Weidel allegedly worked uncleanly on doctoral thesis
Time and again, the doctoral theses of active politicians are subjected to close scrutiny. Time and again, citation errors or even plagiarism come to light. Alice Weidel's doctorate is also said to contain inaccuracies. The AfD national spokesperson defends herself.
The University of Bayreuth is investigating whether parts of Alice Weidel's doctoral thesis could be plagiarized. As reported by the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" (SZ), a preliminary examination by the university has revealed that the doctoral thesis should be examined more closely. The work will be dealt with by the university's "Commission for Academic Integrity".
According to the report, two plagiarism investigators had previously contacted the university. They accuse Alice Weidel of having used external sources in her doctoral thesis from 2011 and of not having labeled this sufficiently or at all. They had drawn up a report on Weidel's work and submitted it to her university, the University of Bayreuth. The report is available to the SZ.
"We do not see any large-scale plagiarism in Ms. Weidel's dissertation, but many small fragments of plagiarism. There is a suspicion of plagiarism here," the newspaper quotes the lead author. Both authors wanted to remain anonymous for fear of possible danger to themselves and their relatives, but the authors are known to the SZ. The University of Bayreuth did not comment on the case when asked, "for personal and data protection reasons".
Weidel sees "campaign" against herself
Weidel firmly rejected the accusations. "My doctoral thesis has probably already been scrutinized by dozens of plagiarism examiners, both attentively and inconclusively," she explained when asked by the SZ. The accusations were based on an anonymous paper, "which also claims to have discovered no classic plagiarism, but citation errors that were blown up into alleged plagiarism without further ado".
On Platform X, the AfD leader went further and described the accusations as a "campaign" against herself and spoke of a "political motivation". She herself had asked for an independent opinion from an unspecified academic, who had come to the conclusion that the allegations could be rejected as absurd and unfounded. "Accordingly, I look forward to further developments."
According to the report, the accusations are presented on 36 pages and sections from Weidel's doctoral thesis in economics are compared with the alleged original sources. The report lists 32 plagiarized fragments and 18 incorrectly marked quotations. These are all individual text passages, a few coherent sentences or even just sentence fragments that Weidel is said to have taken verbatim or analogously without making this sufficiently clear.
Plagiarism expert and Berlin law professor Gerhard Dannemann told the SZ after examining the report: "There are citation errors in Ms. Weidel's work. A revocation of her doctorate would probably stand up in court."
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The University's "Commission for Academic Integrity" will scrutinize Alice Weidel's doctoral thesis due to plagiarism accusations, following a preliminary investigation that revealed potential plagiarized sections and insufficient labeling of sources. Despite these allegations, Weidel maintains that her doctoral thesis has been previously reviewed extensively and contains only minor citation errors.
Source: www.ntv.de
