German minister denies allegations of Ph.D. thesis plagiarism
Germany’s Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen has rejected allegations that she plagiarized her doctoral thesis on obstetrics 25 years ago.
“I can reject the accusation of plagiarism,” Von der Leyen told the Funke Media Group in an interview set to be published on Monday.
She said “activists on the Internet try to spread doubts about the dissertations of politicians.”
Der Spiegel magazine reported on the weekend that the collaborative website VroniPlag, which scrutinizes academic works for cheating, found evidence of plagiarism on nearly half the pages of Von der Leyen’s 62-page dissertation.
VroniPlag reportedly said that the minister’s dissertation lifted material word-for-word from other sources without proper attribution, adding that five pages contained more than 75-per-cent plagiarized text.
A Defense Ministry spokesman said Saturday that Von der Leyen had asked the Hanover Medical School, where she received her medical degree in 1990, to begin an independent review of the thesis.
Von der Leyen has been the minister of defense since 2013. Before that she served as the minister of labor and social affairs from 2009 to 2013. She was the minister of senior citizens, women and youth from 2005 to 2009.
Von der Leyen is regarded as a possible future successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel.
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