Cambridge University college (Emmanuel) dismisses philosophy Fellow because his views conflict with DEI (UPDATED)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM APRIL 23--UPDATED

Peter Singer describes what happened here, and a brief news item is here.  Emmanuel College has really disgraced itself; will Cambridge University follow suit?  (We've discussed Dr. Cofnas's views before.  His views do conflict with DEI, but any college that thinks that justifies rescinding an appointment has no commitment to academic freedom.)

UPDATE:  Philosopher Jeff McMahan writes:

In your post on April 23 about the expulsion of Nathan Cofnas from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, there is a link to a short piece by Peter Singer, in which he quotes from the letter Cofnas received informing him of his impending dismissal:

"The Committee first considered the meaning of the blog and concluded that it amounted to, or could reasonably be construed as amounting to, a rejection of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI and EDI) policies. … The Committee concluded that the core mission of the College was to achieve educational excellence and that diversity and inclusion were inseparable from that. The ideas promoted by the blog therefore represented a challenge to the College’s core values and mission."

It is worth noting one implication of the claim that the achievement of educational excellence is inseparable from policies of diversity and inclusion – namely, that there could not have been educational excellence anywhere until quite recently, when these policies were first introduced.

I am myself supportive of such policies but also believe that the appropriate response to challenges to them is to defend them with rational argument in a public statement, not to cast out, punish, and damage the career of a single individual who challenges them. That Emmanuel College chose the latter rather than the former course of action diminishes the credibility of its stated justification for its action. Presumably it is also essential to excellence in education to enable students from advantaged backgrounds to study in Cambridge colleges; but I doubt that Emmanuel College would have expelled a College Research Associate who wrote on a blog that Oxbridge colleges should drastically limit the places open to students from the public schools, such as Eton, in order to achieve greater social equality by giving priority to applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds.

In fact, the letter from which Singer quotes is explicit in acknowledging the College’s concern with public relations, which the weakness of its other claims suggests was paramount in the decision to dismiss Cofnas from the college. The letter says, for example, that the “College had long had initiatives underway to increase applications from minority and underrepresented groups and the reputational impact of having someone associated with the College who was objecting to all DEI efforts, and calling for others to do the same, could be significant.” Because most Cambridge students are politically left (as is generally the case in all the best universities, for the reason that Cofnas acknowledges in his post on “the right’s stupidity problem”), the college was almost certainly worried that the better prospective students would be deterred from applying for admission if Cofnas remained a member. But that is self-interest, not commitment to educational excellence.

The letter also quotes from “the College’s Guide for CRAs,” which refers to “our commitment to providing a safe and inclusive environment in which diversity of opinion is valued and freedom of thought and expression is celebrated.” Expelling a member of college for exercising that freedom is a curious way of celebrating it.

It should go without saying that my commenting on Emmanuel College’s action does not imply that I agree with Cofnas’s views. But that can no longer be taken for granted so I will say explicitly that I don’t agree with Cofnas’s views any more than Noam Chomsky agreed with Robert Faurisson’s views when he defended Fourisson’s right to express them without sanction.

ANOTHER:   Philosopher Matt Kramer kindly shared this letter he sent:

To the Master of Emmanuel College and the Principal of Homerton College:

Through media reports, I have become acquainted during the past few days with the recent decision to dismiss Nathan Cofnas from his Research Associate position at Emmanuel.  I am writing to the two of you (and separately to the Philosophy Faculty) partly as a senior academic in the University but chiefly as the author of a 2021 book Freedom of Expression as Self-Restraint.  I should state at the outset that I am not acting on behalf of Cofnas, and I have therefore not sought his consent to have me act on his behalf.  Rather, I am acting for the good of Emmanuel College and Cambridge University, each of which should be upholding rather than flouting the principle of freedom of expression.

I have read a few of Cofnas’s blog posts, and I regard some of the pronouncements therein as glib and abhorrent.  However, any glib and abhorrent utterances are fully protected by the moral principle of freedom of expression unless they are constitutive of communication-independent misconduct (i.e., misconduct that can be perpetrated either communicatively or non-communicatively – such as fraud or perjury or incitement to violence or defamation).  Given that the assertions by Cofnas in his blog posts are patently not constitutive of communication-independent misconduct, the dismissal of him from his Research Associate position at Emmanuel College in response to his posting of those assertions is violative of the principle of freedom of expression.  I believe that it is also in contravention of his legal rights under Article 10 of Schedule I in the Human Rights Act of 1998.  (I don’t know whether the Higher Education [Freedom of Speech] Act of 2023 is applicable, since it doesn’t come fully into effect until the statutory instruments for the procedures to implement the statute are enacted.  To the best of my knowledge, those statutory instruments do not yet exist.)

What I find particularly puzzling about this matter is that the Master of Emmanuel College in February of this year correctly articulated the position that should be taken by the College on its association with Cofnas.  While aptly affirming that “[t]he College is committed to providing an environment that is free from all discrimination and affirms the right of all members to be treated with dignity and respect,” he also aptly acknowledged Cofnas’s “academic right, as enshrined by law, to write about his views” and the College’s “commitment to freedom of thought and expression.”  Between February and early April, however, the Master of Emmanuel undertook a remarkable volte-face in which he shifted from upholding one of the main principles of liberal democracy to justifying the dismissal of Cofnas from the Research Associateship with the following sentences:  “The Committee first considered the meaning of the blog and concluded that it amounted to, or could reasonably be construed as amounting to, a rejection of Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI and EDI) policies.  The Committee concluded that the core mission of the College was to achieve educational excellence and that diversity and inclusion were inseparable from that. The ideas promoted by the blog therefore represented a challenge to the College’s core values and mission.”  As Peter Singer in his Project Syndicate column has rightly remarked, these quoted sentences are astonishingly illiberal.  They in effect present the College as a church with a prevailing orthodoxy to which no member is permitted to object in any form.  This point was duly recognized by the Master of Emmanuel himself in February:  “Were the University of Cambridge to dismiss Cofnas, it would sound a warning to students and academics everywhere: when it comes to controversial topics, even the world’s most renowned universities can no longer be relied upon to stand by their commitment to defend freedom of thought and discussion.”

To be sure, had Cofnas’s rejection of the College’s apparently unchallengeable orthodoxy taken the form of discriminatory behaviour in his interaction with other members of Emmanuel, some disciplinary measure(s) by the College could have been justified.  Unlike his blog posts, invidious discrimination in his interaction with others would be a communication-independent mode of misconduct.  However, there is no indication in any of the media reports that Cofnas behaved in an invidiously discriminatory manner in his interaction with other members of Emmanuel, nor is there any indication that the dismissal of him from his Research Associateship was a response to any such behaviour on his part.  Instead, the explicit basis invoked by the College for his dismissal was his posting of his assertions in blog posts.  Such a basis is no basis at all for a college that adheres to the principle of freedom of expression.

An ethically robust institution that adheres to the principle of freedom of expression can readily permit the posting of objectionable blather on blogs – where the objectionable statements in question do not amount to any communication-independent mode of wrongdoing – because such an institution will have taken ample steps (and will be taking further ample steps) to counter the messages conveyed by the blog posts.  Countering those messages should proceed not through prohibitions and penalties but instead through refutative arguments and through reaffirmations of the liberal-democratic values that have come under challenge.  When an institution resorts to the expulsion of someone responsible for the aforementioned blather, it is displaying its lack of faith in the resilience of its own institutional ethos.  It is presuming that the adherence of Emmanuelites to liberal-democratic values is so tenuous as to be imperilled by pronouncements that have in fact brought obloquy only upon the person who issued the pronouncements.  Everyone at Emmanuel should feel diminished by the volte-face that led to the excommunication of Cofnas as a heretic.

With regards,
Matthew Kramer

____________________________________________

Matthew H. Kramer FBA

Professor of Legal & Political Philosophy, Cambridge University

Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge