Bucharest University Senate meets over Prime Minister plagiarism case, Ponta could lose PhD

The Senate’s Office at the University of Bucharest is meeting Wednesday (September 12 ) to reach a verdict regarding the decision of the Bucharest University Ethics Commission, which ruled that the Prime Minister had plagiarized in his doctoral thesis. The sanctions could include the withdrawal of Victor Ponta's PhD title.

The Senate’s Office meeting began today and it might last at least four hours, according to members of the Ethics Commission. The Ethics Commission of Bucharest University decided in July that Victor Ponta had plagiarized in his thesis "by pasting blocks of text, lines or by reversing some chunks of text compared to the order in the source material." In addition, the Ethics Commission established that Mr. Ponta’s thesis "violates the principles of ethics, integrity and good behavior in research." Victor Ponta’s thesis, ‘The International Criminal Court’ has 432 pages, in total, while the text per se totals 297 pages. "Elements of plagiarism can be seen in 115 of the 297 pages," said Marian Popescu, Chairman of the Commission. ‘The Commission expresses serious doubts about the quality of the process scientific coordination in this case," Marian Popescu added. The analysis made by the Ethics Commission took into account matters regarding exclusively academic integrity without analyzing the correctness of the content. In addition, the Commission established that the bibliography used by the author and spelled out at the end of the paper does not meet the academic standards for citing sources. Mircea Dumitru, Rector of the University of Bucharest declared that he cannot withdraw Victor Ponta’s PhD title unless the Ministry of Education approves it. On the other hand, the National Ethics Council concluded that "Victor Ponta’s PhD in Juridical Sciences was obtained in line with the legislation in force in 2003 and the plagiarism accusations cannot be supported," as bibliographic references were quoted at the end of the paper. The Prime Minister asked the National Ethics Council to analyze his doctoral thesis right after ‘Nature’ magazine wrote that he was accused of plagiarism and revealed having access to documents issued by an anonymous source. Iulia Marin