After a controversial blog post he made earlier this year, the professional career of Dr Nathan Cofnas, a Leverhulme early-career research fellow at Cambridge’s philosophy faculty, is dangling by a thread, writes Laurie Wastell for the Spectator.
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. Laurie continues:
Dr Cofnas works in the philosophy of biology, in particular what he calls ‘evolution-informed social science’ and its attendant ethical controversies.
The principally offending passage is about affirmative action and meritocracy in elite American academia. He cites Harvard University data which suggest that were the college to use a colourblind system for academic selection, judging applicants by academic qualifications alone, its proportion of black students would fall dramatically, from around 14 per cent to just 0.7 per cent. When it comes to Harvard faculty, Dr Cofnas added that in a meritocracy they ‘would be recruited from the best of the best students’, meaning ‘the number of black professors would approach 0 per cent’. He adds that black people would ‘disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment’ in this society.
Unsurprisingly, his piece prompted outcry on campus after being reported in the student newspaper. A petition denouncing him as ‘bigoted’ and a ‘eugenicist’ and calling for his termination soon gained over 1,000 signatures. Protests were organised and Emmanuel College’s JCR issued a statement condemning his ‘racist views’.
At first, Cambridge authorities nevertheless defended his right to academic freedom. ‘Freedom of speech within the law is a right that sits at the heart of the University of Cambridge,’ said Professor Bhaskar Vira, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education.
Yet as protests have continued, with one senior academic denouncing Cofnas’s work as ‘abhorrent racism, masquerading as pseudo-intellect’ at a student ‘town hall’ meeting, it seems Cambridge may be about to cave to the mob again.
Thankfully, a group of leading academics and public intellectuals, including Peter Singer, the world-famous moral philosopher and Princeton professor of Bioethics, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, the ethicist Jonathan Glover and US author Coleman Hughes, jointly signed a letter to the Times urging Emmanuel College to reverse its decision, and for the investigations by the Faculty of Philosophy and the Leverhulme Trust to be called off. They were ‘dismayed’ at how he was being treated, adding that ‘there is nothing to investigate’.
The Free Speech Union is also supporting Cofnas with the two ongoing investigations. ‘Free institutions don’t tell academics how they should reason their way from a premise to a conclusion,’ it has said, ‘nor should they say that certain questions are prohibited from the off.’
You don’t have to agree with what Cofnas wrote to see that the fact he might be fired for expressing his views violates fundamental principles of academic freedom. If people believe he is wrong, then they are perfectly within their rights to say why and how and to explain the flaws in his arguments. Instead, the principal claim levelled against Cofnas has been that some find his ideas ‘offensive’ and ‘distressing’. That may well be so, but if universities are to successfully fulfil their truth-seeking mission, academics’ right to explore offensive or controversial topics must come before considerations of hurt feelings. This vital principle must always be defended – especially when it comes to hard cases. Nathan Cofnas must be free to speak.
Worth reading in full.
