Jerry A. Coyne

I've read Dawkins.

I've read Jerry Coyne.

They're both atheist biologists.

I've read some Christian scientists who believe in evolution.

We are looking at the evidence and the mechanics of evolution.

And to guide us through this, we are relying heavily on the work of evolutionary biologist Jerry A. Coyne, specifically his landmark text, Why Evolution is True.

Great book.

It's phenomenal.

So among the signatories to that letter are names that we might recognize.

Steven Pinker, Michael Shermer, Lawrence Krauss, Jerry Coyne, Sabina Hossenfelder, Nigel Bigger, who chairs the Board of Trustees for the Free Speech Union, and Nikhil Mukherjee, who is now the Science Director at the German Skeptics GWP.

There's also Buco de Vries, who's the professor who hired Kofnes to Ghent University after he'd been let go by Cambridge.

And Martin Boudry, his former colleague at the university.

And again, that letter in March framed this in terms of attack on academic freedom.

It stressed that, of course, while the signatories of this letter don't endorse any specific claims that Kofnas has made, he should be free to put forward those views without the threat of losing employment.

That letter in March was signed by Peter Singer, Stephen Pinker, Jerry Coyne, Lawrence Krauss, Martin Baudry, Luca de Vries, Toby Young of the Free Speech Union, Claire Lehman of Quillette, Freddie Attenborough of the Committee for Academic Freedom, and also the former comms officer for the Free Speech Union.

So that is the framing of the response to Kofner's here.

And there are letters supporting him signed by 700 academics, including many of the people from the network we've already identified.

But also Michael Shermer, Jerry Coyne, Lawrence Krauss, people who would otherwise consider themselves skeptics, but their skepticism gets turned off when people say academic freedom.

And they're saying Nathan Kofnes should have at Ghent the academic freedom to pursue things that we disagree with, including race realism.

Nathan Kofnes was never hired by Ghent University to research race realism.