I so want to put this story in the rearview mirror. It disgusts me on so many levels.
But since the fundamental corruption of academia is one of the most important problems in our society, given its pivotal role in setting the cultural and ideological tone of our decaying society, and because this is "my beat," I am condemned to wallow in this intellectual sewer.
The latest twist in this very sorry story is that Nathan Cofnas, the academic who first exposed (in public — many people inside academia were already well aware) Jason Arday's fabulist history and his history of academic fraud, has been suspended from his position at Ghent University.
This may be the single most egregious structural failure I’ve seen in academia, out of a lot of egregious failures.
— Jack (@tracewoodgrains) August 20, 2026
A system that suspends the person reporting academic fraud while conspiring to circle the wagons around the fraud itself is fundamentally, irreparably rotten. https://t.co/8xJYLVl8qa
None of us should really be surprised, I suppose. It was almost inevitable. The backlash against those who exposed Arday has been building since even before Arday committed suicide, for the very same reasons that Arday was protected and promoted by Cambridge University and almost every academic.
Arday was a DEI poster boy, which is another way of saying that he was just one player in an entire League of academic fraudsters.
DEI is based on a fundamentally fraudulent idea that elevating people based on their race, gender, sexual preferences, or similar characteristics will enhance the institutions that do so, helping them achieve their stated goals even better than if they focused on achievement and competence alone.
I am under investigation by my university for discriminating against Arday pic.twitter.com/mOyUPh2Y0B
— Nathan Cofnas (@nathancofnas) August 20, 2026
That is an obviously false premise, and academics at Cambridge and throughout the Western World chose Jason Arday as their poster boy to "prove" this fantastical and damaging idea. They needed him to be the "best in the world" and a superman in all respects to rub our noses in the excrement they deposited on the university quad, and when Arday was exposed, their own fraud was as well.
And their fraud is far more important than Arday's. All Arday did was produce "research" that nobody read; his larger importance was as the exemplar that DEI is great, and everybody who opposes it is a racist neanderthal.
As punishment for American academic @nathancofnas being the first to report publicly that Jason Arday’s DEI research was full of plagiarism, Ghent University, where he is a researcher, announced he is being investigated.
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) August 20, 2026
The person who announced the investigation is the trans…
As punishment for American academic @nathancofnas being the first to report publicly that Jason Arday’s DEI research was full of plagiarism, Ghent University, where he is a researcher, announced he is being investigated.
The person who announced the investigation is the trans rector. He was recently forced to admit that a speech he gave at the university was written with AI and included fake quotes.
Arday's suicide provided these fraudsters with the excuse they needed to shoot back by changing the subject from their own and Arday's fraud to the much safer ground of arguing that his fraud did not deserve the death penalty, which "we" imposed by "hounding" him.
Of course, that's absurd, but emotionally satisfying for the people who are most at fault: the people who created the fraud themselves.
Arday clearly suffered from mental illness, which made him particularly susceptible to the siren song that the DEI advocates sang to him. They set him up for a fall, and because of his mental health issues, that fall was much harder for him than it would have been for many.
The man leading the investigation into Nathan Cofnas (the man who played a leading role in exposing a fraudster in academia) at Ghent University is a cross-dressing member of the Green Party https://t.co/cZ0ZUGa6lB pic.twitter.com/Kkd9PD2HkL
— ripx4nutmeg (@ripx4nutmeg) August 20, 2026
The University of Ghent, which is now fielding questions and complaints (even more complaints than before the Arday saga) about @nathancofnas, is led by a transvestite larperman.
Rector Dave de Sutter has always had a dodgy relationship with the truth that extends far beyond forcing others to pretend he's a woman.
When he got the job as head of the university (in a role set aside for a woman, no less!), he stated that if a professor publicly claims there is no genocide happening in Gaza, they must be formally confronted and held accountable.
No comment on Gaza, personally, but this is what he was saying: if a researcher treats genocide (which he called 'science') denial as a valid hypothesis -- meaning if a researcher designs a study that actively proves that a genocide is *not* occurring - that crosses a line that should never be crossed in academia, and the university should not remain neutral about it.
I've already written about the push for "Jason's Law," which would essentially make it illegal to write much about scandals like this, and it's obvious that many in academia want to use Arday's suicide as an opportunity to purge the dissidents who oppose this vile ideology from their midst.
It's another example of an abuser's logic, otherwise known as DARVO: Deny, Accuse, Reverse Victim and Offender.
Cambridge University and all the academics who promoted Arday as a demigod are the offenders here, but Arday's death gives them the opportunity to accuse the people who exposed their fraud of being cruel racists, and they are taking full advantage of it.
It's the same emotional blackmail used to promote transing kids: unless you allow this horrific harm, people will DIE!
Nothing illustrates the hysteria and the flight from truth and reality more than the fact that Petra de Sutter, in charge of University of Gent, who has suspended Nathan Cofnas for unspecified thought crimes, is a cross-dressing male. We are supposed to pretend he is a woman,… pic.twitter.com/AnqKQLzoHi
— Bo 🏴 🇬🇧 🇵🇱 (@Bozenka_2023) August 20, 2026
Nothing illustrates the hysteria and the flight from truth and reality more than the fact that Petra de Sutter, in charge of University of Gent, who has suspended Nathan Cofnas for unspecified thought crimes, is a cross-dressing male. We are supposed to pretend he is a woman, like we were supposed to pretend Jason Arday was a gifted scholar with autism.
It's appalling. It's corrupt. It can, quite literally, wind up with people dying because of the evil practices they promote.
Jason Arday would almost certainly be alive today if he had been steered away from an academic career he clearly was not suited for. He had talents, obviously. He certainly could tell compelling enough stories, fictional though they were. Perhaps he would have been a better actor than Jussie Smollett and would have done well in that world.
It's been illuminating to see the political appointments running universities.
— Bo 🏴 🇬🇧 🇵🇱 (@Bozenka_2023) August 20, 2026
'Petra' (formerly Paul) De Sutter, who has suspended Nathan Cofnas pending a disciplinary investigation at the University of Ghent, talks a lot here about seeing the other person's point of view.… pic.twitter.com/nsGDIm5Naw
Certainly, he wouldn't have been subjected to such public humiliation.
But the idea that we all must participate in a fraud in order to prevent notional harms is ridiculous, and worse: it demands that we give up the enterprise of learning and speaking the truth, which is the entire point of academic institutions.
At least it used to be. And the only reason why we support academia is for that purpose. If the new purpose is to perpetrate fraud on society, then we should just let these institutions die.
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