Nathan Cofnas *Might Be Wrong
I don't mean about *that thing. I mean another thing. A challenge to the controversial academic who exposed Jason Arday.
Nathan Cofnas might be wrong.
No, not about that (he might be wrong about that too), about something else.
Before we kick off, I would strongly urge anyone unfamiliar with Cofnas in his own words–i.e., you haven’t read his Substack, and haven’t seen him interviewed–to become familiar. He holds some very controversial views, and because of them, is accused often of being a racist bigot.
You may find you agree with that assessment, but you shouldn’t form your judgement based on what is said about him. That’s almost never a good idea.
His recent interview with Winston Marshall is a great place to start.
For example, I was surprised—and this is what we’re here to discuss today—to learn that Cofnas is actually in favor of racial hiring quotas. Tracing the logical path he uses to arrive at that conclusion will require us to air some of those controversial views of his, so be warned: this may get a little spicy.
Although Cofnas’s spiciest views are not the subject of my challenge to him. I make this riposte assuming that his boldest claims could be proved right, but that what he thinks follows from them may not be. (If the views themselves are wrong, none of this will apply, because none of it will matter.)
Specifically, I think Dr. Cofnas might be wrong about the value of maintaining racial quotas in institutions of high visibility and import. He doesn’t like them, per se, or think they’re especially fair, he just views them as necessary for keeping the peace. Here’s how he frames it in the above interview:
“I think that colorblindness is not always a politically viable policy, and insofar as it’s not viable, then some kind of quota system may be necessary.”
He doesn’t exactly sound like Kimberlé Crenshaw here, I don’t think. And for that matter, I don’t raise my objection to his thinking because I don’t like quotas or preferences–though I’m certainly skeptical.
I’m just not sure that they will keep the peace.
I wonder if Cofnas isn’t basing his assumptions on political winds that are shifting too rapidly for us to trust them. He thinks that unequal treatment in service of maintaining a semblance of diversity is less corrosive than the threat of losing that diversity. I’m not so sure.
Among the bitterest pills to swallow in politics is that what your opponent wants matters too. How they feel about things informs what you can realistically do without destabilizing pushback. Cofnas wrote a single, well-supported piece exposing a single academic–I’m speaking of course about Jason Arday–as a fraud and a fabulist. In so doing, he set off a multi-week firestorm of recriminations and competing accusations.
Cofnas triggered the response he did for a reason, and it’s the same reason I think he might be wrong about which is truly the lesser evil: unequal opportunity or unequal outcome.
The rest of this is going behind a paywall. Sorry, but I actually kind of like being employable…
