A spate of plagiarism scandals has been shaking Serbia’s political and university life, with issues being raised about political parties’ and public officials’ malpractices in obtaining PhD degrees, and about the integrity of Serbian higher education in general

Miletic, Natalija

LSE Research Online

Megatrend University building in BelgradEurocrisis in thePress8/11/2014Plagiarism Frenzy in Serbia: In Deep Mudblogs.lse.ac.uk /eurocrisispress/2014/08/11/plagiarism-frenzy-in-serbia-in-deep-mud/By Natalija MileticA spate of plagiarism scandals has been shaking Serbia’s political and university life, with issues being raised aboutpolitical parties’ and public officials’ malpractices in obtaining PhD degrees, and about the integrity of Serbian highereducation in general.Since early June of this year three prominent politicians – the Minister ofInterior, the Mayor of Belgrade, and the President of New Belgrade – thecapital’s municipality representing the main business district in the country andprobably in the region – have been denounced for having allegedly plagiarisedtheir “fast-track” PhD dissertations. But the affair does not stop here, as itincludes another “high-ranking personality” – the Rector and owner ofMegatrend, Serbia’s biggest private university, who has been accused ofboasting a PhD degree from the London School of Economics, which he hasnever obtained. It all started when three UK-based Serbian scholarspresented to the public their analysis of the PhD dissertation submitted by the Serbian Minister’s of Interior, MrNebojsa Stefanovic, obtained in just two years, while he was serving as President of Parliament. In the article,published on the portal Pescanik (Hourglass), the scholars argue that, in addition to the lack of quality and thefailure to meet the minimum standards of a research thesis, the minister’s PhD abounds in plagiarism. Whatfollowed was a series of cyber-attacks, which brought the website down, an occurrence that further fuelled thedebate about this case. Minister Stefanovic conspicuously avoided addressing the charges throughout the weekafter, producing only one written statement, where he claimed he “honestly obtained the PhD”. But this did notprevent his superior, Prime Minister Vucic, to angrily state that the charges of plagiarism are “the most stupid thinghe has ever heard”. However, higher education institutions, from the Ministry of Education to various “autonomous”university bodies, remained silent on the issue, despite early calls of a few distinguished professors to take thescandal seriously, as well as a subsequent petition signed by almost two thousand Serbian scientists from both thecountry and its diaspora in support of the article.The minister’s mentor, and at the same time Rector and ownerof Megatrend , Mr Mica Jovanovic, dismissed the plagiarismcharges by saying that “it just isn’t common or appropriate for apetty student to question the authority of a Professor such ashimself”. This prompted two other UK-based Serbian scholarsto check the veracity of his CV. They found that the Rector(whom they lampooned as “Rector Münchhausen”), did notobtain a PhD from LSE, as he was boasting in publicappearances and his CV. After the LSE and the University ofLondon confirmed that Mr Jovanovic has never gained a suchdegree at their institutions, nor did he ever register for a PhDprogramme in the past, he was forced to resign and to leave theuniversity’s formal management to someone else.The practice of awarding dubious degrees appears to be widespread, and the extent to which it plagues the Serbianuniversity system was further illustrated when a third case broke out. This time, the “hero” is a former athlete namedMr Aleksandar Sapic, whose PhD was found to allegedly contain many plagiarised parts from a variety of sourcesranging from domestic articles, translated books, as well as internet sites (including Wikipedia). Mr Sapic, once the1/3best water polo players in the world, now an opposition party member and the mayor of the most prosperousBelgrade municipality – New Belgrade – confirmed he might have not appropriately referred to “one piece ofsomeone else’s work”, however claiming that his PhD “was obtained honestly”.The culmination of this crescendo of affairs occurred when a Germany-based scholar, Mr Rasa Karapandza, arguedthat Belgrade Mayor Mr Sinica Mali’s PhD thesis contains an astonishing amount of apparently plagiarised parts.Unlike other officials, Mali’s dissertation was defended at a public university – the Faculty of OrganisationalSciences of the University of Belgrade. Mr Karapandza, who enriched his analysis with a page-by-page interactivegraphic display of the amount of non-original text in the mayor’s thesis, found that, besides domestic sources, MrMali plainly translated a whole chapter of a PhD thesis written by a Groningen-based Eritrean scholar, MrHabljarama. The Mayor’s response was that “the only authoritative” instance to judge the PhD is his mentor and thecommission which awarded him the degree, a claim criticised by many as “hypocritical”.There have been quite a few common denominators regarding the reactions that followed each of theseaccusations: the accused were all quick to dismiss the allegations; the universities, state and private, have failed sofar to assemble independent bodies to address the allegations through a transparent procedure; attempts ofsilencing the media have been observed (from hacker attacks to threats and intimidations of journalists); bothmajority and opposition parties have failed to initiate internal procedures on these questions and to dismiss thealleged plagiarists from public posts if a commission were officially to strip them of their PhD degree. Althoughformal procedures have been initiated at the universities involved universities (albeit without official commissionsyet) – it remains to be seen how investigations will be conducted and how impartial their internal assessments willbe.Arguably, a major issue halting further progress with regard to the plagiarism affair is university autonomy, which isnow being used as a pretext for not allowing external examiners (both horizontally – from other universities, andvertically – from the Ministry of Education and regulatory bodies) to take part in evaluation procedures. There is nopolitical will to deal with the “rascals in our ranks” either. There is no strong media scene either, nor a civil societysector and independent intellectuals whose engagement may be powerful enough to exercise the necessarypressure forcing a transparent and veritable account of the matter.Plagiarised PhDs are of course not a Serbian or East European specialty. The reader will probably recall the casesof two German ministers– Karl Theodor Zu-Guttenberg and Annet Schavan, of the ex-President of Hungary PallSchmitt, and, most recently, of US Senator John Walsh. But what could be a domestic specialty is the lack ofappropriate institutional response, as well as a responsible reaction from the political elite. It took two days for ArmyCollege to confirm that the plagiarism allegations against Walsh appeared to be well-founded, and a ten-day periodfor a commission to formally decide on the next steps. In Serbia, two months after the breakout of the affair, whichhas in the meantime expanded to include three high-profile politicians, not a single commission has beenestablished and no one knows how much it will take for a first decision to be taken. Let alone what theconsequences will look like.Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Euro Crisis in the Press blog, nor of theLondon School of Economics_______________Natalija Miletic is a Berlin-based freelance journalist and a regular correspondent for the German Deutsche WelleRadio. She holds an MA degree in Peace and Security Studies from the Institute for Peace Research and SecurityPolicy at the University of Hamburg, Germany.Follow her on Twitter: @FlyNatalija 2/33/3

Plagiarism frenzy in Serbia: In deep mud

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