Ghent professors challenged expertise of Jason Arday’s plagiarism accuser

Allegations Nathan Cofnas was unqualified for Ghent role and would cause ‘negative impact’ made to senior leaders months ago Nathan Cofnas, the academic who accused Jason Arday of plagiarism, has been accused of having “very limited expertise” for his academic role by professors also working at Ghent University, who say he has a “far-right agenda”. Cofnas secured a postdoctoral research role “on the future of liberalism” at Belgium’s Ghent University in March. Weeks later, Ghent’s department of philosophy and moral sciences handed a 19-page statement to university officials, setting out why it believed it was “improbable” that Cofnas was the best candidate. Jason Arday, the University of Cambridge sociology professor, was found dead on 14 August after weeks of intense media scrutiny of his professional and personal achievements following Cofnas’s allegations against him of plagiarism, which have not been formally proven. Allegations that Cofnas was not qualified for his research role and would cause a “negative impact” by promoting racial pseudoscience were made to university leaders months before Arday died, the Guardian understands. Cofnas’s online