Dr Beck is a postdoctoral researcher in history and philosophy of science, Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University
Pieter Beck, recipient of one of the Jan Gillis prizes awarded by the Belgian Flemish Academy of Sciences, (c) Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschap en Kunsten (KVAB).
Guest contribution by Dr Pieter Beck. Originally published in Dutch by the Flemish weekly news magazine Knack and republished in English with the author’s permission. https://www.knack.be/nieuws/belgie/onderwijs/nathan-cofnas-heeft-wel-degelijk-de-deontologische-code-van-de-ugent-geschonden/
Disclaimer : Science for Justice NL is concerned with the ways in which weak, distorted or pseudoscientific claims can acquire institutional authority and contribute to discrimination, unfair decision-making and miscarriages of justice. We publish this guest contribution because it examines that broader relationship between scientific authority and injustice. The analysis and conclusions concerning this particular case remain those of the author.
Pieter Beck’s own disclaimer: Unless stated otherwise, the views expressed in this piece are Pieter’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of his institution.
In March, I was one of the more than 300 members of staff and students at Ghent University to sign the letter to rector Petra De Sutter, raising concerns about the appointment of postdoctoral researcher Nathan Cofnas. I did this not only as a member of Ghent University, but also as a member of the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, into which Cofnas had been hired.
I signed the letter because I am convinced that the beliefs Nathan Cofnas has put on record contravene the university’s own code of ethics, which prohibits incitement to discrimination, hatred and segregation, and the promotion of racial superiority or racial hatred. I will argue for that here, using many examples from Cofnas’s writing.
Critics of Cofnas always refer to the same set of passages or give a general paraphrase. Perhaps they do not want to repeat his ideas out of fear of circulating his ideas even further. I understand the sentiment, but I also think there is no better way to make people agree that Cofnas’s ideas are problematic than to just let Cofnas himself do the talking. Clever Cofnas-apologists seem to know this and are reluctant to add links to his blog in their texts, probably knowing well that the original text will not help their case.
But let us return to Ghent. In our letter five months ago to the rector, we argued that Cofnas had made several statements which breached the following regulations in the university’s code of ethics: “Freedom of expression is not unlimited: You do not incite discrimination, hatred, violence, or segregation against others” and “You do not spread ideas about the superiority of a race or racial hatred.”
What were those statements?
Most of them came from Cofnas’s blog “A Guide for the Hereditarian Revolution”, which had already sparked outrage at Cambridge University. The first one is the passage which has been quoted the most (and often the only one mentioned): “[In a meritocracy] Blacks would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment.” Less cited is the fact that he thinks that “Legislators should take into consideration how their policies will influence the racial makeup of society, and what effects this is likely to have.”
Cofnas also explicitly calls for racial segregation and “racial tribalism”, stating: “There must be some barriers set up between races in order for each one to express its own unique genius. And in the case of group conflict, racial tribalism can sometimes be the key to solving collective-action problems. If whites are attacked by whites, it makes sense for them to fight back as whites.”
Cofnas also blames “woke” for thinking that: “Whites are the ones who brought blacks out of Africa and created the conditions where they failed to develop a culture of homework, respect for the law, and strong nuclear families.”
Further down the text, he “explains” that this alleged characteristic of black people is genetic, due to the fact that they are “[genetically] adapted to hunting and gathering on the savanna”. This, he argues, is contrary to East Asian people who are diligent due to selective pressure on the rice paddy. For those who think that this is just controversial evolutionary psychology, I advise them to read this thread by statistical geneticist Sasha Gusev about Cofnas’s confused thinking here.
And, in case you were still left wondering whether Cofnas holds racist views against black people, he writes: “American Renaissance is … an important centre for high-quality discussions of race.” American Renaissance, see also American Renaissance (Wikipeda), is the online successor to a print magazine founded by white supremacist Jared Taylor and published by his New Century Foundation, which the Southern Poverty Law Centre identifies as a white-supremacist organisation. American Renaissance also describes itself as “race realist”, the word Cofnas also uses to refer to his own position.
During a lecture given in Ghent for the far-right student organisation KVHV in April, Cofnas was asked a question about this. He said that American Renaissance “hosted many serious scholars to talk about race differences” such as Michael Levin. Levin is a philosopher who received funding from the Pioneer Fund to write his book Why Race Matters. Pioneer Fund is the eugenic and racist organisation that was founded in 1937 to support studies looking into “the problem of race betterment.”
Levin is even more explicit than Cofnas, arguing, for example, in one of his articles for American Renaissance that black people have less concern for morality and that only white people could have invented science because “conformity to universal rules” is a “Caucasian speciality”. In another blog post, Cofnas makes it clear that his views on black inferiority are not limited to intelligence either: “The persistence of race differences in income, IQ, education, health, crime rates, etc., almost all disfavoring blacks, triggers an increasingly hysterical effort to find and correct the environmental cause.”
Again, this list of examples is not exhaustive. But by now I hope you can understand why I believe that Cofnas violated our university’s code of ethics.
In a conversation with the department in May, the rector argued that all these statements were made before Cofnas was hired in Ghent and could thus not be taken into account. However, Cofnas has by now made it sufficiently clear that he still subscribes to the views discussed above.
In March, when he already had an affiliation with Ghent University, he was interviewed by national television. Afterwards, Cofnas posted a link to “A Guide for the Hereditarian Revolution” in a reaction to the X-post of the TV-show. His official contract started on May 1. In a blog posted on May 11, he discusses the problems encountered at Cambridge due to his blog and refers to “A Guide” on several occasions, never distancing himself from the text.
At the end of May, the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, on several instances collectively issued a statement on the hire of Nathan Cofnas. The statement was taken offline after complaints from the hiring professor, Bouke de Vries. The central administration also preferred we take the statement down. We were however given permission to share the document individually.
Aside from the issue of racism, we also explained that we were deeply surprised that Cofnas was hired on the project at all; a project in political philosophy, whereas Cofnas consistently presented himself as a philosopher of biology. As a group, we found it very improbable that Nathan Cofnas was the best out of fourteen candidates for this job opening. We found no academic publications or other elements which could be used to argue that Cofnas has the required expertise on topics such as liberalism and demographics, which are central to the project. The formulated requirement in the job posting of a “strong research interest in liberalism” is also not borne out by Cofnas’s publication record or the rest of his CV.
You can look at this list of his published papers and decide for yourself. Cofnas seems to agree with us. In a recent podcast, the host asked Cofnas whether he was still “studying the same thing [i.e. race and IQ]” at Ghent University. Cofnas said that he was indeed still doing “the same work”.
So Cofnas apparently has not turned into a political philosopher after all! Perhaps Ghent University will sooner sanction Cofnas for breach of contract than for violating the code of ethics.
In a reaction to the department’s statement, Cofnas called us “a bunch of activists”. I never thought Nathan had a good sense of humour, but this is genuinely funny, coming from a man who built his whole identity around activism for the “hereditarian revolution” and writing blog post after blog post about the best way for the right to take over institutions. On August 15, Cofnas posted a link to one of his blogposts, which contains a passage in which he makes clear what his beliefs are about some of his academic colleagues and what he thinks should be done with them: “Our institutions are teeming with woke fanatics who will never listen to reason and should be purged.”
Cofnas defenders often want to frame his critics as people wanting to censor science, but it is important to note that Cofnas does not perform empirical research on race and IQ. Cofnas published two articles in which he argued that scientists should be free to investigate the connection between race and IQ. But these are articles in philosophy of science. I write articles on the history and philosophy of chemistry. That does not make me a chemist or someone who does “research in chemistry”.
In his academic articles, Cofnas presents the relation between race and IQ as merely a hypothesis: “there is nothing that would indicate that it is particularly unlikely that race differences will turn out to have a substantial genetic component.” Compare this to his language in the introduction of “A Guide”: “a hereditarian revolution is both feasible and desirable. “Race realism” is the best term to describe the scientifically correct position.” The problematic passages in the blogpost are not part of an empirical investigation, but are ideological statements based on a false representation of the existing science and on pseudoscientific sources.
Yesterday the university issued a statement, in which it announced that it will take “appropriate action”. The statement itself was quite vague, but less than 24 hours later (August 20) it was revealed that Cofnas had been suspended pending investigations. The university said it will not communicate during the investigation process.
I understand that the administration does not want to communicate as long as investigations are ongoing. But I do hope that the university will in the end come up with a statement about the ideas that Cofnas has spread as a member of Ghent University. I have argued that these ideas violated the university’s code of ethics from the beginning. They were formulated repeatedly and publicly.
They should be denounced clearly and publicly as well.
Editorial clarification: Ghent University’s statement of 19 August 2026 concerned recent public statements relating to the Jason Arday matter. The University has not disclosed the specific details or underlying grounds of the disciplinary investigation. The precautionary suspension should therefore be regarded simply as that: a precautionary suspension.
Appendix, by Richard Gill, 24 August 2026
Pieter Beck’s article only scratches the surface of the controversy at the University of Gent. I plan to write soon about aspects of Cofnas’ work (1) concerning statistical aspects of the nature versus nurture question, and (2) statistical aspects of his claim that [in a meritocracy] Blacks would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment. That claim was based on a false interpretation of data on the race of candidates admitted to Harvard University. I am not disputing the empirical fact – the data which he reproduces. But, pretty obviously, those applying to Harvard are not a cross-section of the entire US population. One has to study how it could be skewed in various ways, both disfavouring and favouring applications by BAME persons. I suspect that Dr Cofnas does not understand the difference between correlation and causation, and does not know the concept of confounding variables. He is a philosopher of ethics, I am not, but I do find this concerning. When an academic writes publicly on controversial matters, they should have the necessary academic background in order to speak authoritatively.
Already one can observe that his reasoning on the “nature versus nurture” question depends on faulty logic. He argues that environment (nurture) is unimportant, but his reasoning is plain wrong and contradicts very well-established science. See the earlier-mentioned thread by statistical geneticist Sasha Gusev for a start.
I also hope (in another separate post) to write about the Jason Arday case at my Alma Mater, the University of Cambridge. It involves scientific integrity, plagiarism … and pseudoscience. In my opinion, it signals an appalling decay in academic standards throughout academia. It is not a simple right versus left question, though extremists on both sides of that spectrum will be able to jump on it as an excuse to promote their extreme views.