculty's internal documents, now public, suggest that concerns about Cofnas's credentials and motivations were formally articulated well before the events of August, adding a layer of institutional foreknowledge to the timeline.
