One of the academics who spearheaded the plagiarism allegation against Jason Arday has been suspended from his post as a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University in Belgium.
The academic, Nathan Cofnas, announced the development in a post on X, adding that he expects to be fired.
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“I was just suspended by Ghent University. They will almost certainly fire me. The decision was made by rector Petra De Sutter, a former Green Party leader,” he wrote.
The self-styled “race realist” works as a researcher at the university’s department of philosophy and moral sciences, according to the BBC.
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He previously worked at a Cambridge college but was dismissed in 2024 for espousing what was considered racist views. Mr Cofnas claimed that under true meritocracy, black people would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment”.
He joined Ghent University earlier this year and has since been criticised for his stance on hereditarianism.
In July, Mr Cofnas published an analysis of Mr Arday’s academic work, alleging that parts of the professor’s 2015 PhD thesis closely matched earlier academic material.
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In the analysis published on Substack, he claimed he ran Mr Arday’s work through plagiarism detection software. He found “many passages are lifted from the works of other scholars with minimal editing.
He said the thesis was similar or identical to work by other scholars, including a 2009 dissertation by Paula Zwozdiak-Myers.
Mr Arday, however, denied this. Mr Arday had acknowledged citation errors but denied intentional academic misconduct. He attributed problems with his doctoral work to inadequate supervision and his autism.
However, this allegation, along with many other questions about Mr Arday’s work and achievements, subjected the ex-Cambridge professor to weeks of intense media scrutiny.
He was also a victim of what many consider to be racially motivated attacks.
PREMIUM TIMES reported the death of the professor last week. He was found dead in London a few days after his resignation over these allegations.
In a statement announcing his resignation, Mr Arday said: “his decision to step down should not be interpreted as a loss of faith in scholarship.”
READ ALSO: Ex-Cambridge professor accused of plagiarism found dead
After Mr Arday’s death, Ghent University said it had begun investigating Mr Cofnas’s statements about the late professor’s work.
The university said it took “recent public statements made by Mr Cofnas very seriously”, and had taken “appropriate action.”
“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,” it said.
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