The campaign to support the academic freedom of an early career research fellow currently facing possible expulsion from the University of Cambridge gathered momentum this week.
Dr Cofnas, a member of the university’s faculty of philosophy, is at the centre of two ongoing inquiries over a controversial blog post he wrote about race and genetics, and has separately had his research affiliation with Emmanuel College terminated (Mail, Telegraph, Times).
However, a group of eminent philosophers and public intellectuals have now written to The Times urging Cambridge to “call off” its investigation into Dr Cofnas, whose research interests include race, heredity, intelligence and meritocracy.
Signed by leading academics including Prof Steven Pinker at Harvard and Prof Peter Singer from Princeton, the letter criticises Emmanuel College for expelling Dr Cofnas and questions why his funding body, The Leverhulme Trust, and his faculty both felt it was appropriate to launch investigations against an academic who was simply exploring unorthodox ideas.
“Freedom of speech within the law is a right that sits at the heart of the University of Cambridge,” the letter says. “Given this, we do not understand why the philosophy faculty is conducting an investigation. Members of the College or University who disagree with Dr Cofnas’s views could issue statements repudiating those views and explaining why they believe them to be mistaken.”
As the Times points out, Dr Cofnas is being supported by the FSU.
We believe Dr Cofnas was exercising his right as an academic to freely explore controversial and unfashionable topics and we expect the university to have the courage to respect his academic freedom.
Emmanuel College’s decision to cut all ties with Dr Cofnas followed the early career academic feeling he had no choice but to step down from all student-facing duties, which included teaching and marking examinations, amid unhappiness among some students at his continued employment by the university.
In his offending blog post, titled “A guide for the hereditarian revolution”, Dr Cofnas argues for a culture of “race realism” that will “crumble a central pillar of our moral-political system”, namely, that there are no differences in talent between ethnicities.
In a meritocracy, Dr Cofnas writes, black people “would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment”. Put another way, if society were to stop fighting its “war on nature”, Harvard faculty “would be recruited from the best of the best students, which means the number of black professors would approach zero per cent”.
According to Dr Cofnas, to crush the “woke juggernaut” currently riding roughshod over these ‘uncomfortable truths’ what we need is an intellectual revolution, and only “widespread acceptance of hereditarianism, especially among the elites, will undermine the reigning left–liberal order as we know it”.
When the piece first emerged in February, it prompted a furious reaction on campus. A petition for Dr Cofnas’ removal from the institution was organised and quickly amassed over 1,000 signatures, claims of “hurt and upset” were levelled at him by students, chants of “fire Nathan Cofnas” were heard at a campus protest with one student even accusing him of having “blood on his hands”, while Emmanuel College’s JCR released a statement condemning his “racist views”, and senior academics played to the gallery with some withering criticisms of his work.
Bronwen Everill, director of the university’s Centre of African Studies, told student newspaper Varsity that Cofnas’s presence was “like having a flat-earther on the physics faculty”.
Writing on X, the History faculty director of undergraduate studies, Nicholas Guyatt, said: “[It is] genuinely jaw-dropping that nineteenth-century race theory is back in town.”
At an Emmanuel College ‘town hall’ on the question of Cofnas’ employment, Lord Woolley, the principal of Cambridge’s Homerton College, told students: “I see it for what it is. Abhorrent racism, masquerading as pseudo-intellect… There is no place for bigots in institutions like this.”
Dr Cofnas’s “race realism” blog post isn’t the first time the US-born researcher has tested the boundaries of academic freedom in an era of campus safetyism.
Following a separate row over a 2019 article in which he claimed there were “gaps” in IQ between different racial groups, students protested against the fellow remaining on the College payroll. When he was first appointed to the University as Research Associate in 2022, 1,200 people signed a petition to sack him from his post, which is funded by The Leverhulme Trust, a British philanthropy organisation.
Following the outcry over Dr Cofnas’ blog post, the Leverhulme Trust and Cambridge both launched “urgent investigations”.
Back in February, the Master of Emmanuel College, Doug Chalmers, told irate students that “we retain our commitment to freedom of thought and expression” and accepted Dr Cofnas’ “academic right, as enshrined by law, to write about his views”.
On the same day, Professor Bhaskar Vira, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education at Cambridge, issued a brief statement that began: “Freedom of speech within the law is a right that sits at the heart of the University of Cambridge. We encourage our community to challenge ideas they disagree with and engage in rigorous debate.”
Less than a month later, however, the mood music had changed. Faced with continuing protests, Prof Vira told students he believed Cofnas had “crossed a line” when it comes to concerns for freedom of speech, and that the University was now seeking legal advice on freedom of speech law.
Although the University’s inquiry, and that of the Leverhulme Trust are ongoing, on April 5th, Emmanuel College informed Dr Cofnas by letter that it had terminated its relationship with him.
The letter read: “The Committee first considered the meaning of the blog and concluded that it amounted to, or could reasonably be construed as amounting to, a rejection of Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (EDI) policies.
“The Committee concluded that the core mission of the College was to achieve educational excellence and that diversity and inclusion were inseparable from that. The ideas promoted by the blog therefore represented a challenge to the College’s core values and mission.”
At the time, one of the signatories to the Times letter, Prof Peter Singer, took issue with the College’s statement.
In an op-ed for Project Syndicate, titled ‘Will Cambridge support free speech?’, he said that this letter implies “that at Emmanuel College, freedom of expression does not include the freedom to challenge its EDI policies, and that challenging them may be grounds for dismissal. That is an extraordinary statement for a tertiary institution to make. It is even more surprising given that the adoption of EDI policies is a relatively recent phenomenon.
Prof Singer added: “Emmanuel College’s decision does not prevent Cofnas from continuing to hold his research fellowship in the Faculty of Philosophy. But that would cease to be the case if the university inquiry were to reach the same conclusion as the college.”
“The academic world will be watching what happens,” he concluded. “Were the University of Cambridge to dismiss Cofnas, it would sound a warning to students and academics everywhere: when it comes to controversial topics, even the world’s most renowned universities can no longer be relied upon to stand by their commitment to defend freedom of thought and discussion.
Prof Steven Pinker has also previously drawn attention to Dr Cofnas’s articles debunking the theory that Jews were selected for traits that spread their own influence. The theory, Pinker said, was a “major source of support for the American alt-right” and Cofnas had “written sharply argued, devastating refutations”.
While conceding that he had not read Cofnas’s blog post on race, Pinker said it “would seem irrelevant to what appears to be a violation of academic freedom”. He added: “Unless there is reason to suspect that Cofnas engaged in scholarly misconduct, a university should not investigate its scholars for the content of their opinions.”
