American academic who accused ex-Cambridge professor Jason Arday of plagiarism suspended

The fallout surrounding the plagiarism row involving late Cambridge professor Jason Arday has taken another turn, days after the 41-year-old was found dead in London.

Arday, who became Cambridge University’s youngest Black professor in 2023, had resigned from his role days before his death after weeks of scrutiny surrounding allegations over his academic work and questions about other parts of his career and achievements.

He denied the plagiarism claims, whilst Liverpool John Moores University previously upheld its decision to award him a PhD following an investigation.

Among those to publicly question Arday’s work was American academic Nathan Cofnas, a postdoctoral researcher in Ghent University’s department of philosophy and moral sciences.

As reported by the BBC, Cofnas claimed to have run Arday’s work through plagiarism detection software, alleging that ‘many passages are lifted with minimal editing, sometimes retaining copy-editing mistakes from the original source’.

Cofnas had publicly raised plagiarism allegations against Arday before his death (Facebook/Nathan Cofnas)

Now, Ghent University has confirmed Cofnas has been suspended whilst a preliminary disciplinary investigation takes place.

Cofnas first wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “I am under investigation by my university for discriminating against Arday.”

He later added: “I was just suspended by Ghent University. They will almost certainly fire me.”

Reported by NBC News and The Independent, the university said the suspension was being imposed ‘as a precautionary measure’ whilst it considers whether there are sufficient grounds for the case to be passed to the relevant disciplinary body.

Ghent University rector Petra De Sutter and vice-rector Herwig Reynaert also issued a joint statement following Arday’s death.

They said: “Ghent University stands for respect for human dignity and opposes discrimination, hatred and racism.

“We attach great importance to academic freedom and to open academic debate, even when views are controversial. However, that freedom is not unlimited.

“It goes hand in hand with responsibility and may be restricted in order to protect the rights of others.”

The university added that it was taking Cofnas’ recent public statements ‘very seriously’, but said it would not comment on the details of the disciplinary case in order to protect the confidentiality of the proceedings.

Arday became Cambridge University’s youngest Black professor in 2023 (University of Cambridge)

Cofnas describes himself as a supporter of ‘race realism’ and has argued that genes play a ‘non-trivial role’ in intelligence differences between racial groups.

His association with Cambridge University’s Emmanuel College was ended in 2024 following controversy over his writings, including a claim that under a true meritocracy, Black people would ‘disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment’.

Cofnas has said he is not racist and is in a legal dispute with Emmanuel College.

Arday’s death came after weeks of intense public attention surrounding the allegations. His family later said he had faced ‘a campaign of sustained abuse for more than three years’ and asked the press to leave them alone.

The Metropolitan Police said Arday’s death is being treated as unexpected but is not believed to be suspicious.

More than 30,000 people later attended a vigil in central London’s Trafalgar Square in his memory, according to organisers.