Racist disinformation 101 time.
A new poisonous “freedom” letter demonstrates that its drafters constructed a description of a racist case with the racial dimension removed, addressed to a rector who had spent March publicly handling exactly that.
The drafters knew what they were doing by generating such racist disinformation letter and amassing signatories.
Whoever wrote “publicizing academic misconduct” as a complete account made a calculated choice to hide the racism.
Ghent tied the suspension to his public statements about Arday and to limits on academic freedom that protect the rights of others, then magically sealed the specific charges behind personnel confidentiality. How ironic.
But then Cofnas named the charge himself: discrimination. He says he is charged with a thing the “open” letter hides from view.
His account is the only one on record, and Ghent has let it stand ever since. The suspension came August 20. Three days of international coverage, no correction from the university. The drafters read that record and carefully deleted the part that matters most, the racist hounding that ended with a man dead at 41. We still wait on the coroner’s file. The family says the campaign was too much for him. Simon Baron-Cohen, in contact with Arday hours before his death, told the BBC he “felt he couldn’t go on.”
A lynching.
Which is worse, knowingly being racist or knowingly failing to be anti-racist?
Every signatory of that lynching letter had the racial dimension available in a week of international coverage of a man’s death, and signed a version without it anyway.
That’s culpable at minimum as negligence, and the letter is engineered so negligent signers and knowing signers produce identical signatures, which means the second group artificially expands the first with a laundering move of disinformation.
Shame on every person on this list. They should be handled as racist until they prove otherwise.
| Measure | Count | Share of 449 |
|---|---|---|
| Male (name-based estimate) | 385 | 86% |
| Female (name-based estimate) | 57 | 13% |
| US and UK affiliations | 235 | 52% |
| Current Ghent University affiliation | 3 | 0.7% |
| Any Belgian affiliation | 11 | 2% |
| Emeritus, retired, or former positions | 39 | 9% |
| Independent, unaffiliated, or private | 24 | 5% |
| PhD students and candidates | 20 | 4% |
| Field in self-listed title | Count |
|---|---|
| Economics, finance, management | 47 |
| Physics, mathematics, statistics, computer science | 44 |
| Philosophy | 38 |
| Psychology, neuroscience, genetics | 23 |
| Law | 15 |
| Sociology and criminology | 8 |
| Education | 3 |
| Institution | Signatories |
|---|---|
| University of Oxford | 14 |
| London School of Economics | 12 |
| University College London | 6 |
| Harvard University | 5 |
| Queen Mary University of London | 5 |
| University of Buckingham | 5 |
| George Mason University | 4 |
| King’s College London | 4 |
| University of Edinburgh | 4 |
| City St George’s, University of London | 4 |