Monday, August 31, 2026
Defenders of the West
As the election of Trump has shown, the one place where there is a modest amount of hope that Western culture can be saved is here in the United States, and given our close ties and interdependence with Europe, it's important that we fight back at every opportunity.
I don't know anything about Nathan Cofnas aside from the most basic facts, but what is clear is that he is being punished for exposing Jason Arday, and not for any supposed unacceptable views on race. He was hired after making them clear, and the research he based them on was apparently of sufficient quality that the university gave him a position many academics would die for. So spare me the character assassination, because it is irrelevant. I know this because the university implicitly endorsed him when it hired him.
This is about whether speaking truths that the cultural and academic elite refuse to hear will get you punished, and the answer to that is obvious. The people who have perpetrated a fraud upon the world are either being lionized or excused without comment, while the people who exposed the fraud are being hounded, punished, and subject to enormous harassment.
The choice we face is about whether we, to the extent we can object, take that opportunity and do so in the strongest terms we can, and Rubio's State Department is doing so. It is about free speech, obviously, but also about much more: will we let the people and institutions that shape our society and help develop the policies that run our lives be a bunch of frauds with arbitrary power over us all?
It's not a small thing. Not only are academic institutions extremely powerful and influential, but the people with the power are talking about passing a law to shut everybody up when they get exposed.
Of course, the State Department should come down like a ton of bricks on these guys and use whatever power we have to push back. They need us more than we need them, and it most certainly IS our business. When academics come to us for money, they spin yarns about how vital to society and the economy they are; when they get into trouble, they act as if we have no stake in whether they are run properly.
