The recent uproar at Ghent University — where over 300 staff and students signed a petition (initially reported around March 12, 2026, via VRT NWS and Brussels Times coverage) demanding the removal of philosopher Nathan Cofnas from his postdoctoral research position in the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences — exemplifies a depressingly familiar script in modern academia. Cofnas, hired for a project on philosophy of biology, has been targeted primarily for his writings on race, intelligence differences, and related topics, which critics label as "scientific racism" or pseudoscience. The petition, echoed in a Change.org drive that gained hundreds more signatures, calls for his hiring to be stopped or reversed, framing his views as intolerable racism rather than debatable hypotheses.
Regardless of where one lands on the substance of IQ group differences (the black-white gap's existence is well-documented in psychometric literature, though explanations — environmental, genetic, mixed — remain contested), the truly shocking element here is not the debate itself but the knee-jerk impulse to exclude rather than engage. This is not about refuting arguments with evidence; it's about purging the arguer from the institution. Cofnas becomes a symbol of the broader pattern: when certain lines of inquiry touch on race, heredity, or inequality, the response is cancellation, not conversation. The Counter-Currents piece defending him highlights historical data (e.g., persistent gaps in early 20th-century tests like Army Alpha/Beta, Coleman Report findings) to argue his position fits within legitimate scholarly bounds, yet the petition sidesteps engagement entirely, opting for demands to "reconsider" or fire him outright.
This is far from new. The suppression of hereditarian or race-realist research on intelligence dates back reliably to the late 1960s and 1970s, when Arthur Jensen's 1969 Harvard Educational Review article ("How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?") ignited a firestorm. Jensen documented evidence suggesting genetic factors partly explain observed IQ variances (including racial gaps), sparking protests, physical assaults on speakers like Hans Eysenck (punched during a 1970s lecture), death threats, disrupted talks, and media vilification portraying such work as inherently racist. Eysenck, a vocal defender of empirical inquiry into heredity, faced similar mobbing. Richard Herrnstein's 1971 Atlantic piece on class and IQ (no race mention) drew immediate racist accusations. By the mid-1970s, a "Resolution on Scientific Freedom" signed by Jensen, Eysenck, Herrnstein, and others decried the "suppression, punishment and defamation" of researchers exploring human behaviour genetics.
The pattern repeated: Linda Gottfredson faced promotion denials and departmental backlash in the 1990s for work on intelligence's occupational implications; conferences were cancelled or funding blocked if Pioneer Fund ties (often smeared as racist) surfaced. Surveys like Snyderman & Rothman (1988) revealed experts privately aligned more with Jensenite views than media caricatures suggested, yet public silence prevailed due to fear of sanctions — lost grants, shunning, firings. The 1994 Bell Curve controversy amplified this: co-authors Herrnstein and Murray endured boycotts, protests, and institutional pressure despite data-driven arguments.
Ghent's petition is just the latest iteration. A counter-effort (noted in Aporia Magazine coverage) supports Cofnas's academic freedom with over 100 academic signatures, but the dominant dynamic remains mob-driven exclusion. Rector Petra De Sutter has so far stood firm against outright dismissal, but the pressure mounts — open letters from 45 philosophers accusing "racist pseudoscience," social media amplification, and Change.org momentum.
At this point, the university system has proven itself incapable of sustaining open inquiry on taboo topics without descending into ideological policing. When disagreement equals disqualification, when petitions outnumber peer-reviewed rebuttals, and when historical patterns of suppression (from Jensen's era to now) repeat without meaningful reform, the case for drastic measures strengthens. Close down the universities: radically defund, decentralise, or replace the bloated, conformity-enforcing bureaucracies that masquerade as seats of learning.
True scholarship thrives in environments that prize evidence over equity dogma, debate over denunciation. Today's campuses increasingly function as ideological echo chambers where certain questions are forbidden, not falsified. If academia cannot police itself against this recurring suppression — now spanning over five decades — then perhaps the only honest response is to starve the beast: redirect resources to independent researchers, private institutes, or online platforms free from institutional capture. Until then, episodes like Cofnas at Ghent will keep reminding us: the real threat to intellectual progress isn't controversial hypotheses; it's the academics who treat them as heresy.
https://counter-currents.com/2026/03/the-historical-evidence-behind-cofnas-position-on-iq/