{"id":201174,"date":"2026-08-23T08:20:47","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T16:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=201174"},"modified":"2026-08-23T09:54:05","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T17:54:05","slug":"the-nathan-cofnas-suspension-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=201174","title":{"rendered":"The Nathan Cofnas Suspension Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Jerry Coyne’s blog Why Evolution is True<\/a>:<\/p>\n

UNIVERSITEITSDIENSTEN \u2013 BESTUUR,
\nJURIDISCHE ZAKEN EN COMPLIANCE
\nJURIDISCHE ZAKEN<\/p>\n

REGISTERED MAIL
\nNathan COFNAS<\/p>\n

Katia Berlingieri
\nHead of Legal Affairs<\/p>\n

E juridischezaken@UGent.be
\nT +32 9 264 30 43<\/p>\n

Campus Ufo – Rectoraat
\nSint-Pietersnieuwstraat 25
\n9000 Gent
\nBelgi\u00eb<\/p>\n

www.ugent.be<\/p>\n

DATE
\n20 August 2026<\/p>\n

PAGE
\n1\/7<\/p>\n

OUR REFERENCE
\nTUCHT PERS 2026\/0010\/EN\/LJ \u2013 Nathan Cofnas<\/p>\n

Concerning: Initiation of the disciplinary procedure and decision regarding preventive suspension in the interest of the service (Disciplinary Regulations for Staff)<\/p>\n

Dear Nathan COFNAS,<\/p>\n

Over the past months, I have received several complaints, reports, and concerning signals from across the wider university community regarding your conduct and public actions. In particular, over the past week, additional concerns have been raised in relation to various interviews published in which you participated and the statements you made during those interviews.<\/p>\n

In this regard I have decided to initiate a preliminary investigation as provided for in article 28 of the regulations with respect to disciplinary proceedings, the imposing of disciplinary measures, the preventive suspension in the interest of the service, and the taking of measures to ensure orderly conduct for staff members of Ghent University (hereinafter: \u201cDisciplinary Regulations for Staff\u201d). You can find the Disciplinary Regulations for Staff in the Codex of Ghent University via the following link: REG000237EN.<\/p>\n

Article 3 of the Disciplinary Regulations for Staff stipulates that any staff member may be subject to a disciplinary procedure in the event of:<\/p>\n

(i) Offences that are committed in the university context. These concern either a serious breach of official\/ professional duties (breach of a legal or a deontological duty as an officer), or an offence committed in the course of the performance of their duties\/ the activities of Ghent University, such as (but not limited to), a breach of the internal regulations included in the Codex of Ghent University.<\/p>\n

(ii) Offences committed in the context of private life, in so far as they are, on the one hand, criminally punishable and, on the other hand, have a negative impact on the functioning of the staff member or on the functioning of the service or have a serious negative impact on the well-being of or cooperation with other staff members or students.<\/p>\n

(i) Offences committed within the university context<\/p>\n

During a recent podcast interview with Winston Marshall published on 9 August 2026, you explicitly stated that you are currently continuing your work on “race realism” and the “hereditarian revolution” at Ghent University. These public claims, and the activities you describe, are fundamentally inconsistent with the contractual scope of your employment and constitute a manifest violation of your professional obligations towards this University.<\/p>\n

Your employment contract (article 1) and the vacancy for which you were recruited (ref. LW01) define your research mandate as a study of “the future of liberalism”, specifically focusing on liberalism as a political doctrine emphasizing individual freedom and equality. The projects you publicly and repeatedly associate with your affiliation at Ghent University, most notably your ‘Guide for the Hereditarian Revolution’ which advocates for racial barriers and segregation, fall entirely outside the scope of your official research mandate.<\/p>\n

Pursuant to article 4 of the Ghent University Work Regulations (Arbeidsreglement), employees are required to perform the work for which they were recruited and to execute their function in a loyal, careful, and upright manner. By publicly claiming to use your position and affiliation at Ghent University to advance research that is unrelated to your appointment, you are in breach of your professional duties and the loyalty required, as defined in article 3 \u00a71 of the Disciplinary Regulations for Staff.<\/p>\n

Moreover, pursuant to article 1.3 of the Ghent University Code of Ethics, employees must ensure that any accumulation of activities does not entail a (perceived) conflict of interest or conflict with other standards established in the Code. Even if your work on ‘race realism’ were to be characterized as a private activity, its public association with your UGent affiliation creates a severe perceived conflict of interest and violates article 1.5 of the Code, which prohibits spreading ideas of racial superiority or inciting racial segregation.<\/p>\n

The gravity of these cumulative breaches, involving deliberate public misrepresentation and the misuse of the University’s reputation to promote ideologies that conflict with its core values, as well as your decision to continue your research into ‘hereditary evolution’ and ‘racial realism’ at Ghent University, contrary to the terms of your employment, concern a breach of your ethical duties as a member of staff at our University and therefore qualify as a disciplinary offence committed within the university context.<\/p>\n

(ii) Offences committed in the context of your private life<\/p>\n

In a series of recent public interviews you made, including interviews with Winston Marshall (8 August 2026), David Starkey (9 August 2026) and Rob Montz (14 August 2026), I have established that you have made various statements in which you assert (among other statements) that racial or ethnic groups differ in intellectual ability for inherited or biological reasons.<\/p>\n

Certain statements made during those interviews may be interpreted as advancing ideas concerning the inherent superiority or inferiority of racial or ethnic groups. However, neither freedom of expression nor academic freedom is unlimited. Both may be restricted by law where necessary to protect the rights of others and to prevent discrimination and racism. Belgian anti-discrimination legislation provides for such restrictions. Questions therefore arise as to the compatibility of your public statements with the objectives and provisions of Belgian anti-discrimination legislation, more specifically articles 20 and 21.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, in several public interviews, you repeatedly referred to the late professor Jason Arday as being “mentally disabled” and made various other disparaging remarks concerning him, including, among others, describing him as a “worthless scholar”. In addition to the disparaging nature of these remarks, the University is deeply concerned by the way you have framed your actions.<\/p>\n

By framing your interventions as a ‘crusade’ aimed at the systematic personal and professional destruction of colleagues, you have demonstrated that your actions extend beyond the permissible bounds of academic debate. Such behaviour strongly suggests an intentional and serious disturbance of the peace, which may fall within the scope of conduct protected against under Chapter V of the Belgian Criminal Code concerning offences against a person’s honour or reputation, including the provisions set out in articles 443 et seq.<\/p>\n

The aforementioned findings have had a notably negative impact on the functioning of the University and on the well-being of, and cooperation with, students and other members of staff. Such statements conflict with the core of the University’s commitment to equality, inclusion and the dignity of all students and staff members and have caused serious distress and concern within the university community, particularly among students and staff members who may reasonably experience such statements as calling into question their equal standing within the academic environment.<\/p>\n

Over an extended period of time since your appointment at Ghent University, significant concerns have been raised by members of the Ghent University community and beyond regarding your presence and activities within the institution. These concerns are not isolated or incidental in nature. They have manifested themselves through sustained and visible reactions from students and staff members alike.<\/p>\n

In particular, students at Ghent University established the group \u201cStudents Against Cofnas\u201d, specifically aimed at opposing your appointment at the University. Furthermore, in May 2026, a petition concerning your appointment was signed by more than 2,000 students. These initiatives illustrate that the concerns surrounding your presence at the University are widespread and have affected a substantial part of the student community.<\/p>\n

Similar concerns have also been expressed within the academic environment in which you are employed. A public statement issued by your department in June 2026, which has been removed from public access, indicated that your presence had become a source of significant unrest throughout the workplace. This demonstrates that the concerns are not limited to students but also extend to colleagues and staff members who are required to work within the same academic environment.<\/p>\n

In addition, the manner in which you publicly presented your role in the allegations concerning the late professor Jason Arday has reinforced concerns among the university\u2019s community that your public interventions seem to develop into targeted campaigns of professional elimination. By framing the ‘exposure’ of a colleague not as scholarly debate but as a victorious act in a self-described ‘hereditarian revolution’, and by publicly calling to ‘purge’ institutions of those you label as ideological enemies, you have created a climate of severe psychosocial distress. As a result thereof, staff seem to perceive your presence as an objective threat to their professional standing and personal dignity.<\/p>\n

The disturbance is further evidenced by objectified reports and files. Firstly, I have been informed that several confidential files concerning you are currently being processed through Trustpunt. Furthermore, IDEWE\u2019s external psychosocial prevention adviser has been requested to carry out a study within the relevant department in order to objectively assess the impact of your employment on the wellbeing of staff and students.<\/p>\n

Without prejudice to the confidentiality of those files and without anticipating their outcome, their existence and apparent recurrence provide a further indication that the concerns relating to your conduct extend beyond public debate and are also manifesting themselves within the University\u2019s internal working environment. This reinforces the conclusion that the present circumstances have generated a level of tension and unrest that risks adversely affecting the proper functioning of the University and the psychosocial wellbeing of members of its community.<\/p>\n

Your continued public invocation of your affiliation with Ghent University while disseminating these views creates a reputational risk. It generates a perception among external audiences that the University endorses or provides a platform for ideologies of racial superiority, which fundamentally undermines our institutional credibility and causes additional distress and uncertainty among staff and students regarding the University\u2019s public standing and credibility. The scale of this impact is evidenced by the fact that in the past week alone, the University has received more than 100 emails expressing deep concern, and that number continues to grow.<\/p>\n

The current unrest has therefore also given rise to concrete consequences for the University’s functioning. The University has been informed that a guest lecturer who was scheduled to teach during the forthcoming academic year has withdrawn from that commitment because of concerns relating to the University’s association with you. Furthermore, I have received information that additional consequences may arise in the context of its national and international academic relations, including discussions concerning a possible boycott of cooperation with Ghent University on account of that association. These developments demonstrate that the present unrest extends beyond internal concerns and is beginning to affect the University’s academic activities and external relationships. These examples are not exhaustive, and further reports continue to be received.<\/p>\n

In addition to the initiation of the disciplinary investigation, as mentioned above, I have therefore also decided to suspend you as a precautionary measure in the interests of the service, in accordance with article 55 of the Disciplinary Regulations for Staff. In view of the nature and seriousness of the facts, as well as the potential risk to Ghent University, I believe that this preventive suspension should be imposed as a matter of urgency in accordance with article 57(2) of the Disciplinary Regulations for Staff, without hearing you prior to this decision.<\/p>\n

The scale and persistence of the concerns expressed by students and staff, combined with the recent escalation following your public statements and media appearances, demonstrate that the current situation poses a risk to the proper functioning of the University and to the psychosocial wellbeing of members of its community.<\/p>\n

Considering the volume and nature of the complaints, reports and expressions of concern received, the University cannot reasonably exclude the risk that your continued physical presence in the workplace would lead to confrontations, further disruption of the University’s activities, or a deterioration of the working and learning environment. Immediate intervention is therefore necessary to preserve institutional stability, safeguard the psychosocial wellbeing of staff and students, and prevent any further escalation of the unrest.<\/p>\n

In these circumstances, waiting until after a prior hearing has taken place would not adequately protect the interests safeguarded by the Disciplinary Regulations for Staff. Deferring intervention would leave the current unrest unaddressed and create a real risk of further disruption to the University’s functioning.<\/p>\n

The preventive suspension takes effect immediately and applies for a period of seven working days (up until and including Friday 28 August 2026).<\/p>\n

As provided for in article 56 of the Disciplinary Regulations for Staff, the preventive suspension means that you may no longer carry out any teaching, research or service activities as a member of staff at Ghent University and\/or on behalf of Ghent University, nor may you participate in conferences or other activities in that capacity, unless you have the express permission of the rector. Furthermore, this preventive suspension entails a ban on contact with Ghent University staff and students, the provisional suspension of your account, and you are denied access to Ghent University’s sites and buildings.<\/p>\n

You may submit your written response regarding the facts forming the basis of the preventive suspension by email to juridischezaken@UGent.be by Friday 28 August 2026 at the latest. If you wish to be heard in person, you must notify us of this by email as soon as possible and no later than the aforementioned deadline. A suitable date will then be arranged.<\/p>\n

If you wish, you may combine your written response to the facts giving rise to both the disciplinary preliminary investigation and the preventive suspension into a single letter. You have the right to be assisted in these proceedings by a solicitor, a trade union representative or an adviser of your choice. You also have the right to inspect the file and to obtain an electronic copy of it.<\/p>\n

Following your written or oral response, I will decide whether to uphold or amend the preventive suspension in the interests of the service, or to lift it, in accordance with article 57(2) of the Disciplinary Regulations for Staff.<\/p>\n

Should you feel the need to talk to someone, or you need psychosocial support, you can contact:<\/p>\n

Trustpunt: an appointment can be made via trustpunt@ugent.be;
\nEmergency response centre: 09\/264 88 88 (24\/7);
\nTele-onthaal: if you need someone to talk to, telephone number 106.<\/p>\n

Yours faithfully,<\/p>\n

Prof. dr. Petra DE SUTTER
\nRector\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My favorite way of analyzing the recent anti-Israel riots on American college campuses was through the framework of business. What business would be OK with this level of disruption? None. <\/p>\n

If we looked at the Ghent-Cofnas affair through the framework of business, we’d ask — what business would be OK with this level of disruption? We might answer none.<\/p>\n

I agree with John J. Mearsheimer’s anthropology<\/a>. To me, it is Torah (meaning truth). We’re profoundly tribal. We desperately need other people. And in exchange for their help and protection, we have to obey their rules or we get tossed out (cherem as excommunication<\/a>, aka what happened to Spinoza<\/a>). In our evolutionary history, expulsion has usually been a death sentence, which is why we find it so upsetting. Our fear and anxiety should prompt us to choose behaviors to minimize this unwanted result and instead pursue that which gives us pride<\/a> (which depends on how much value we add to others). <\/p>\n

Philip N. Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, posted on Bluesky on August 23, 2026<\/a> that he does not know what should get a professor fired. He then supplied a list anyway: “disinformation, false science, hate speech and harassment.” Three of those four terms describe conduct or law. The second one does the sociology.<\/p>\n

Thomas Gieryn published “Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science<\/a>” in the American Sociological Review in December 1983. He moves the demarcation problem out of philosophy and into professional life. He says scientists draw the line in practice, in public, under contest, and they draw it with whichever attributes serve the fight in front of them. He read John Tyndall’s Belfast Address of 1874 and found Tyndall describing science one way against religion, claiming empirical rigor and cultural authority, and another way against mechanics and engineering, claiming disinterest and freedom from utility. The two portraits contradict each other. Both did their job, because each was cut to fit its opponent. Gieryn called the practice boundary-work and later called the product a map. He named the professional payoff: authority, resources, autonomy.<\/p>\n

“False science” makes a claim about location. A charge of error invites reply, and reply costs the accuser a year of work and hands the target a citation. A charge of falseness in the demarcation sense costs one word and relieves everyone inside the fence of any obligation to read. Gieryn’s later book calls this genre expulsion, the removal of a claimant from the map so that his output can be classified without examination. The efficiency is the appeal.<\/p>\n

The flexibility Gieryn described in Tyndall shows up here in the space of four lines. Cohen founded SocArXiv, has argued for years that the discipline needs post-publication scrutiny, and has pressed for correction and retraction of work he judges unsound. His 2025 book from Columbia, Citizen Scholar: Public Engagement for Social Scientists, argues that scholars should reach past the boundaries of their fields and speak to public audiences. In the post, the exposure of plagiarism appears under the heading of harassment, and the ground he singles out for distaste is the researcher working past the terms of his appointment. Gieryn’s account predicts inconsistency of this kind and explains why it costs the practitioner nothing. Self-correction is the field’s proudest attribute when the target is a study the field wants gone. Collegial protection is the attribute at hand when the target is a professor and the finder came from outside. The ideology gets deployed by the episode.<\/p>\n

Ghent’s suspension letter runs the third genre, protection of autonomy, and runs it against the university’s own employee. Jerry Coyne posted the six pages on August 21. One charge holds that Cofnas performed work “inconsistent with the contractual scope of your employment.” That sentence draws the line between legitimate inquiry and illegitimate inquiry with an employment contract. No epistemic criterion appears. The map gets drawn by the personnel file.<\/p>\n

A second passage in the letter reasons from the volume and nature of complaints to the risk that his presence would disrupt the working environment. The Committee for Academic Freedom, which says it has read the letter in full, describes the reasoning as resting on the reactions of others to his appointment and his public activity. Maarten Boudry calls it one long heckler’s veto. In Gieryn’s terms the count of complaints becomes the evidence of transgression, and the fence gets surveyed by a census of everyone who wants the man on the other side of it. Boundary-work of that design needs no finding about any claim Cofnas ever made.<\/p>\n

Boudry sits at Ghent and co-edited Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem with Massimo Pigliucci in 2013, the standard contemporary volume arguing that demarcation can be done, and done with criteria. He now watches his own institution demarcate by counting email. The affair contains its own literature review.<\/p>\n

Cofnas draws maps for a living. His hereditarian writing performs expansion in Gieryn’s sense: it claims territory currently held by sociologists of race and describes the holders as captured by taboo rather than by evidence. His defenders draw a boundary of their own, placing the plagiarism dossier inside science and the Belgian disciplinary process outside it, in politics. The US Ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, entered on August 20 with a statement about dishonest institutions and a review of American relationships with Ghent. That is cartography performed by a state. An analysis that finds boundary-work on one side only is doing boundary-work rather than describing it.<\/p>\n

The plagiarism finding used methods nobody disputes: text set beside text, claimed credentials checked against records. Nothing in the method comes from hereditarianism, and a graduate student with a library card could have produced the same document. The demarcation attaches to the man and then travels to his findings. Gieryn’s word for what is at stake in these contests is credibility, and credibility attaches to persons. Cambridge opened its own review of the thesis. Liverpool John Moores holds the doctorate. Whether the finding stands will be settled by institutions that have their own maps to defend.<\/p>\n

Gieryn offers no way to decide whether group differences in test scores have genetic causes, whether Belgian anti-discrimination law reaches an interview with David Starkey, or whether a suspension protects anyone. He offers no reason to expect a boundary to land where the truth is, since the line gets drawn by interests and lands where interests want it. That agnosticism makes the frame usable while a dispute is hot, and makes it insufficient as a judgment. A man died on August 14. Cultural cartography says nothing about that, and should not be asked to.<\/p>\n

If a sociologist or a journal treats the plagiarism dossier as a finding, engages the evidence, and reaches a conclusion about the thesis on the merits, the fence has held in one place while a claim crossed it. If the dossier goes unread inside the discipline because of who assembled it, Gieryn’s 1983 paper describes what happened, and the discipline supplies him a fresh case forty-three years on.<\/p>\n

Cohen was responding<\/a> to these posts by roterote<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Here is the full suspension letter from UGent that was sent to Nathan Cofnas, it shows ample reason for his suspension and potential termination. Including breach of contract, using the University of Ghent\u2019s name and legitimacy to promote his racial supremacist views and causing reputational damage.
\nThe second part of the UGent suspension letter to Nathan Cofnas. <\/p>\n

Clearly he is a problem at the university and causing discord and damage to the institution. A guest speaker even cancelled because of Cofnas\u2019s association with UGent. <\/p>\n

He was not suspended for whistleblowing. That is a Cofnas lie.<\/p>\n

Also it is important to highlight the letter leads with the fact Nathan Cofnas is committing academic fraud by instead of working on what he was hired to do, he is working on race science and his revolution.<\/p>\n

A lot of people are asking me how Nathan Cofnas was hired, UGent professor Bouke de Vries invited him to UGent. Bourke and Cofnas are part of the same global network to mainstream eugenics and far right academics. Of course funded by Peter Thiel and other rich far right activists.<\/p>\n

This network has been running for many years now and has big American money behind it. Cofnas is just one of their guys and they are all over the world.<\/p>\n

I can highly recommend @hopenothate.org.uk\u2018s report Race Science Inc. as a good starting place to understand how a eugenicist like Nathan Cofnas can get hired at two prestigious universities over more qualified candidates. This is a major far right project to give the academy\u2019s legitimacy to them.<\/p>\n

Another question being asked to me is how can Nathan Cofnas be studying the Future of Liberalism? Well that is because he isn\u2019t studying the future of liberalism as an ideology he is studying whether certain groups having children is compatible with the future of liberalism. He\u2019s studying eugenics.<\/p>\n

A final thing to consider is how Nathan Cofnas views Academic Freedom in his own words. Cofnas clearly supports purging the academy of his ideology enemies or think academic freedom matters. <\/p>\n

\u201cFrom our perspective, there is no path to success that doesn’t involve removing the activist non-scholars\u201d<\/p>\n

There is also a letter of support for Cofnas which has already been signed by over 425 academics from around the world. <\/p>\n

I am keeping track of everyone who signed it in the thread below.<\/p>\n

Two days ago the US Ambassador to Belgium Bill White also launched an attack against UGent and Belgium in defense of American Eugenicist Nathan Cofnas. This is the third time Bill White has intervened in Belgian politics. This is in line with the 2025 US National Security Policy against Europe.<\/p>\n

Since 2025 there has been a major effort to both politically and financially support the rise of the far right in Europe. Recently millions were given to people via the US State Department like Nigel Farage to promote far right views and ideas. <\/p>\n

This is part of the wilder Republican anti-EU project.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Notes<\/p>\n

Roterote’s suggested links: Politico<\/a>, Hope not Hate<\/a>, Guardian<\/a>, ByLineTimes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cohen’s post appeared on Bluesky on August 23, 2026<\/a>, quoting a post about the Ghent suspension. Fourteen likes at the time of reading.
\nThomas F. Gieryn, “Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists,” American Sociological Review 48, no. 6 (December 1983): 781-795. The Tyndall material occupies the center of the paper. Verify page numbers against the journal before quoting.
\nThe three genres of expulsion, expansion, and protection of autonomy come from Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line (University of Chicago Press, 1999), where Gieryn also uses “cultural cartography” and “credibility contest.” The 1983 paper supplies the argument; the 1999 book supplies the vocabulary a sociologist will recognize.
\nJason Arday resigned from Cambridge on August 5, 2026 and died on August 14, 2026 at age 41. Confirm his year of birth before printing dates; reports give the age at death rather than a birth year.
\nNathan Cofnas published the plagiarism analysis on Substack on July 21, 2026. He left Cambridge in 2024 after Emmanuel College acted on complaints about his writing on race, and moved to a postdoctoral post in the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences at Ghent. Confirm his birth year, and confirm whether the Cambridge departure is best described as dismissal or non-renewal, since accounts differ.
\nGhent University announced a preliminary disciplinary investigation and a precautionary suspension on August 20, 2026, citing respect for human dignity and opposition to discrimination. Rector Petra De Sutter and Vice-Rector Herwig Reynaert issued the joint statement about the limits of academic freedom. Confirm De Sutter’s birth year.
\nJerry Coyne posted six page images of the suspension letter at Why Evolution Is True on August 21, 2026, saying Cofnas does not object to circulation. Transcribe from the images yourself. Do not quote from anyone’s paraphrase, including this essay, without checking the page.
\nThe contractual-scope charge and the passage on complaint volume both appear in Coyne’s reproduction. The letter also raises articles 20 and 21 of Belgian anti-discrimination legislation and articles 443 and following of the Belgian Criminal Code on offences against honor and reputation. A note on Belgian law from someone who reads Dutch would strengthen any piece you write; the English coverage handles the statutes loosely.
\nThe Committee for Academic Freedom statement of August 20, 2026 says the committee has seen the letter in full and that the reasoning rests on the reactions of others. Boudry’s “heckler’s veto” characterization appears in his X posts of August 20 and 21. He also claims parts of the letter were AI-generated, using the Pangram detector, and connects this to fabricated quotations in De Sutter’s inaugural speech. Detector output is not evidence. That claim is the one to verify hardest, because a fabrication charge against a rector inside a fabrication scandal is exactly the symmetry a writer wants to be true.
\nCohen’s Citizen Scholar: Public Engagement for Social Scientists (Columbia University Press, 2025) is the source for the public-engagement argument. His founding of SocArXiv and his record of post-publication criticism are well documented but check the specifics before characterizing any single campaign.
\nBill White, US Ambassador to Belgium, posted the condemnation of Ghent on August 20, 2026 and referred to a review of American relationships with the university. Steven Pinker’s remarks about Cofnas appeared in the Wall Street Journal on August 21, 2026.
\nGieryn’s frame, applied without discipline, explains every position as interest and leaves no room for anyone being right. <\/p>\n

Further reading<\/p>\n

Thomas F. Gieryn<\/a>, Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line<\/em><\/a> (Chicago, 1999). The mature statement, with the creation science trials, the Cold Fusion episode, and the phrenology chapter.<\/p>\n

Thomas F. Gieryn, George M. Bevins, and Stephen C. Zehr, “Professionalization of American Scientists: Public Science in the Creation\/Evolution Trials<\/a>,” American Sociological Review<\/em> 50 (1985): 392-409. The nearest analogue in the literature to a demarcation fight conducted in front of a lay audience with legal stakes.<\/p>\n

Thomas F. Gieryn, “Boundaries of Science<\/a>,” in Sheila Jasanoff et al., eds., Handbook of Science and Technology Studies<\/em> (Sage, 1995), 393-443. The review essay, useful for citations you can drop into a paragraph.<\/p>\n

Robert K. Merton<\/a>, “The Normative Structure of Science<\/a>” (1942), collected in The Sociology of Science<\/em> (Chicago, 1973). The account of organized skepticism and disinterestedness that Gieryn reclassifies as a rhetorical resource rather than a description of behavior. Read the two together and the argument becomes visible.<\/p>\n

Michael Mulkay, “Norms and Ideology in Science<\/a>,” Social Science Information<\/em> 15 (1976): 637-656. The precursor claim that the Mertonian norms function as vocabulary rather than as rules.<\/p>\n

Massimo Pigliucci<\/a> and Maarten Boudry<\/a>, eds., Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem<\/em><\/a> (Chicago, 2013). The philosophical counterattack, arguing that demarcation can be done on principled grounds. Boudry\u2019s presence in the present affair makes the volume more than a citation.<\/p>\n

Steven Shapin<\/a> and Simon Schaffer<\/a>, Leviathan and the Air-Pump<\/em><\/a> (Princeton, 1985). Boundaries built rather than found, with Hobbes placed outside the experimental community by the community\u2019s own construction.<\/p>\n

Steven Epstein<\/a>, Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge<\/em><\/a> (California, 1996). A case where outsiders crossed the fence and acquired credibility inside it, which is the possibility the present affair forecloses.<\/p>\n

Two Rules<\/p>\n

Every guild polices two things. It polices the product, because outsiders buy the mark and the mark is collective property. It polices the members, because a trade whose members hand each other to strangers does not last a generation. Medieval craft statutes<\/a> carry both duties on the same page. Wardens inspect the cloth and seize the defective bolt. Brothers swear to bring grievances to the guild court before they take them to the town, and a master who slanders a master in the street pays a fine for it. Do not fake the goods. Do not hand a brother to the guild\u2019s enemies. Both rules are old and both work.<\/p>\n

They rarely collide, because a guild handles its own fraud in its own room. The forum does the work. A master who waters the dye gets called in, fined, corrected, and if he persists, removed, and the customers hear about the standard while the failure stays inside. The two rules stay compatible as long as the internal room functions.<\/p>\n

The room jammed at Cambridge. Concerns about Jason Arday<\/a>\u2019s doctoral thesis surfaced years before this summer and went nowhere, and a reporter who started pulling the thread backed off after a threat of legal action<\/a>. Whatever the merits of the allegations, the institutions holding them chose the cost of inaction. That choice is the origin of everything that followed, and it belongs at the front of any honest account.<\/p>\n

When the room jams, a member with a finding has two moves. He can eat it, which is what the trade expects and what most members do. Or he can go outside, and outside now means a Substack post, a lay audience, and a coalition of people who dislike the guild and will use his document for their own purposes. Nathan Cofnas<\/a> went outside on July 21, 2026. Arday resigned on August 5<\/a> and died on August 14<\/a>. On August 20, Ghent University<\/a> suspended Cofnas<\/a> as a precautionary measure pending a preliminary disciplinary investigation.<\/p>\n

Read the suspension letter<\/a> with a manager\u2019s eye and it stops sounding like a document about ideas. Two thousand students sign a petition. Staff file complaints. A hundred emails arrive in a week. A guest lecturer withdraws. A boycott gets discussed. Files sit open at the university\u2019s integrity desk and the external occupational health service has been called in. The rector concludes that the situation threatens \u201cthe proper functioning of the University.\u201d Strip the names and that paragraph could come from any firm with a personnel problem and a quarter to finish.<\/p>\n

A firm would ask a second question, and this is where the analogy earns its keep. Not only whether disruption exists, but who produced it and what the response teaches everyone watching. An employee says something lawful and unpopular. Two thousand colleagues demand his removal, customers send angry mail, a supplier threatens to walk. Management now has a real problem and one bad solution. Remove the man because others made him expensive, and the firm has published a price list. Anyone able to generate a hundred emails can now select who works there. Ghent has taught its own faculty that thirty signatures and a week of coordination will end a colleague, and the next coalition will read the lesson correctly. Maarten Boudry<\/a> calls the letter one long heckler\u2019s veto, and the Committee for Academic Freedom<\/a>, which says it has read the document in full, describes its reasoning as resting on the reactions of others to his appointment and his public activity.<\/p>\n

Ghent has one argument that escapes this, and it deserves better treatment than either camp has given it. The letter claims Cofnas was engaged on a project concerning the future of liberalism and presented his race research as work conducted at Ghent, attaching the university\u2019s name to an enterprise outside the terms of his appointment. If that holds up factually, the case stops being a heckler\u2019s veto and becomes an ordinary employment claim. Any employer may tell a researcher that the institutional letterhead covers the funded project and nothing else. Arbitrators enforce that. Journals enforce affiliation rules. The claim is checkable and nobody has checked it: what the appointment document says, who funded the post and under what call, whether Ghent ever told him in writing where the boundary sat, and whether he in fact used the affiliation for the Arday work and the interviews rather than for the liberalism project. Four emails and an afternoon in the Ghent research portal settle it, and the answer might go against Cofnas.<\/p>\n

The scope claim carries a second problem, and it is the one an employment lawyer reaches for first. Ghent hired him knowing what he works on. He arrived after Emmanuel College<\/a> removed him in 2024 over the same body of writing. In March 2026<\/a>, more than three hundred staff and students questioned whether his views were compatible with the university\u2019s ethics code, and Ghent proceeded. An employer who knows what a man does, hires him anyway, watches the objection arrive in writing, keeps him, and never warns him has waived the objection. So the scope charge lives or dies by a calendar. If a file on employment scope exists from March or May, Ghent has a case and this affair looks different. If the concern first appears in writing in August, after the petition and after a man died, the rule was assembled to fit a conflict already underway.<\/p>\n

That distinction is the heart of the thing. A coalition that expels a member for breaking a rule that existed before the quarrel is doing what coalitions do and must do. A coalition that expels a member because his presence has become expensive, then writes the expense up as a violation, has done something else and should be made to say so. Build the timeline column by column and the letter answers for itself: hire date, the March objections, the July 21 post, the interviews of August 8, 9, and 14, Arday\u2019s death on August 14, the petition, the hundred emails, the letter of August 20. Then mark which entries the letter cites as grounds and when each one happened.<\/p>\n

None of which makes the second rule corrupt, and this is where Mearsheimer\u2019s anthropology<\/a> reaches further than any free-speech argument. Institutions are coalitions. Membership supplies protection, income and standing, and charges obligations in return, and every functioning coalition polices the edge of tolerable behavior. Cherem<\/a> is that ordinary thing written down. Amsterdam put Spinoza<\/a> (1632-1677) under the ban in 1656, and the community doing it held a young and conditional welcome in a Calvinist republic that was watching. The elders were not confused about philosophy. They were doing arithmetic about survival. The rabbinic prohibition on mesirah<\/a>, carrying information about a Jew to gentile power, comes from centuries in which the authority receiving the information was no court in any sense we would recognize. Rule two is the survival rule of groups that cannot count on the outside world, and the professoriate in 2026 believes it cannot count on the outside world, with funding under threat and the American ambassador<\/a> announcing a review of relationships with a Belgian university. That belief is not fantasy, and it changes what a rector thinks she is doing when she signs.<\/p>\n

The rabbis, having made the rule, also made the exception. Informing is permitted when the man endangers the community. The tradition kept a door in the wall, because a rule with no door protects the predator alongside the brother, and maintaining the door is the hard part, since every accused man swears the accuser walked through it in bad faith. Ghent\u2019s letter has no door. It weighs the volume of complaints, the risk of confrontation, the withdrawal of a lecturer, the wellbeing of staff. It never asks whether the information was true and whether the community needed it. A guild that applies the second rule with the exception deleted has not made a hard judgment under pressure. The deletion outlasts the suspension, because the next member with a finding will read this letter and never read the eventual settlement.<\/p>\n

Consider what a trade becomes once that ranking is public. Fraud gets priced as an internal expense, absorbed the way a store absorbs shrinkage, as the cost of avoiding a scene. Detection migrates outward, since the incentive to look has been removed from the inside and left standing on the outside. The outside auditors are journalists with a story to sell, activists with a target list, and governments with a grievance, and none of them owes an accused man a fair reading. The guild has not abolished the audit. It has subcontracted the audit to its enemies and lost the power to correct their errors. Members adjust. A young scholar who notices that a famous colleague\u2019s citations fail to check out learns what to do with the observation, and he is right to put it away. Then the mark loses value, and a guild facing falling external trust responds by policing loyalty harder, because auditing produces findings and findings feed the enemies. The Catholic hierarchy<\/a> ran that loop for forty years before the Boston Globe finished it in 2002. Police departments run it. Medicine runs it with impaired physicians. Each of them paid, in the end, many times what candor would have cost, and the members who paid most had done nothing.<\/p>\n

Which returns the business frame to the point where it stops being an analogy. A university sells the credibility of its findings. The disruption ledger and the audit function draw on one asset, so a rector who fires the auditor to protect operations has sold the inventory to make the rent. The trade is available and the books look better for a season. Ask what the mark is worth in year three.<\/p>\n

The cost lands on people who never entered the argument. It lands on the next scholar accused by an outsider with worse evidence and no standards, who now has no internal body with the credibility to clear him. It lands hardest on Black academics, and the guild\u2019s defenders cannot afford to leave this unexamined. The claim made by the critics of diversity hiring is that the credentials go unchecked. A guild that declines to check, and disciplines the man who checked, has conceded the premise by conduct while denying it in statements. Arday\u2019s record will now never be adjudicated by anyone with standing to settle it, which serves nobody who admired him and leaves his defenders arguing about the machine<\/a> instead of the thesis.<\/p>\n

Two tests remain and both are small enough to watch. The first is the calendar, and Ghent can end the argument tomorrow by producing a dated file on employment scope that predates the petition. The second is the dossier. Liverpool John Moores<\/a> holds the doctorate, Cambridge holds the appointment, and any journal could commission a review of the passages this week. If a sociologist reads the document, checks the sources, and publishes a finding on the merits, the guild kept both rules and mishandled a hard fortnight. If a year passes and no one inside the discipline will touch it because of who assembled it, the ranking is settled doctrine, and the trade has told its customers what the mark is worth.<\/p>\n

Notes on sources and verification follow.<\/p>\n

1. Dates used here: the Substack post of July 21, 2026; Arday\u2019s resignation on August 5 and death on August 14, at 41; the interviews of August 8, 9, and 14; the suspension announced August 20. <\/p>\n

2. The letter\u2019s contents reach me through Jerry Coyne\u2019s six page images<\/a>, posted August 21 with Cofnas raising no objection to circulation.<\/p>\n

3. The disruption inventory, the petition figure, the email count, the withdrawn lecturer, the boycott discussion, the integrity desk and the occupational health referral, all come from readings of the letter.<\/p>\n

4. The employment mandate concerning the future of liberalism is the pivot of the essay and remains unverified.<\/p>\n

5. The March 2026 objections are reported by Times Higher Education<\/a>, which puts the number above three hundred and notes a counter-letter in his support. Other outlets give a figure above twelve hundred for a later letter. Reconcile these before citing either.<\/p>\n

6. Ghent\u2019s public position appears in the joint statement from De Sutter and Vice-Rector Herwig Reynaert, reported by the Irish Times<\/a> and Inside Higher Ed<\/a>. Cofnas announced the suspension on X<\/a> the same afternoon.<\/p>\n

7. Boudry also claims parts of the letter were machine-generated, using a detector, and ties this to fabricated quotations in the rector\u2019s inaugural address. Detector output is not evidence. Verify that claim harder than any other in the file, because a fabrication charge against a rector inside a fabrication scandal is exactly the symmetry a writer wants to be true.<\/p>\n

8. On mesirah and its exception the halakhic literature is contested and the exception is where the disagreement lives. Take the formulation from a rabbi you trust rather than from an encyclopedia entry.<\/p>\n

9. The guild statutes described here are common across craft ordinances and vary by trade, city and century. <\/p>\n

10. Opposing views: Sneha Krishnan<\/a> on institutional murder, Jafari Sinclaire Allen<\/a> in The Nation, and Steven Pinker\u2019s remarks<\/a> in the Wall Street Journal, which grant the findings and fault the manner.<\/p>\n

Further reading. Stephan R. Epstein, “Craft Guilds, Apprenticeship, and Technological Change in Preindustrial Europe<\/a>,” Journal of Economic History<\/em> 58 (1998): 684-713. The case that guilds solved real problems of quality and training.<\/p>\n

Sheilagh Ogilvie, The European Guilds: An Economic Analysis<\/em><\/a> (Princeton, 2019). The case against, arguing that guilds served members at the customer\u2019s expense. Read with Epstein and take neither at full strength.<\/p>\n

Elinor Ostrom<\/a>, Governing the Commons<\/em><\/a> (Cambridge, 1990). On graduated sanctions and internal conflict-resolution arenas, which is what a functioning guild room is and what Cambridge did not supply.<\/p>\n

Yosef Kaplan, From Christianity to Judaism<\/em><\/a> (Oxford, 1989), and Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life<\/em><\/a> (Cambridge, 1999). The Amsterdam community\u2019s position and what the 1656 cherem was protecting.<\/p>\n

Boston Globe Spotlight Team, Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church<\/em><\/a> (Little, Brown, 2002). A record of what a guild pays when rule two governs for forty years.<\/p>\n

C. Fred Alford, Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power<\/em><\/a> (Cornell, 2001). On what happens to the member afterward, which is the part the moral arguments leave out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Jerry Coyne’s blog Why Evolution is True: UNIVERSITEITSDIENSTEN \u2013 BESTUUR, JURIDISCHE ZAKEN EN COMPLIANCE JURIDISCHE ZAKEN REGISTERED MAIL Nathan COFNAS Katia Berlingieri Head of Legal Affairs E juridischezaken@UGent.be T +32 9 264 30 43 Campus Ufo – Rectoraat Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16281,42838],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-college","category-nathan-cofnas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=201174"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201213,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201174\/revisions\/201213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=201174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=201174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=201174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}