James Kilgore (Symbionese Liberation Army) obtained DL doctorate from Deakin

As suggested in the thread entitled University of Cape Town lecturer, Kilgore obtained his doctorate by DL from Deakin University in Australia.

This is confirmed in the following article from the San Francisco Chronicle: From SLA extremist to liberal activist.

Snippet:

• He taught night classes to domestic workers at Avondale College in Harare even as he earned a correspondence course doctorate from Deakins University in Victoria, Australia. He merged his professional and academic lives, writing his doctoral thesis on the lives of domestic workers in Zimbabwe. He and Barnes collaborated on several journal articles and at least one textbook while in Harare.

 

The Los Angeles Times reported today he earned his correspondence doctorate in 18 months.

 

Whatever name he was using, wouldn't Kilgore have needed an undergraduate degree bearing that name in order to enroll in Deakin? Wouldn't he need recommendations? Does this Avon College in Harare, whatever it is, hire its staff sight unseen? And how did a wanted fugitive, a murderer and a terrorist, land a plush job at the University of Capetown?

I suspect that a number of people, some of them in responsible positions, knew precisely who Kilgore was and were sheltering him.

This whole thing stinks like a turd.

 

Dress the bastard up like a farmer and send him back to his marxist paradise in Zimbabwe.

 

I'm assuming they're referring to the research period itself; my understanding is that minimum enrollment at Deakin is two years. Certainly difficult to imagine, at any rate, how he would have finished a dissertation in this amount of time.

As far as admission criteria are concerned, my master's was a sticky issue because my thesis ran shorter than the Aussie average; if I didn't have a master's at all, never mind a bachelor's, I'm pretty sure I would never have been admitted to Ph.D. work.

Gotta agree with Bill. Something smells funny here.


Cheers,

 

A few years ago Rudy Guiliani was asked to write an article for a Time-Life Series book. The subject was the organized crime boss, Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Time-Life wanted an article which would illustrate that the subject would have been a successful businessman if he had taken a straight path. The mayor refused and was outraged. Rudy spent most of his adult life fighting the mafia and his response was simple... this guy had a tool that no legitimate business person could ever use. If the competition got in the way, he murdered them.

The comments regarding this post revolve around an assumption that Kilgore would be acting like a respectable individual. What makes anyone think that is the case? If he is a murderer, why not use other tools to get to the end game. What is there for him to lose in cheating, plagarizing, stealing... murder?

The school could have been dupped (most likely case) into believing his "credentials" and Deakin might have been duped into believing the doctoral work was his. I have no idea what the thesis was about, but there are many cases in Academé where even the most trustworthy researchers were frauds... take Sir Cyril Burt.

He is a criminal; therefore, I personally would not bother debating whether he is bright... more likely he is a fraud.

John

 

Clearly Kilgore is not a respectable individual. But if he earned a Ph.D. from Deakin and got a cushy job with the University of Cape Town, he either did a very good imitation of respectability, or else these institutions gave a fugitive murderer assistance that they would deny to the rest of us.

I hope to God that the first alternative is the case.

But if it is, then questions need to be answered. Like how did Kilgore acquire an undergraduate degree and recommendations for a false identity?

The best hypothesis that I can think of is that he didn't create a new identity from the beginning, but instead appropriated a real man's name (Pape apparently), undergraduate record and perhaps graduate degree as well. Even if Kilgore really did the Deakin work himself, did he use Pape's transcripts to get in, and did he obtain recommendations from that other man's former professors?

Where *is* the real Pape (if he even exists)? Does he know that he's been living another life in South Africa? I hope Kilgore didn't kill him too. If I were the police, I'd be investigating this stuff.

 

Former SLA Member Sentenced on Explosives and Passport Charges

It seems Kilgore may have obtained DL degrees (as Pape) from both LaTrobe and Deakin: Revolutionary's secret life