Plagiarizing academic work: a strange habit of Romanian politicians

“On the Barricades” s05e47

In this first episode of this weekend’s release of “On the Barricades,” hosts Maria Cernat and Boyan Stanislavski discuss some updates from Romania. As we’ve talked about before on the show, scandal after scandal emerges about Romanian politicians getting caught for cheap, blatant, seemingly careless plagiarism of entire doctoral theses and books. Why is this particular form of corruption so common in Romania? How do the mentality of impunity among such politicians, the general societal attitude toward higher education, and the transition’s putting Romanian academia on a business model, play a role? And how relevant is the factor of the secret services in explaining the phenomenon? Maria is an academic in Bucharest whose stories and observations are useful for getting beneath the baffling appearance of these cases.