Trump promoter Sebastian Gorka is an academic fraud with a fake PhD. [View all]

[pnwmom]

The writer of the piece below, Andrew Reynolds, is a Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-academic-fraud-of-trumps-terrorism-expert-1.5465216

Dr. Gorka styles himself as the crusading academic. A Kissinger for our troubled times. The brilliant scholar of terrorism who has taught at elite colleges and published groundbreaking research. He often reminds the imbeciles of the press that as a man of great learning only he truly comprehends the threat of Muslims.

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I started digging and it didn’t take long to find out that Gorka is a fraud – a charlatan of the most brazen hue – a snake-oil salesman whose supposed Ph.D dissertation would have never passed muster in America or Britain and to put the cherry on the cake was approved by an fraudulent panel of examiners. The polar opposite of Lt. Gen H.R. McMasters’ celebrated dissertation awarded by UNC Chapel Hill.

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If that is true, we are left in sum with a degree that was awarded in absence – on the basis of a dissertation without basic political science methodological underpinnings – and apparently from an examining committee of two of Gorka’s diplomat friends, with only BA degrees; along with an old family friend, Schöpflin.

In sum, Gorka’s Ph.D is about as legitimate as if he had been awarded it by Trump University. Facts matter, but so does the gathering, synthesizing and creation of knowledge that is what we call ‘education.’ If you fake a Ph.D you are faking your credentials. He delivers provable untruths to the American public but is believed by many because he presents himself as an esteemed scholar of Islam. Gorka would never have got away with such chutzpah in the UK.