The U.S. Army War College has begun its investigation into Sen. John Walsh (D-MT) reportedly plagiarizing his master’s thesis.
No new information will be released about the investigation until it is complete, spokeswoman Carol Kerr said according to The Associated Press.
The findings of the board conducting the investigation will be reviewed by the inspector general of the Defense Department. The college will decide whether a punishment is necessary, according to the Associated Press.
In July The New York Times reported that Walsh had plagiarized a significant chunk of his 2007 master’s thesis. As a result of the report Walsh announced that he would drop out of the race for U.S. Senate in Montana. Walsh was appointed to his Senate seat earlier in the year after Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT).
This doesn’t affect the plagiarism, but it was not a “Masters thesis”. The Army War College calls it a “research paper”.
I mention this only because AWC has taken flak for supposedly letting people write Master’s theses that are are only fifteen pages long. While they do award a Master’s degree, AWC students don’t write a thesis per se – they write papers for several courses over the year (like how most MBA students don’t write a thesis, for example). It’s still a light workload as Master’s programs go, but the College does not make those papers out to be full fledged theses.
Again, this is only clarifying something wrt the War College. Walsh himself deserves everything being thrown at him re the plagiarism.
While we’re at it…maybe the AMA or the American Academy of Ophthalmology can look into the Randian Paul charges of plagiarism, which may have well occurred during the time he attempted to practice medicine on someone’s eyes.
If they yank his degree, do they have to return the box tops he sent in to get it in the first place?