Hungarian Prez Beats Plagiarism Rap-sody

Pál Schmitt (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Hungary's President, Pal Schmitt, must have a few pals among the five-member Semmelweis University committee who concluded Schmitt's  215-page, 1992 doctoral dissertation on the Olympic Games did not involve plagiarism by the nation's leader.

HVG, a Hungarian weekly magazine, created shockwaves last January when it claimed Schmitt's thesis included portions that had been copied from other writers' works, particularly in the wake of resignations a year earlier by Hungarian politicians Silvana Koch-Mehrin and Karl Theodorzu Guttenberg amid charges of plagiarism.

According to accounts by the Sofia News Agency, Novinite.com and the Associated Press and San Francisco Chronicle, the Semmelweis University panel exonerated Schmitt, though acknowledged the absence of footnotes and citations and slipshod bibliography in his work. HVG alleged 180 pages of the 215-page Schmitt thesis merely translated Bulgarian researcher Nikolai Georgiev's Analyse du programme olympique (des Jeux d'Olympiade), also written in 1992.

The five-member committee ruled Schmitt's dissertation "met the formal requirements of the time," according to the AP story. Schmitt in his youth earned two gold medals in fencing from the Summer Olympics. Some might allege that Schmitt is still engaged in fencing, only using stolen writings, instead of an epee, so it's good to have the Semmelweis University confirm the Hungarian paprika...er, paper... at issue, was Schmitt's own creation.