The first rule of the Republican playbook is: when under scrutiny, start a witch hunt to distract from your own crimes. This is precisely what Nathan Cofnas did, and with great success. Whenever someone points out that Cofnas should never have been hired by the University of Ghent on the merits of his “research” on “Liberalism’s fertility problem,” or notes that his statements about the hereditarian “revolution” as a postdoc violate the university’s code of ethics, or mentions his ties to a dark-money network funded by billionaire eugenicist Peter Thiel, people immediately respond: “But Arday committed plagiarism!” This claim, even if granted, has nothing to do with Cofnas’ unfitness for the postdoc position, or his dubious qualifications for academic employment in general.  

Note that, back in April, I myself published a blog post arguing that Cofnas should never have been awarded the UGhent postdoc, based on evidence of his own sloppy, hypocritical, and derivative research – research that could hardly have justified his hiring in such a competitive job market. This was months before Cofnas wrote about Arday. Yet when I bring up these same arguments today, someone inevitably responds, “But Arday plagiarized!” 

This is what is known in politics as whataboutism, “a propaganda strategy of responding to an accusation with a counter-accusation instead of offering an explanation or defense against the original accusation.” As philosophers know, whataboutism – which is one of Trump’s favourite strategies – “is an informal fallacy that the accused party uses to avoid accountability—whether attempting to distract by shifting the conversation’s focus away from their behaviour or attempting to justify themselves by pointing to the similar behaviour (which may be true or false, but irrelevant) of their opponent or another party who is not the current subject of discussion.” 

But many philosophers, despite being ostensible experts in informal fallacies, are falling for it. Some have signed an open letter “opposing the publishment of Nathan Cofnas for whistlebowling,” even though whistleblowing was not why we was dismissed (though this is what Cofnas wants us to believe). As the opposing open letter supporting Cofnas’ dismissal observes,  

Well before Cofnas received international media attention following the death of prof. Jason Arday, the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences expressed their concerns about Cofnas’s views and the process that led to his hire (see here)…. Cofnas has repeatedly made statements that according to us violate the university’s code of ethics… The timeline of the complaints preceding the death of Jason Arday makes it clear that Cofnas’s “whistleblowing” was not the cause for the university’s actions now.

I suspect that, if Cofnas has not accused Arday of plagiarism (along with making inflammatory comments about Black people only exceling at “sports and entertainment,” about becoming the head of a “eugenics and race science program at Harvard” after the hereditarian “revolution,” and other sensationalist claims), UGhent’s investigation would have resulted in his dismissal anyway, albeit it on a slower timeline and with less media attention. That is, Arday’s suicide did not cause Cofnas’ dismissal, it merely expedited it. 

Given philosophers’ expertise in informal fallacies and critical thinking, one has to wonder whether the signatories actually believe the petition they signed. People sometimes endorse a claim they don’t believe for the purpose of “virtue signaling,” or aligning themselves with the politics of the target, whom they (often incorrectly) assume to be in the right. 

There is also the question of patronage in the new gilded age. When philosophy departments are being aggressively defunded and tenure is being eliminated, there is still big money to be made – at least by eugenicists. As the Byline Times reported, billionaires are funneling dark money into eugenics research, while simultaneously automating jobs and dismantling the welfare state, creating a hellish dystopia. The obscenely rich seem to view themselves as superhuman gods, entitled manipulate the human genome and destroy the social fabric, hoping to create a Gattaca-like dictatorship from the ashes of the old world.  

Some commentators have noted that Cofnas stands to make vastly more money as a spokesperson for eugenics than a mere postdoc, i.e., someone who is supposed to be committed to the unselfish pursuit of wisdom rather than beholden to market forces or the interests of private benefactors. Could some of his supporters have similar aspirations of grandeur? 

Setting aside the question of motives, the burgeoning support for Cofnas, a “hereditarian” theorist who seemingly hopes to revive Harvard’s eugenic legacy, confirms what disabled philosophers have been saying all along: the profession is a safe haven for eugenicists intent on using their institutional prestige to whitewash the racist and ableist fever dreams of billionaires.