Interesting Analysis of a Gorka's Hungarian PhD

I found the analysis of the dissertation interesting. I am not intending for this to become a political discussion so please resist temptation.

It reminded somewhat of the discussions we have had here about UCN, Azteca, the Warsaw school and so on. On the surface what the article calls a 3rd or 4th tier school. Once they dig deeper they find irregularities in his academic referees (inadequate qualifications and analysis) and a lot of issues with his dissertation itself (poorly sourced, old data from 20 years ago, inadequate understanding of material he is covering) but like the 800 page UCN dissertation, it passed. They are also not sure how he spent time there (probably a research doctorate - although "research" may be stretching it according to the article).

Interesting and worth reading.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/17/dr-sebastian-gorka-may-be-a-far-right-nativist-but-for-sure-hes-a-terrible-scholar-trump-radical-islam/

 

Also a cautionary tale. If you are doing an inexpensive overseas doctorate at a lower rung school don't compound issues by trying to get by with as little work as possible. Ensure your advisor holds your feet to the fire (or if they don't care find someone local who can guide you and research how to do a doctorate).

In this case, it appears the person submitted work that was poorly done and poorly vetted. People made assumptions about him being an expert based on his PhD but it didn't stand up to scrutiny. In most lower profile cases people won't bother checking as closely but there is the integrity issue. This article guides you on some "don't do this" aspects but it is basic stuff.

 

A cursory 2-minute search shows that the author (Daniel Nexon) is a rabid anti-Trumper, so I’ll take everything he writes with several grains of salt.

 

From the quotes, it looks to me like the guy (Gorka) wrote his Diss as a birthday present to his Dark Overlord, Viktor Orban.
The Diss contains a quote from a work by Miklós Maróth: Muslims who fail to "assimilate" to the required extent should be "wrapped in pigskin." That's hate ideology, pure and simple. It has no place in any academic document -- except perhaps, as a horrible example, in a scholarly work on hatred.

Whatever Gorka's "work" means to others -- he doesn't rent any space in MY head! Neither does his Overlord, Orban. And - for the record, I'll admit it -- neither does Donald Trump.