Musaazi NAMITI
Nathan Cofnas—the US academic whose Substack article revived accusations of plagiarism against Cambridge professor Jason Arday, leading to his resignation and subsequent death—has been suspended by Belgium’s Ghent University, the academic announced on social media.
The suspension follows an outpouring of grief and a protest in London, which drew an estimated 30,000 mourners who denounced Dr Cofnas and the media, blaming both for the death of Dr Arday.
“I was just suspended by Ghent University. They will almost certainly fire me. The decision was made by rector Petra De Sutter, a former leader of the Green Party,” Dr Cofnas wrote on X and Substack without giving further details.
Earlier, he had posted on X to say: “I am under investigation by my university for discriminating against Arday.”
The university’s rector, Petra De Sutter, and vice rector Herwig Reynaert issued a statement saying Dr Arday’s death had hit their own academic community hard, adding: “At the same time, we wish to be clear about the values we uphold as a university. Ghent University stands for respect for human dignity and opposes discrimination, hatred and racism.”
It went on: “We attach great importance to academic freedom and to open academic debate, even when views are controversial. However, that freedom is not unlimited. It goes hand in hand with responsibility and may be restricted in order to protect the rights of others.”
I asked Nathan Cofnas for the evidence about Jason Arday. Here’s what I found
Dr Arday was found dead on August 14 at a property in Battersea, south London, days after he resigned amid intense media scrutiny over accusations of plagiarism and false claims about his life and academic achievements. He was 41.
Cambridge University hired him in 2023 as a professor of sociology of education, making him, at 37, the university’s youngest black academic to hold the prestigious title.
But after he had been in the job for some time, academics started raising concerns about the quality of his work, while journalists questioned whether parts of his PhD dissertation, completed in 2015 at Liverpool John Moores University, had been plagiarised.
In his July article, Dr Cofnas, whose Cambridge college affiliation was terminated in 2024 following controversy over his views on race, said he began investigating Dr Arday after being contacted by a faculty member at Cambridge. He declined to name the faculty member, who alleged that Dr Arday was a plagiarist and fabulist.
“My source claims that many if not most professors at Cambridge have known about this for more than a year,” he wrote.
Dr Arday and Cambridge’s administration, according to Dr Cofnas’s source, had used intimidation and legal threats to prevent the story being told.
There had been no public mention of Dr Arday’s alleged plagiarism, according to Dr Cofnas, except on the personal website of retired Plymouth Marjon University professor Dave Harris.
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