Second Norwegian Minister Resigns Over Plagiarism Allegations

In January, we examined a plagiarism scandal involving two government ministers and their academic theses in Norway.

The first was Sandra Borch, then the nation’s Minister for Higher Education. A student, upset with Borch’s strict policies against self-plagiarism, began investigating Borch’s thesis and quickly found incidents of uncredited copying.

The media further investigated Borch’s work, and E24 found that some 20% of her thesis had been plagiarized. A separate analysis found that another 10,000 characters had been taken from another report.

Borch quickly resigned from her post, citing the need for trust in her position. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre accepted her resignation, agreeing with her reasoning.

However, similar allegations were made against Health Minister Ingvild Kjerkol while that was going on. But, where Borch resigned immediately, Kjerkol did not. Kjerkol said the issues were “editing errors” and that she would wait for the university’s decision.

Last week, Nord University reached a conclusion, which was not good news for Kjerkol. According to the school’s investigation, the issues were “far more serious errors than sloppiness,” and the school decided to revoke her master’s degree in health management.

Following the school’s decision, Kjerkol announced that she would resign. The Prime Minister accepted the resignation, saying that the school had found that the plagiarism was “intentional.”

Kjerkol said, “Although it hurts not to be believed, we have to deal with the fact that (the university) is of a different opinion.”

The resignation brings Kjerkol’s time in the government to an end. She had been in the position since October 2021.

However, this likely won’t be the end of government officials facing challenges to their academic work. Such plagiarism stories are becoming increasingly common worldwide.

Lessons from the Story

This story is interesting because Borch and Kjerkol had different approaches to addressing the allegation. Borch resigned almost immediately, where Kjerkol opted to see how the university ruled.

However, the differences are pretty easy to understand. Borch’s hand was forced. Not only was she the Minister of Education, but she had enacted tough policies on plagiarism. Any loss of confidence in her academic work would likely have been fatal to her position.

Kjerkol, on the other hand, could afford to wait. Her position wasn’t so heavily focused on academic integrity. However, once she lost her degree, she lost her standing on the topic, making resignation the only realistic move.

This is a common pattern in European plagiarism scandals. The scandal’s impact depends heavily on whether the universities involved opt to revoke degrees.

An excellent example of this is Germany. In March 2011 German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned after Bremen University revoked his Ph.D. due to plagiarism. Four years later, another Defense Minister, Ursula von der Leyen, was allowed to keep her degree from Hannover Medical School, despite plagiarism being confirmed by the school.

She did not resign and is currently the President of the European Commission, a title she has held since 2019. These were two careers with very similar tipping points that went on wildly different trajectories following the decision by the schools.

Kjerkol, most likely, was hoping to get a similar reprieve to von der Leyen but realized that her position was untenable after the school disagreed.

However, it’s not just Norway or Europe that is experiencing this rise in plagiarism. It’s happening all over the world.

A Global Problem

Right now is a challenging time when it comes to academic plagiarism. This is particularly true for academics who are in the political spotlight, either directly or indirectly.

We’ve seen this in Europe for decades. High-ranking government officials have been targeted by plagiarism allegations in a wide number of countries, including Germany, Romania, Spain, Russia and now Norway.

These types of allegations have expanded to the United States. However, here it has largely manifested as targeting academics who find themselves in the political spotlight. It began with Claudine Gay, the now-former President of Harvard, but has expanded to include diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) administrators at both Harvard and other schools.

However, there has also been a backlash, such as the allegations against Neri Oxman, whose husband, Bill Ackman, was one of Claudine Gay’s most vocal critics.

While it’s easy to blame many of the recent stories on the weaponization of plagiarism, there wouldn’t be plagiarism to find if there weren’t issues in academia.

The first is that poor writing techniques are endemic in academia. Many recent scandals have dealt less with clear attempts to deceive and more with poor writing issues, including improper paraphrasing, poor note-taking and inadequate citation. While still plagiarism, these stories are often better handled with corrections than revocations.

Second, enforcement in academia is lacking on these issues. Many of these theses or dissertations were published before plagiarism detection software was widely available. However, even after such tools were available, it’s clear that they were not adequately scrutinized before publication.

Much of this is due to a problem with scale. A single plagiarism analysis may only take a few hours, but doing that for dozens or hundreds of students quickly becomes burdensome. This is why it’s simple to check the theses of a handful of political or ideological opponents but much harder to check everyone before the works are published.

In short, there’s almost certainly a large volume of dubious theses and dissertations out there. As such, targeted campaigns, such as those against political opponents, will continue to find at least some success.

Bottom Line

There are no easy answers here. It’s clear that academia needs to take plagiarism more seriously. It’s no longer just about preserving academic integrity; it’s about protecting students after graduation.

However, even if academia magically changed today, it wouldn’t address the decades of papers that have already been published.

The best advice I can give is simple: If you are in a situation where you feel you may be targeted, fairly or unfairly, you need to check your work yourself. Either that or have someone you know and trust do it for you.

This gives you a chance to make corrections and handle any issues that are found on your terms. This minimizes the publicity and the impact such issues can have on your career.

Simply put, this issue is not going away. If you feel vulnerable, your goal should be to get ahead of it. It’s uncomfortable, but a little discomfort today is much better than letting it surprise you later.