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Why should someone not be shamed if they do things shameful ? Trying to understand your logic here.

By harrassment do you mean public exposure of his lies that earned him his fame ?

What is the alternative you propose ? Cover up ? Look the other way ? Become an enabler of such behavior ?

Shaming is one of society's feedback mechanisms to discourage dishonest behavior. It has its place.

Granted that the standards used by a society at any point in time may not be a universal standard. Case in point Turing. In that case, it is the society that gets shamed later.

Arday was no Turing.

2 comments

>Why should someone not be shamed if they do things shameful ? Trying to understand your logic here.

His logic is probably, "arguments are soldiers": the enemy is trying to make my side look bad; neutralizing that enemy action takes priority over everything else.

In the wake of Arday's death, Nathan Cofnas (who led the X mob against him) states his motivation. Beyond whistleblowing, he states that after a 'revolution' removes professors like Arday, it will open opportunities for him to become 'head of the department of eugenics and race science at Harvard'.

https://bsky.app/profile/kohngregory.bsky.social/post/3mt3ci...

I can't read this post, but you need to go to the source it's quoting: https://youtu.be/9ZDTBqb8Juo?t=1611 -- Cofnas is joking with the interviewer. He doesn't think such a position exists or would ever exist, it's a joke and/or outrage bait for clipping up. His actual views, the ones that got him fired, are ugly enough.

His actual motivation is completely straightforward: R E V E N G E

He got sacked from Emmanuel College (part of University of Cambridge) in 2024 due to the public uproar against his published blog posts, and in particular the college's reasoning was that his blogpost was a "rejection of diversity, equity, and inclusion". That's right, Emmanuel College explicitly requires you accept DEI or they'll sack you. So Cofnas's motivation is to:

1) get back at the University of Cambridge for sacking him

2) bring DEI into disrepute and get everyone to reject it

You then have to ask the more pertinent question. Why did Cofnas know to look for plagiarism in Arday's work? SOMEONE AT CAMBRIDGE TOLD HIM TO.

The anonymous member of faculty did so because they knew all about Arday's dubious academic output and did not like that the university had brushed it under the carpet.

Both Arday and his employer had numerous opportunities to be honest and open about it, but they suppressed it and called the police and lawyers on good-faith academics and journalists.

So what's Cambridge University's motivation for doing that? Simple: they wanted to protect their "star professor" who appears so often on TV, radio and in the press, to hide the fact that only 75 out of the 6180 academics at Cambridge are black, and they are actually a bastion of white upper-class privilege. Even though they know he's a plagiarist and a fabulist, and if everyone learned that truth, it'd bring all academics and universities into disrepute.

This tragedy was entirely of their own making. I look forward to seeing Cambridge University properly investigated over this.

> He got sacked from Emmanuel College

This sounds worse than reality.

That was an unpaid research affiliation, while he was holding a separate, paid research fellow position at Cambridge.

Cambridge didn't fire him from his paid job, which was a terminal, three-year fellowship. [0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Cofnas#Academic_career