UK Politics

[Phylo]

"Here's how I exposed Jason Arday and Cambridge" | David Starkey Talks to Nathan Cofnas​

I won't deny that watching Cambridge University's management scramble to contain the fallout from their disastrous recruitment of the dodgy academic Jason Arday has been sweetly satisfying. These are, in some instances, the very same people who sprang into action against me back in 2020, casting me out of the institution to which I'd been associated for 56 years.

Their decision to offer Mr Arday a Chair Professorship - the most coveted position in academia - on the basis of his plagiarised and completely meritless work has struck a hugely damaging blow to the practices of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in higher education. They will regroup of course, and do everything they can to prevent further probes into a system by which white and Asian students and academics are discriminated against in the name of racial representation, but for now let us enjoy the spectacle of their humiliation.

There are, of course, grimmer aspects to this story. Far from being the kind of doe-eyed, dreadlocked black Bambi he presented himself as, Mr Arday employed some of the most aggressive lawyers in the country to go after people who were looking into his academic record. One journalist for the Times Higher Education supplement was investigated by the Metropolitan Police over his reporting. A student who requested they no longer be supervised by Mr Arday was accused of racism. Just as we've seen how DEI in the police force results in a young man like Henry Nowak dying in handcuffs while his killer stands over him chatting amiably to officers; we see how DEI in education can ruin the careers of honest, decent people, while charlatans reap undeserved accolades.

My guest this week is one such victim of DEI in education. Nathan Cofnas is an academic, a philosopher of biology, who penned an article back in 2024 in which he argued that academic elites were being dishonest about average differences in intelligence between different racial groups. This resulted in a year-and-a-half long investigation by the university that saw him effectively quarantined until his contract of employment ran out. Now working at another university, it was Cofnas who exposed Jason Arday's rampant plagiarism, after being alerted to it by whistleblowers at Cambridge. If it hadn't been for Cofnas's intellectual bravery, and the open marketplace of ideas that we now have on X, the chances of this scandal ever emerging are close to non-existent.