“For a psychologist there are few questions that are as attractive as that concerning the relation of health and philosophy…In some it is their deprivations that philosophize; in others, their riches and strengths. The former need their philosophy…[because] what was at stake in all philosophizing hitherto was not at all ‘truth’ but rather something else—let us say health, future, growth, power, life.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
I, like everyone reading this report, had never heard of late Cambridge professor Jason Arday until the British press had turned him into a story. On some level, it is a strange story because it is so generic. The wife of billionaire Bill Ackman, Neri Oxman, is said to have plagiarized her dissertation, yet remains a sought-after designer and consultant. The VroniPlag Wiki documents hundreds of cases of plagiarism in Germany, most of them unknown, save for a politician who lost his doctorate before going into business. Joan Peters, a widely-debunked hoaxer, saw multiple reprints of her forgery, From Time Immemorial, long after she’d been exposed. Similarly, Jason Arday was hired under unusual circumstances then accused of plagiarism and fabulism. Nathan Cofnas, the racial hygienist who first reported on Arday (and who is himself the subject of an academic fraud investigation) thought Arday’s personal story—‘the autistic, high-achieving son of African migrants’—would bring Cofnas media attention. At present, Cofnas has no academic position. He lost a wrongful termination suit against Cambridge, and most recently, some temp work at Ghent. By contrast, Jason Arday enjoyed substantially more academic citations while teaching full-time. However, once Cofnas’s story had spread, British media hounded Jason Arday until he resigned. A few hours before Arday’s suicide, Cofnas threatened on TV: “The lesson is this what’s [sic] happened [sic] if you don’t give Cofnas a job!”
Though Cofnas cites revenge as his primary motive, he also believes he is being scapegoated for Arday’s death. Yet according to his own account, it was Cofnas who scapegoated Arday: “He’s getting a lot of attention because he took the plagiarism, which is fairly common in academia, too far, and told such crazy lies about his personal life…You know, there are so many cases just like Arday, but there isn’t that kind of story potential.” Arday’s misdeeds, both real and imagined, have been dissected at length. As a result, I am less interested in Jason Arday—an accused symptom—and more in Nathan Cofnas, who presents himself as the cure. (“After the revolution, I’ll be the head of the Department of Eugenics and Race Science at Harvard.”) The disease is DEI—characterized as ideological nepotism—and the antidote is meritocracy. I will, for the sake of argument, assume that Cofnas’s reporting on Arday is correct. Since Cofnas complains his research is unduly ignored, I will also take Cofnas’s racial theorizing seriously and analyze Cofnas by his preferred metrics. In brief, Cofnas believes in the innate inequality of races, which includes IQ, talent, and unspecified X-factors. Although he does not explicitly support segregation, he rejects policies which might force de-segregation where segregation is the norm. Yet it is his racial theorizing on Ashkenazi Jews which is most relevant. Cofnas believes the Ashkenazim “were subject to evolutionary selection pressures—presumably the ability to succeed in white-collar professions and/or Talmudic study—that favored higher general intelligence (g).” However, he warns that “Jewish success goes far beyond what can be explained by IQ alone. It does not follow that Jewish intellectual accomplishment is an illusion or due to nepotism.” Having thus done away with any possibility of racial nepotism, he classifies Jews as “shrewd”—adding that “stereotypes generally have a basis in reality.” He posits some (genetic?) X-factor to explain this, concluding that “Jews are better than gentiles at capitalizing on their g.”
Nathan Cofnas was born to an Ashkenazi family and grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He studied at Columbia, Cambridge, and Oxford, cultivating support from celebrity scholars (such as Steven Pinker) and fellow researchers. Apparently, this support network even spans the US government, while his social media fame dwarfs that of Jason Arday. Despite these advantages, Cofnas failed to secure a satisfactory academic position. Reportedly, he was hired for gig work under murky circumstances. Cofnas would go on to misrepresent his research, using Ghent University’s name to produce a “flood of shit” irrelevant to his professional duties. The Philosophy Department protested his hiring, partly because Cofnas had never published on the assigned topic. As a result, Cofnas was ridiculed by colleagues as a nepotism case. One philosopher of science (University of Toronto) called Cofnas’s work “of abysmal quality, riddled with false dichotomies, misinterpreted correlations, and straw-man reasoning—a technique to which philosophers are particularly allergic.” The publication of Cofnas’s much-ridiculed intelligence paper led to an editor’s resignation, while another apologized for not “requiring enough from the author [Cofnas]”. A letter to the editor concludes: “We simply could not comprehend how Philosophical Psychology, an important journal in our field, had allowed such shoddy work to pass.”
Now let us contrast these facts with the life of Jason Arday. While Cofnas was born into a privileged in-group with “good genetics,” Arday was born to Ghanaian immigrants with self-described deficits. Arday turned to physical fitness in order to cope, lecturing on Sports Pedagogy while training morning and night. The evidence suggests he belonged to semi-pro soccer clubs and completed at least a few marathons. Putting aside the truth or falsehood of Arday’s more fantastical claims, it is clear that he was fitter than 99% of academics—including Cofnas, who can only desiccate in the sun. Born in the UK, he worked through the equivalent of community college and attained his Ph.D. at a public university. In other words, he began his career with very few privileges, yet managed to leverage them into a top academic appointment. Whatever X-factor that Nathan Cofnas lacked, Arday must have had much more of it—plus some consanguinities. To wit: Arday’s face was handsome and proportional, which is often a sign of good genetics. His teeth suggest a man who did not reach for treats at every frustration. Though Arday claimed autism and (abeyant) psychosocial problems, his interviews are striking for his naturalness and comfort. Despite being older than Cofnas, he appeared happier, more youthful, and attained reproductive success. Arday fell in love, married, and had children for the typical reasons, whereas Cofnas “sarcastically” explains his marriage to a Korean woman: “to advance J[ewish] interests in ways that are difficult to explain.”
To test Cofnas’s racial theories, I have chosen three Ashkenazi Jews and three gentiles for this study. One gentile, Jason Arday, faced the harshest consequences of anyone, though he was never formally accused. Another is Germany’s Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a Roman Catholic Defense Minister whose doctorate was rescinded due to plagiarism. Despite being heavily defended by the German government, Guttenberg ultimately resigned, at which point his wealth exploded. He soon managed to acquire another Ph.D. “for personal reasons.” This is predictable in light of Guttenberg’s noble lineage—no ‘X-factor’ needs to be postulated. Equally predictable is the fate of Christopher Langan, a claimed 200+ IQ “loser”—to quote Cofnas—unable to “capitalize on his (g)” for “not being Jewish”. Although Cofnas does not deny the role of the environment, he never bothers to analyze Langan’s actual plight. Unlike Cofnas, Langan had a difficult childhood with poverty, abuse, and the near-total lack of role models. Unable to cope with online criticism, Langan once lashed out at me, threatening the same violence he had grown up with. Of course, Langan’s personal choices distend out of his traumas just as Cofnas’s resentments are the product of his lacks. Though Ashkenazi himself, Cofnas’s end will almost certainly be closer to the life and times of Christopher Langan—down to their shared racial hatreds—despite vast differences in privilege. Cofnas cannot see this, however, for he fears the individual life. And if he continues to fail, perhaps his group won’t, at which point Nathan Cofnas will simply take credit for their deeds.
I’ve already mentioned Neri Oxman, an Ashkenazi Jew who has played a major role in Israeli culture. Despite her plagiarism, Oxman’s Ph.D. was never rescinded. The lack of consequences was especially striking given that her husband, Bill Ackman, had just forced Harvard’s (black) president to resign over similar allegations. Ackman would spend the next several weeks defending his wife, though he didn’t need to, as the news cycle mysteriously dried up. Years later, Neri Oxman received an honorary doctorate and is now at the peak of her career, having capitalized upon her (g) through another Ashkenazi power broker, Jeffrey Epstein. According to Grok, Arday’s pre-death media coverage was far larger and more sustained than that of Oxman despite her fame, cultural import, and personal entanglements with a notorious sex criminal. Finally, there is the case of Joan Peters (née Friedman), who argued that Palestinians are recent immigrants with no real claims upon the Holy Land. This was based on poor use of statistics and outright fraud—incidentally, what Arday stands accused of, though in much more limited form. Holocaust scholar Norman Finkelstein was largely responsible for exposing Peters, and her once-celebrated book was universally panned. Though Peters never wrote again, she continued her activism, collected her royalties, and was eulogized in Israel for her malfeasance.
Are such examples unfair? Because it seems that, Jew or gentile, networks (of which race is but one) explain outcomes at the highest level of power. While race might be the price of entry, it is one’s ability to satisfy power that keeps one in its thrall. To the reasonable observer, it is less that Ashkenazim have racial gifts, and more that they are given a bit of cushion. Of course, this has been loaned to them on the harshest terms, to the point that they are called the moneylenders! And why not? Jews are ‘useful’ to gentiles because they look like them, are forced to do their bidding, and will ultimately take the fall. Yet that comes later. For now, gentile must discipline gentile and undo the “damage” of a rising caste. This is what Nathan Cofnas was recruited to do, though he is much too stupid to understand it. As a result, one man is dead while a corpse has gone on living. And although humor is not Cofnas’s strong suit, the universe is presenting him an opportunity to do something biblically funny. Thankfully, the instructions on this point are clear. The haft must also go in after the blade, and the fat close upon it. Courage, Nathan! Or else your strange toil will have been for naught.
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More from Alex Sheremet: In The Dark: Analyzing Woody Allen’s “Husbands And Wives” (1992), ANALYSIS: Misreading Wallace Stevens’ “The Emperor of Ice-Cream”, SEASONAL GRUNGE: Spring & Winter in NYC on 35mm Film