Cambridge fellow in ‘meritocracy’ race row
American academic says that on merit black people would only be famous for sports and entertainment
A CAMBRIDGE philosophy fellow has caused outrage after claiming that in a meritocracy black people would only be famous for sports and entertainment.
Writing on his blog, Nathan Cofnas, who researches the philosophy of biology, said that in a truly meritocratic system: “Harvard faculty would be recruited from the best of the best students, which means the number of black professors would approach 0 per cent.”
In such a system, black people would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment”, he wrote.
In response to Mr Cofnas’s claims, Maroof Rafique, the student union’s black and minority ethnic officer, expressed his “profound concern and disagreement”, according to Varsity, Cambridge’s student newspaper.
In the post, published on Monday, the philosopher made the case that Western elites should lift the taboo on “hereditarianism”, the idea that racial characteristics play a significant role in determining key traits such as intelligence or physical ability. He said: “We need to end the war on nature, accept that talent is not distributed equally within or across groups, and allow people to succeed based on their merit.”
Mr Cofnas argued that while intellectuals did not accept Charles Darwin’s ideas when they were introduced, “by his death in 1882, the intellectual class was largely on his side”.
He said: “We can’t expect to win in an afternoon. People’s beliefs and moral intuitions are sticky, and many people are just incorrigible dogmatists.
“All we have to do is make people aware of a simple scientific fact.
The cultural revolution will take care of itself.” Dr Bronwen Everill, the director of Cambridge’s Centre of African Studies, told Varsity that the university’s continued employment of Mr Cofnas was akin to “having a flat earther on the physics faculty – it’s embarrassing”.
It is understood that Mr Cofnas has not been contacted directly by anyone at the university to discuss the blog.
Prof Angela Breitenbach, chairman of Cambridge’s philosophy faculty, said: “The views expressed in these blogs do not represent the views of the Faculty of Philosophy. The faculty strives to be a leader in defending equality and fostering inclusion.
“There is no place for racism at the University of Cambridge.”
Mr Cofnas stood by the comments when pressed, saying: “There is a 15 to 18 point IQ gap between American blacks and whites. (This is not disputed by informed scholars.) Blacks are 14 per cent of the population.
“It is a statistical inevitability that, if selection is colour blind, blacks will make up a small percentage of people in positions that depend heavily on general intelligence.”
He also maintained his argument that if Harvard applications were based solely on academic merit, black students would only make up 0.7 per cent of students, and that if professors were recruited from the highest performing cohort of Harvard students, black people would make up a very small percentage.
‘We need to end the war on nature, accept that talent is not distributed equally within or across groups’ ‘It’s akin to having a flat earther on the physics faculty – it’s embarrassing’