The Jason Arday story keeps getting worse, and better.
When the story first hit, I didn’t expect to wind up writing a bunch of posts about it; to me, it was interesting because it exposed the fundamental corruption of DEI ideology and, of course, the institutions captured by it.
True enough, as far as that went, but as the story unfolded, the depth and breadth of that corruption just grew and grew, as did the efforts to defend the indefensible. I shouldn’t be surprised, of course, because I write about these topics separately all the time, but just about every single issue I write about regularly, save gender ideology, is all wrapped up in this one tight little ball of a story.
The University of Cambridge can boast 126 Nobel Prizes. That’s more than any other university in the world except Harvard, and it does it on an endowment that is one twentieth the endowment of Harvard. In the Nobel ranking, Cambridge beats MIT, Chicago, Columbia, Oxford, and Yale…
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) August 21, 2026
The University of Cambridge can boast 126 Nobel Prizes. That’s more than any other university in the world except Harvard, and it does it on an endowment that is one twentieth the endowment of Harvard. In the Nobel ranking, Cambridge beats MIT, Chicago, Columbia, Oxford, and Yale (in that order). Cambridge, the university of Newton, Hawking, Russell, Wittgenstein, Moore, Keynes, Crick, Sanger, Kendrew, Perutz, Rutherford, Chadwick, Turing, Maxwell, Brenner, the list goes on and on, Cambridge is beyond question one of the very greatest universities in the world. The list of immense distinction continues to the present day. It is tragic, and deeply unfair, that the reputation of this truly great university should suffer at the hands one unfortunate anomaly, the Department of Education.
Like Richard Dawkins, I find it especially noteworthy that this all took place at Cambridge University; if it were an obscure university or community college, it would have been a laughing matter. But Cambridge is at the top of the academic pyramid, and it declared Jason Arday at the very top of its pyramid of intellectual leading lights.
Dawkins is unfortunately wrong that Arday and his department are exceptions to a rule of excellence, although I sympathize mightily with his desire that it were. The corruption is fundamental; the cancer metastasized; and it has reached the brain.
And the body that is dying is not Cambridge, which is merely a few cells in the grey matter of that brain. It is the entire academic elite, which is a subset of the cultural and political elite of Western society. Western culture itself is dying, and the cancer is Critical Theory.
There is now a movement to create “Arday’s Law,” which would punish people for discussing scandals like this too much, and it has the support of UK elites and backers like Amnesty International.
This is getting more ridiculous by the day.
Amnesty International has issued an absurd statement on how “black disabled lives matter”
What’s next for Arday? A Nobel Prize?
You know what else matters?
Truth
Personal responsibility
Accountability
Hard workhttps://t.co/Z28TuoKAMJ— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) August 20, 2026
Thousands of protesters have gathered to celebrate the life and chant the names of his “accusers” to shame them for…telling the truth. Some are baying for blood, and Ghent University in Belgium has suspended the professor who originally revealed (in public) the plagiarism that set this in motion. I say “in public” because, in reality, all the major players already knew Arday was a fraud, and they helped him perpetrate it.
So powerful to be in Trafalgar Square at the vigil.
Rest in Power, Professor Jason Arday. pic.twitter.com/Z2PtLsf1rT
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) August 17, 2026
This is where the U.S. State Department comes in, and it is only doing so thanks to Marco Rubio having a backbone made of titanium and a moral sense that is usually absent in anybody who reaches the heights of power.
The United States Mission to Belgium condemns, in the strongest terms, Ghent University’s retaliation against an American scholar following his accurate whistleblower reporting on academic fraud.
The United States government regularly funds and supports research, academic…
— U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Bill White (@USAmbToBelgium) August 21, 2026
The United States Mission to Belgium condemns, in the strongest terms, Ghent University’s retaliation against an American scholar following his accurate whistleblower reporting on academic fraud.
The United States government regularly funds and supports research, academic exchanges, and other engagements with overseas universities. Dishonest, corrupt institutions that engage in, or reward, scapegoating mob behavior are not desirable partners for us. This is particularly true where the purpose and effect of the scapegoating is to punish accurate journalism unearthing academic dishonesty. We are therefore reviewing any relationships we have with Ghent University.
Bad-faith idealogues will try to make this a referendum on the content of Cofnas’s scholarship – or polemical distortions of it. That’s wrong. Free speech means that controversial views are protected. And Cofnas’s views were known to Ghent University when he was hired.
The ultimate purpose of freedom of speech is to overturn lies, fraud, and false ideologies. This is precisely what Cofnas was doing, and precisely the reason his home institution wants to silence him.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Nathan Cofnas, you see, is an American, and European universities get an awful lot of direct and indirect support from the United States. So when Cofnas was punished for telling an uncomfortable truth, it presented an opportunity to take a stand against this attack on Western values.
Resigned from the NUJ today over its statement on Jason Arday. You can’t be a union for journalists while supporting those who seek to muzzle journalism. https://t.co/YSfmfeh5aO
— Gethin Chamberlain (@newsandpics) August 19, 2026
AS the election of Trump has shown, the one place where there is a modest amount of hope that Western culture can be saved is here in the United States, and given our close ties and interdependence with Europe, it’s important that we fight back at every opportunity.
This internal email from a tenured professor at Nathan Cofnas’ department shows not only that the “barrage” of complaints about the “negative effects on well-being” was perfectly coordinated, but that it was explicitly encouraged by rector Petra De Sutter herself. If this is… pic.twitter.com/AUwzygmP8y
— Maarten Boudry (@mboudry) August 21, 2026
Here is the full letter from Ghent University suspending @nathancofnas. As you can see, it’s one long heckler’s veto: the decision is not so much about Cofnas’ actual violations as about the flood of complaints and protests the rector has received, the reputational damage to the university, the cancellations by certain speakers, the possible boycott against UGent due to Cofnas’ appointment, etc.
The letter holds Cofnas accountable for all the “tension and unrest” his presence has caused (even though he never even shows up on campus), and for the “severe psychological distress” among students and the “negative impact on the well-being” of colleagues.
Since the rector is transgender, here’s an analogy she might appreciate: this suspension is like banning a Pride event in a city because of the “unrest and tension” (read: anti-LGBT violence) the organizers are “causing” among religious fanatics. Or excluding trans women from political positions because of the “psychological distress” they may cause to people who believe in a sex binary.
It’s even worse than a conventional heckler’s veto, because I know that the rector has actively encouraged the “hecklers” to flood her with complaints, thereby giving the university a stick to beat the dog with. …
This internal email from a tenured professor at Nathan Cofnas’ department shows not only that the “barrage” of complaints about the “negative effects on well-being” was perfectly coordinated, but that it was explicitly encouraged by rector Petra De Sutter herself. If this is true, she was actively egging on the hecklers in order to grant them a veto, which makes the whole affair even worse. /2
I don’t know anything about Nathan Cofnas aside from the most basic facts, but what is clear is that he is being punished for exposing Jason Arday, and not for any supposed unacceptable views on race. He was hired after making them clear, and the research he based them on was apparently of sufficient quality that the university gave him a position many academics would die for. So spare me the character assassination, because it is irrelevant. I know this because the university implicitly endorsed him when it hired him.
Feel like I’m flogging a dead horse with this one, but it’s now a month after Cofnas’s article dropped and, to my knowledge, Hilary Cremin hasn’t done a single interview. Articles online just rehash wacky stuff she’s said in the past.
How is Cambridge letting her sit this out… pic.twitter.com/URe9NHZaFx
— Cosmopolitan Reactionary (@cosmorxn) August 21, 2026
People who hired Jason Arday:
• No consequences
Leadership in Cambridge who signed a letter saying Arday was fully innocent, and that there must be no further investigations about him:
• No consequences
First person who wanted to expose Arday’s fraud:
• Threatened with a big lawsuit, investigated by police for 4 months.
Person who exposed Arday’s fraud:
• Suspended from academic position
Completely broken, pro-fraud system.
Feel like I’m flogging a dead horse with this one, but it’s now a month after Cofnas’s article dropped and, to my knowledge, Hilary Cremin hasn’t done a single interview. Articles online just rehash wacky stuff she’s said in the past.
How is Cambridge letting her sit this out like a spectator? How are the media letting her away with it?
This is about whether speaking truths that the cultural and academic elite refuse to hear will get you punished, and the answer to that is obvious. The people who have perpetrated a fraud upon the world are either being lionized or excused without comment, while the people who exposed the fraud are being hounded, punished, and subject to enormous harassment.
The choice we face is about whether we, to the extent we can object, take that opportunity and do so in the strongest terms we can, and Rubio’s State Department is doing so. It is about free speech, obviously, but also about much more: will we let the people and institutions that shape our society and help develop the policies that run our lives be a bunch of frauds with arbitrary power over us all?
It’s not a small thing. Not only are academic institutions extremely powerful and influential, but the people with the power are talking about passing a law to shut everybody up when they get exposed.
Of course, the State Department should come down like a ton of bricks on these guys and use whatever power we have to push back. They need us more than we need them, and it most certainly IS our business. When academics come to us for money, they spin yarns about how vital to society and the economy they are; when they get into trouble, they act as if we have no stake in whether they are run properly.
Well, we do. And we have money and power of our own. Use it.
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