UPDATE2: 2nd April 2012
UPDATE!
The Hungarian President has said he will not resign but will redo his dissertation to comply with current requirements. He blames his advisers and the examining committee for failing to bring the problems with his doctorate to his attention.
And being President he will probably get away with this.
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Budapest’s Semmelweis University has proposed (note that is not yet a final decision) that the Hungarian President Pal Schmitt’s PhD be rescinded for massive plagiarism with 196 plagiarised pages in a 215 page thesis! While the Hungarian President has largely a ceremonial role he is seen as being a supporter of the new constitution and the very controversial “reforms” being pushed through by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Reuters reports on the pressure on Schmitt to resign:
Hungarian President Pal Schmitt came under growing pressure on Thursday to stand down after being accused of plagiarizing parts of his doctoral thesis, which critics say threatens the integrity of his office. ….
Schmitt, 69, a two-time Olympic gold medal-winning fencer, became president in 2010 when Orban’s ruling conservative Fidesz party elected him for a period of five years. He has denied wrongdoing since business news portal hvg.hu first reported allegations in January that he had copied large parts of his thesis from other authors without proper quotation or referencing.
But national news agency MTI reported on Thursday that Budapest’s Semmelweis University had proposed that Schmitt’s doctorate be withdrawn based on the findings of its inquiry into the allegations. A final decision is expected later.
The leading right-leaning daily Magyar Nemzet called on Thursday on Schmitt to resign, saying his position had become untenable. …
The committee set up at Semmelweis University said that while the 215-page thesis contained “unusually large amounts of verbatim translation”, it was found to have met the formal standards of the time. It said 180 pages of Schmitt’s thesis, “An analysis of the program of Modern Olympic Games”, showed partial overlaps with a study written in French by a Bulgarian sport researcher, and 16 pages were copied from another author. Schmitt, a former Fidesz vice president, received the doctorate from the Budapest Sports University in 1992, according to the presidential office’s website http://www.keh.hu.
The 1,157-page inquiry report, which was not made available to the public, found the Sports University at fault for not identifying this overlap with other works in time, leading Schmitt to believe his work was in line with requirements.
Tags: Budapest, Pál Schmitt, PhD rescinded, Plagiarism, Semmelweis University, Viktor Orbán
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