Sunday, June 30, 2013

Plagiarism problems in new Iranian president's dissertation?

Foreign Policy reports that Iranian President-elect Hassan Rowhani completed his doctoral work at the Scottish Glasgow Caledonian University in 1999. A Farsi-language web site has published (apparently, I don't read Farsi, but there are text passages compared in English on the site) a documentation of similarities between his abstract and other books. Since doctoral theses are not published in the UK, the thesis is not available for general reading.

An update notes that:
Glasgow Caledonian University Director of Communications Charles McGehee writes, "Our University library has just confirmed that  Kamali, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence is referenced in the main body of the Dr Rouhani's thesis and in the bibliography."
He also notes, "we have formally requested permission from the author to digitise the thesis and submit it to the British Library so that it may be accessible to the wider public."
The article in Foreign Policy details other problems with the academic biography of Rowhani.

Perhaps the EU should consider insisting on all dissertations being published digitally?

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