Cofnas out at Cambridge

Nathan Cofnas has been removed from his position at Cambridge University. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, he was removed because of his race realism, which I have long agreed with and is apparent in what is posted at TOO (including 27 articles on race realism  and many more on Africans and African-Americans). On the other hand, he has been obsessed with attacking me—often in academic journals (journals that I have published in back in the good old days). See here. In general I have been prevented from responding to him except on my website.

I regard him as an atypical Jewish academic activist: acting to defend the Jewish community—and quite possibly seeing race realism as conforming to the interests of Jews as an intelligent, wealthy elite; recently I heard Alan Dershowitz defend Jewish power, saying something like, “Jews deserve everything they have attained in America.”

Nevertheless Cofnas has attacked some of the ideas on race differences (including IQ) that have been originated and long championed by mainstream Jewish intellectuals and which have become dominant in academia and a pillar of political correctness.

Obviously, I have a very low opinion of Cofnas’s  intellectual honesty, his scholarship (he clearly was unacquainted with the vast majority of the literature reviewed in The Culture of Critique), and even his ability to form cogent arguments—something that one would not expect from a person who is trained in philosophy.

From the Daily Mail:

A fellow at the University of Cambridge who has sparked backlash with his comments on race has been dropped by Emmanuel College where he was a research associate.

Nathan Cofnas, an early career research fellow in the Faculty of Philosophy, is understood to have had his relationship with the college ended following an investigation into his conduct.

Mr Cofnas came under fire in February after he published a blog post which claimed the number of black professors at Harvard would ‘approach zero’ in a meritocracy, and that ‘Blacks would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment.’

He also dismissed equality between people of different ethnicities as a ‘thesis’ that is ‘based on lies’.

Mr Cofnas, who describes himself as a ‘race-realist’, is understood to have been informed of the college’s decision by letter on April 5, which stated his posts were in violation of its diversity and inclusion policies.

According to Varsity, the letter stated: ‘The Committee first considered the meaning of the blog and concluded that it amounted to, or could reasonably be construed as amounting to, a rejection of Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI and EDI) policies.’

It added: ‘The Committee concluded that the core mission of the College was to achieve educational excellence and that diversity and inclusion were inseparable from that. The ideas promoted by the blog therefore represented a challenge to the College’s core values and mission.’ …

 

 

17 replies
  1. Herbert
    Herbert says:

    His Jewish origin can no (longer) be taken into consideration in this case, because Mr. Cofnas leaned too far out of the window called “inclusion”, and therefore has to be excluded; he now represents a considerable eroding danger for the pseudo-scientific edifice of lies.

  2. Nathan Cofnas
    Nathan Cofnas says:

    Regarding the unbelievably dishonorable character of those on the far right, especially the JQ right:

    Kevin MacDonald says he has “mixed feelings” about me being fired. (I was actually fired from my college, not the university.) He can’t say that he is against it.

    No mainstream academic has more strongly supported MacDonald’s right to academic freedom than I have. When his paper criticizing me in Philosophia was threatened with retraction, I published an article in Quillette defending him. As he knows, I lobbied hard (albeit unsuccessfully) behind the scenes to save his paper. I have loudly opposed all acts of censorship against him. Now he repays me by gloating about me being fired for talking about race realism.

    MacDonald’s low moral character shines through in everything he does, from his shoddy work to the way he has conducted himself in his debate with me. He purports to expose the secret biases of others, but his scholarship is Robin DiAngelo-style motivated reasoning. If X is evidence for his theory, not-X is evidence, too! (Note that my own race realism is said to be part of the group evolutionary strategy.) He is a self-identified “ethnic activist” who accuses anyone who points out his errors and misrepresentations of being driven by ethnocentrism. He says Jewish intellectuals have a genetically and/or culturally transmitted disposition to become “gurus,” while he has created his own cult of dimwits. He is the first to resort to ad hominem attacks, while at the same time complaining that everyone else treats him unfairly.

    I understand the prima facie appeal of JQism, and I’m glad that I spent time engaging with the strongest version of it. My arguments are on the record for anyone who wants to see them. But one should have no illusions about JQism being rooted primarily in honest mistakes. It is a magnet for disturbed minds and personalities who, in an alternate reality where they actually obtained power, would probably end up killing each other before they had a chance to do anything to Jews.

    • Kevin MacDonald
      Kevin MacDonald says:

      And so it continues. After agreeing to a debate at a Counter-Currents conference where we would have had equal time to present our views and rebut each other, you backed out. And if they weren’t an ideal audience for you, it would have been filmed and placed online for all the world to see and judge for themselves in perpetuity. A C-C crowd would have been civilized and respectful.
      Yes, I am an ethnic activist but I admit it proudly after coming to my positions after spending years reading Jewish history; until then I was a Reagon Republican. On the other hand, you never acknowledge that you are a Jewish ethnic activist—like a long line of Jewish ethnic activists who attack anyone who criticizes Jews by making up attributions of psychopathology without knowing anything about their psychological makeup and without acknowledging that their ethnic commitments have anything to do with it—as discussed in Culture of Critique. Many of them have been and are in prominent academic positions. Indeed they dominate the academic discussion of anti-Semitism.
      Please give an example where I claim that “If X is evidence for his theory, not-X is evidence, too!” Your example is my claim that your race realism “is said to be part of the group evolutionary strategy.” But I phrase it tentatively: “quite possibly.” And as I have repeatedly written, in order to understand Jewish influence, one has to figure out where the great bulk of Jewish power—in the media, in campaign donations, lobbying, academic writing, etc.—are directed. Cofnas’s theory apparently relies on something like the idea that if you can find one Jew who is out of step with the Jewish community, there is no sense in trying to say that the mainstream Jewish community has any influence. For example, there are some Jews who are immigration patriots and oppose the demographic transformation of the U.S. But that’s not where the power and money of the Jewish community are mainly directed. Check out the ADL for example, or my chapter on immigration in Culture of Critique. Same with the Israel Lobby: Some Jews oppose it, like Jewish Voice for Peace and Mondoweiss; and, as Mearsheimer and Walt note, what the Israel Lobby wants may ultimately be bad for Jews and Israel, so some Jews may oppose the Lobby for Jewish reasons. But in fact, the power of the Jewish community is directed in support of Israel no matter how genocidal it is and no matter how they treat the Palestinians (the phrase “open air prison” describing Gaza and the West Bank to a great extent comes to mind, and no matter how much the behavior of Israel contravenes the Enlightenment values of the West and apologetic accounts of Jewish ethics. Indeed, as in all of Israel’s wars, there has been a huge upsurge of Jewish identity since Oct. 7, including among a lot of Jews who had little, if any, commitment to Judaism prior to the war. Your claim that Jews are not particularly ethnocentric is transparently ridiculous.
      Similarly, the power of Jewish academics has been vastly more directed against race realism than in favor of it and, in my opinion, Jewish academics were the main force against the race realism that was dominant in America in the 1920s–Chapter 2 of Culture of Critique. While I think your work opposing my research is garbage, I commend your work in race realism. But as noted, it’s quite possible to accept race realism for Jewish-motivated reasons; but such attitudes do not reflect the mainstream views of the Jewish community. And I commend your commitment to free speech, but the ADL is now leading the battle for internet censorship (just ask Elon Musk), and for entirely Jewish reasons.

      • Nathan Cofnas
        Nathan Cofnas says:

        Based on this comment, it sounds like you would like to have a live debate, which is great news. But it is not reasonable for you to say that you are only willing to debate me in the presence of 100 neo-Nazis (the original plan). Please suggest a non-neo-Nazi moderator who would be acceptable for you. We’ll do the debate online.

        • Kevin MacDonald
          Kevin MacDonald says:

          As usual, you don’t respond to me with an actual argument. But I’ll think about how to do it. C-C crowds are coat-and-tie people, all quite civilized; I don’t recall any Nazis.

          • Nathan Cofnas
            Nathan Cofnas says:

            You complained that I “backed out” of the debate “where we would have had equal time to present our views and rebut each other.” So it’s weird that now you ask “What exactly would be the point of this debate?”

          • Kevin MacDonald
            Kevin MacDonald says:

            Can I change my mind about the value of a debate? The written word allows reflection, getting the references together, thinking about it, etc. And isn’t plagued by extraneous factors like how verbally aggressive one is and how much showmanship is involved. Again I ask, what is the point of this debate, after 6 years and ~50,000 words on your attacks from me? It should end.

          • Pierre de Craon
            Pierre de Craon says:

            Kevin’s second thoughts—viz., that further debate is unlikely to serve any substantive interest, least of all that of Truth—are persuasive. Even were they otherwise, I hardly think that Lipton Matthews should be KM’s or anyone else’s choice for a debate moderator.

            Even this brief article, for example, leaves one feeling that Matthews is neither mature enough nor familiar enough with the subversive aspect of Jewish participation in Western societies since at least the Enlightenment to be able to overcome a lifetime’s worth of brainwashing, which will tell him that any criticism of Jews qua Jews is inherently warped and wicked and thus not to be credited.

            Besides, in neither argumentation nor composition does Matthews impress. His sentence structure is frequently errant, clumsy, or both. Moreover, he thinks that the word “incredulous” means “unbelievable.”

            Ergo, this reader votes thumbs down.

    • Rudolf
      Rudolf says:

      “Most gracious” race-realist Mr. Cofnas,

      if Prof. MacDonald had not an extremely noble but “low moral character” [sic], as you unfairly and inaccurately insult him, then he would unquestionably be just one of the pitiful countless creatures who tell the Jews what they want to hear and kiss their bottoms every day for the rest of their lives.

      Your accusation is therefore incredibly unfounded, malicious, unobjective and mere projection, presumably you believe that you can now pin your frustration about your rebuff in Cambridge on others, an irrational fallacy that suggests a certain, not insignificant, emotional immaturity.

      Nevertheless, I wish you “much success” (note the irony-signaling quotation marks) in continuing your academic career in the name of whitewashing any Jewish responsibility for the catastrophic world events of (at least) the last 200 years.

      I completely lack the slightest assumption of who you want to continue to convince with this (apart from yourself and “your own kind”), which is absolutely dishonest. If you even accuse us of (a totally non-existent!) “schadenfreude”, you are just overestimating your own value and significance in the lives of non-Jewish people.

      Best Regards

  3. OpenBordersForIsrael
    OpenBordersForIsrael says:

    Hi Kevin,

    I would love to see this debate – understand if you are reluctant to take it on – but there are plenty on the dissident right who would do it – I am thinking Mark Collett, David Duke or Andrew Joyce. Independent moderators would be easy to find – Lipton Matthews or Ed Dutton could do it. Ultimately what we would gain from it is that your work is scholarly excellent could be difficult for laymen to understand – especially given the length of some of your books. A debate summarising the points and Cofnas counter-points would be easily digestible for people who are getting into the JQ. Also, our side would easily win, with Cofnas’ only counter-point effectively being “the fact that we repeatedly and lopsidedly espouse ideas that undermine the cohesion of white,Christian societies, but usually endorse the opposite policies for Israel, is purely a coincidence. Nothing to see here, folks”.

  4. ignotus
    ignotus says:

    The blind spot in the jewish perspective is evident in NC’s retort above and elsewhere. NC is a thoughtful and sophisticated writer, yet he is limited by his preconceptions and at some point will resort to disqualification to prevail. The blind spot is also clear in Maurice Samuel’s “You Gentiles” (1924). Samuel’s thesis is that the differences in mentality between jew and gentile are irreconcilable (although his focus is on the orthodox jew, which was more prevalent then than it is now, he extends his conclusions to the reform jew as well, however “assimilated”). He also explicitly admits early on that “We could never have built a world like yours” (Ch.I, Sec.III) and recognizes the destructive effect jews have on that gentile world (Ch.IX). Yet throughout he is firmly in the jewish camp and deems their mindset superior, concluding with the demand that jews be granted full citizenship rights like everyone else in gentile societies. The gall. I strongly recommend Samuel’s book for the clarity and sophistication of its exposition, as well as the blind spots in the jewish mindset it evinces.

    On a separate note, it is indeed quite a feminine mindset to claim victimhood status, and demand authority without responsibility. I wonder if the parallel between the jewish and female minds has been drawn more thoroughly. If done well, it could make for interesting reading.

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