On April 2, American researcher Nathan Cofnas is expected to give a lecture to KVHV students. His arrival is strongly criticized since Nathan Cofnas defends a “racial realism” which believes that “IQ is linked to race”. The American was hired at the start of the year at the University of Ghent to collaborate on a project with Bouke de Vries. His arrival caused an outcry, the same one expected following the announcement of his conference on Thursday.
Le président du KVHV, Jonathan Goossens, a déclaré à HLN that the student association did not endorse Nathan Cofnas’ comments but that it was a question of fueling the academic debate. “As an association, we believe it is important to encourage academic debate. We are fighting against academic censorship,” he declares.
Des théories de “pseudoscienceâ€
The philosophical researcher, having dealt with questions related to biology and ethics, defends the thesis according to which there are intellectual differences between races. Several of his posts on his blog have caused controversy. He believes that without quotas, there would no longer be black people in positions of responsibility or in teaching, and that they would only be present in entertainment and sport. More generally, he defends the idea that racial categories do not have the same intellectual abilities and believes that blacks are less intelligent than whites.
He also uses IQ tests to claim that white Americans have more intellectual abilities than black Africans. These tests in question above all report that the IQ gap has been largely closed for more than 50 years. The researcher’s theory also ignores environmental factors such as different access to nutrition or education. According to Nathan Cofnas and the defenders of this “racial realism”, these arguments are part of a “woke” dogma. Many researchers consider that Nathan Cofnas is in fact creating pseudoscience to fuel racist discourse and thinking.
A criticized hiring
The announcement of his hiring in Ghent provoked an outcry, more than fifty complaints and hundreds of signatures on a petition. The University, through the rector Petra De Sutter, believes that it must defend academic freedom through the search for controversial positions, and not engage in censorship. The rector, however, commented to the VRT that the researcher’s comments could be “hurtful or worrying” and that she remained attentive to these signals. “We will therefore continue to monitor recruitment in compliance with the applicable legal and institutional framework,” she added.
