The Cambridge fiasco has made modern DEI look laughable, but it is no joke. Widespread damage has been inflicted by politically correct ideas about race over the years, and one of the first and worst casualties was academic teaching and research about human intelligence. The stigmatisation of this topic has increased lately, and the implications for scientific inquiry are grave. As far as I can
determine, as of 2025, not a single major college or university psychology department in the United States offers such a dedicated course. How did this happen to a key topic in psychology?

The marginalisation of intelligence research began more than fifty years ago with a backlash against the hypothesis that average group differences in IQ scores might be influenced by genetics. In 1969, a paper by Arthur Jensen exploring this possibility produced attempts to prevent him from teaching at UC Berkeley and from speaking at academic conferences (including death threats). E.O. Wilson was condemned as a racist after he published Sociobiology in 1975. His Harvard colleague Richard Herrnstein had experienced similar treatment after he published I.Q. in the Meritocracy two years earlier. Undaunted, Herrnstein co-authored The Bell Curve with Charles Murray in 1994, which discussed the important role that intelligence plays in stratifying modern societies. The responses to that book, mostly from academics and journalists who had not read it, continued the tradition of intimidation and vilification (Herrnstein passed away just before the book was published, so Murray was left to absorb these attacks by himself).

No Voice at Vox: Sense and Nonsense on IQ and Race

We know that genes are not necessarily deterministic. They are probabilistic and we are learning how to change genes and their functional expression.

QuilletteRichard Haier

These examples and others like them deterred most researchers and faculty from investigating this topic lest they receive the same treatment. As a result, students interested in learning what intelligence research is uncovering have been left without access to objective courses or research mentors. Since intelligence is a pillar of meritocracy, the progressive Blank Slate orthodoxy that group differences are entirely explained by environment, culture, and social structures was protected from the findings of behavioural and molecular genetics, neuroimaging, neuroscience, and psychometrics. This lopsided understanding of group differences surely contributed to Cambridge University’s uncritical embrace of Jason Arday despite his weak academic history and highly unlikely personal story.

This brings me to Nathan Cofnas, the young scholar who finally exposed Arday’s apparent plagiarism and what he has called the “cover-up at Cambridge”.

Cofnas is a philosopher who provoked a scandal in February 2024, when he wrote a scathing critique of DEI titled “A Guide for the Hereditarian Revolution” that included this blunt assessment based on actual data supplied by Harvard University:

Under a colorblind system that judged applicants only by academic qualifications, blacks would make up 0.7% of Harvard students. (Even that might be an overestimate, since high-school credentials are sometimes given a boost by affirmative action.) In a meritocracy, Harvard faculty would be recruited from the best of the best students, which means the number of black professors would approach 0%. Blacks would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment.

As a result of the outcry that ensued, Cofnas was excluded from Cambridge’s Emmanuel College, where he was in an unpaid associateship, after an investigation concluded that his views were inconsistent with the college’s values, “careless”, “reckless”, and “confrontational”.

Under pressure from faculty and students (and others), Cambridge University launched its own investigation. By this time, Cofnas’s critics had discovered an earlier paper that he had published in a philosophical journal in 2020, in which he argued that research on the genetic basis of average group differences in intelligence test scores is not inherently racist and that such research is necessary to help establish why such differences exist. Those arguments enraged his critics even more than his views about DEI.

This is where I became involved. In 2024, Cofnas asked me to evaluate his work as an expert in intelligence research, and to write something in his defence if I found his scholarship and knowledge of the literature to be competent. This is the (previously unpublished) letter I sent to the lawyer hired by Cambridge to investigate whether Cofnas had violated the law or university standards:

Dear Ms. McColgan,

In response to a request from Dr. Cofnas, I write to comment on whether his paper (Research on Group Differences… 2020) is based on competent scholarship in the area of intelligence research. I am qualified to opine based on my current role as Editor-in-Chief of Intelligence, a scientific journal published by Elsevier. I have had this role since 2016 and each year I have read hundreds of submissions and expert peer reviews. I also have published original research on intelligence for over 40 years.

The answer is yes, Dr. Cofnas’s knowledge and scholarship in this paper are competent in two ways. First, I have read more than 20 of the cited references. They are all correctly cited in context and reflect mainstream findings and views among people who do intelligence research. Second, many citations argue against his position so there is a scholarly appreciation of different viewpoints. 

I was familiar with his paper before he requested my comment. I cited it in two of my textbooks (both published by Cambridge University Press): The Neuroscience of Intelligence (2d ed, 2023), and The Science of Human Intelligence (2d ed, 2024).

I also read the critique of his paper by Larsen et al. [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09515089.2020.1805199] Although he did not ask me to comment on it, I would make this general point. There are many erroneous beliefs about intelligence research, especially with respect to average group differences and race. These beliefs are widespread among people outside of the intelligence research field. Many of these beliefs have been enumerated and empirically disputed in another book published by Cambridge University Press: In the Know: Debunking 35 Myths about [Human] Intelligence (Russell Warne, 2020). There is far less “consensus” regarding most of these issues than some outside the field believe. Within the field, researchers familiar with the data appreciate the need for public discussion of what the data mean and what the data do not mean, especially about average group differences on psychometric measures. 

As a consumer of the scientific data, [I find that] Dr. Cofnas’s paper addresses this need and is well within the bounds of constructive discussion, especially since the data raise a number of important philosophical issues that remain unsettled. I find this is also the case for his February SubStack blog comments. I have written previously about the need to find a balance between valid sensitivities and uncomfortable reactions to some intelligence research data and the need for protecting open inquiry and discussion (Haier, 2020; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2020.101482). I have also discussed these issues publicly on a number of popular podcasts so I appreciate how his paper has stimulated essential conversations. 

Dr. Cofnas is an important voice in a controversial area. I hope my comments adequately convey my strong support for his work and engagement. If you think it helpful, I am prepared to go line by line through his paper and blog to verify he has correctly characterized the data he discusses.

Sincerely,

Richard Haier

Although Cambridge eventually decided that Cofnas’s views were protected speech and took no further action against him, he is still routinely described as a racist in mainstream commentary about the Cambridge scandal. He joins a historical line of academics demonised in the time-honoured tradition of killing the messenger who delivers unwelcome or upsetting news. Along the way, teaching about intelligence and explaining modern research findings have all but disappeared from a college or university education in the United States. In this vacuum, Blank Slate and social-constructionist assumptions are awarded the de facto status of uncontested facts, unchallenged despite a strong empirical database of countervailing evidence.

It is my hope that future students will have the opportunity to study intelligence research in detail. It may inoculate them against signing petitions based on emotional appeals rather than facts and encourage tolerance for opposing or discomforting perspectives. Human intelligence is fascinating and faculty should be encouraged to teach about it, with an emphasis on scientific findings. Would inquisitive students be uninterested in findings that correlate intelligence test scores and mortality? Or research indicating that brain characteristics measured by neuroimaging predict IQ scores? Or the possibility of increasing intelligence?

There is so much for students to discuss if they are allowed to develop an appreciation for what the current science suggests and an appetite for the challenges of future research. Such courses would be a tangible expression of support for academic excellence and open inquiry as well as providing a pipeline for future research. That would be a constructive outcome of the embarrassing Cambridge failure.