Did Joseph Muscat write his doctoral thesis?
Here’s part of the biographical note appended to the Labour leader’s PhD thesis. It’s customary to refer to yourself as ‘the author’, but normally with the implicit recognition that you are writing about yourself. The way this is written implies that Muscat didn’t write it at all. But that’s obvious from the ‘distancing’ language (the writer’s choice of words and expressions, and overall tone, makes it sound as though he is writing about a third party) and even from the language itself, which isn’t his English at all.
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The first issue to be considered is the author’s family background, which probably overlaps, in one respect or another, with that of many IPSE clients. His father is self-employed, operating an artisan micro-enterprise (manufacture of fireworks) and he was raised in a rural environment where the dominant form of gainful employment is the small-holding tenant and to a much lesser extent the small-holding owner.
He was educated at a private Catholic (Jesuit) secondary school renowned for its solid pedagogic thoroughness and as an effective vehicle of social upward mobility for the petty bourgeoisie. With this social and cultural background, values of individualism and aversion towards large organizations (be it state apparatuses or multinational companies) were bound to have a certain effect on the author’s world-view.
The second is the author’s activisim in the Labour Party in the run-up to the 1996 elections. Unlike earlier electoral campaigns (especially in the 1960s and 1970s) Labour’s campaign in 1996 was not focused on its traditional blue-collar support (which was particularly strong in the densely populated and hyper-urbanised Harbour area, especially the Royal Navy towns of Birgu, Bormla and Isla) but had zoomed out to include all ‘working people’.
Small entrepreneurs and self-employed persons were explicitly and deliberately includes in this broader definition of the ‘working classes’. Indeed, their role was emphasized. To small entrepreneurs, for whom the principal reference organization was then the GRTU, the Labour Party promised the abolition of Value Added-Tax (which was substituted by a Customs and Excise Tax), even though the enterprises would have prefereed the scrapping of the mandatory use of the cash registers.
To those involved in manufacturing and industsrial services it promised workshops at subsidized rent and planning permits for private industrial areas.
Coming to the Malta Labour Party at this conjuncture and from a background (anomalous by traditional Labour standards) that predisposed him favourably to the message of ‘New Labour’, the author bypassed the proletarian rites of passage implied by a militant’s experience of a traditional election campaign and wholeheartedly (and it must be admitted, uncritically) embraced the freezing away of a whole cluster of moral, cultural, political and even aesthetic ‘old Labour’ values. It must be remembered that amongst these values there is Labour’s low-key type of patriotism.
(…)
This author, however, having come ‘late’ and as an ‘outsider’ to the Labour Party has had the benefit of not being de-sensitised to certain issues, such as the limits of Malta’s lumpen-development, to borrow Frank’s eloquent phrase (Frank 1974). This may help explain why the author chose to pursue graduate studies and research related to his country’ development problems.
It may also explain, together with this social background, his preference for small organizations: for the SME rather than for the large industrial establishment, of which the symbol in the Maltese working class lore is the Dockyard. It may also explain why unlike other Labour militants, he instinctively favoured locally-owned SMEs as opposed to large foreign-owned companies in his quest for a development alternative in microstate Malta.
This same preference for individual initiative – and the freedom necessary to exercise it – and the visceral distrust that the small trader, the small manufacturer and the small-holding farmer exhibit towards the state, prevented the author from sharing traditional Labour trust in the paternalistic state, whether this was run by the colonial authorities or their Maltese successors.
The author joined the Malta External Trade Corporation (METCO) in 1997 and soon after volunteered to join the Institute for the Promotion of Small Enterprise (IPSE), then an organization ‘in formation’. As a result he was transferred to the MDC, then perceived as a rival organization of METCO (see chapter 6.0).
(…)
The author’s transfer was picked up by the press, which suggested that government, and more specifically the Prime Minister, wanted to place “trusted acolytes” in crucial places (The People on Sunday, 17 May 1997: 11; 31 May 1997: 11). These reports affected permanently the author’s role in the IPSe project. The author was in real terms first an executive, and then a manager, within a team of other people of his grade.
Nevertheless, it was clear that his opinions carried a political weight that was disproportionate to his actual role within the organization. One of the main reasons for this was that third parties associated him directly with the leadership cadres of the party in government.
The erroneous impression of a larger-than-life political role of the author was dominant in the organization. In fact, on a number of occasions, members of senior management requested his views about policy issues on which a mid-level manager within the organization would not have normally been consulted. Some of his opinions might have influenced decisions, while others were unheeded.
This situation persisted until 1998 when the Labour Party was heavily defeated in early general elections that had been called for September 1998. The atmosphere in the week following the general elections was almost that of a tribal war, with some supporters of the new government burning billboards and threatening people.
of a sudden, the author stopped being perceived as an unofficial government representative, and started being considered as almost a ‘spy’ instead. The author found himself sidelined within the organization and was at one time asked to give up his political activity in order to continue working with the Institute. This condition was later withdrawn.
Over the following months, the author again forged a working relationship within the organsiation, even though access to information was much more restricted.
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Little Joey will eventually be found out. German ministers are falling, one after the other, for plagiarism included in their theses.
Our little dwarf has neither the brains nor the ability to obtain a PhD without a ghost writer. I have suspected this from the pronouncement. In fact, I was astonished.
If he is unfortunately elected, and struts on the international stage, he will be closely scrutinized as an ‘academic’.
Within a few months, with only a minimum of unintelligent phrases, he will be dismissed as a charlatan, as will Malta’s well earned reputation.
Think well, people.
He may have an aversion to foreign owned multinationals, but he surely hasn’t grasped the way to real development.
Concerned as he may be.
It’s been staring him in the face these last twenty five years, Sant’s failure proof confirming the viable, essentially irreversable way chosen by the PN:
This country does NOT have internal demand to speak of.
Yet here he is 2013, going after those who didn’t gear up in 2004. Somehow to be introduced as a matter to hold the state back.
Sustainable development is a matter of creating, discovering, major demand for added value.
It is not the fragmentation of policy to satisfy jaded wants. Nor is it a concealed hostility to the free market. And let’s not start with equity please.
The level playing field isn’t seeing that nobody ever gains the edge.
Joseph has craftily avoided facing this dilemma and the consequences it may pose. It’s been his party’s fundamental axiom, look inward to resolve the country.
The problem, according to him, is bureacracatic.
The man’s entropic. Weaned to be part of a self-referential caste.
When will anyone challenge him?
Jeez, another handpicked Jesuit educated Bozo to rule over the Maltese.
Can you put the thesis for downloading, it will make interesting reading. It will be like Konrad’s with four pages of references and evry paragraph with a reference number , the rest will be filling the blanks.
Go to http://www.theses.com. It’s free to download but you’d need to register first (that’s free too).
My take is that whoever wrote the above is a communist at heart. Maybe some waters have broken.
To me it smacks of Mario Vella…
To me it simply smacks of either unbelievable megalomania or sycophancy (abject arse-licking, in other words)
Isn’t it obvious he was a political appointee. In METCO and IPSE as an executive and then manager just at the age of 22-23yrs.
Mintoff’s choice, by Joseph’s direct admission.
Clearly that this is not Muscat’s writing. But it happens all the time – just look at the theses of some of our lawyers and then see the way they write for the newspapers and their blogs.
Ghost writers or very good (and kind) proofreaders who, as much as I disagree with the practice, are perfectly legitimate.
NOT IN PhDs THEY’RE NOT!
No. Ghost writers are not acceptable in PhDs. You’re confusing issues, there. A proof reader checks for errors of punctuation, spelling, and so on.
A proof reader does not deal with content. A ghost writer does, and that’s why it’s not allowed.
Muscat didn’t use a proof reader, anyway. His text is replete with the sort of errors a good proof reader would have noticed and corrected.
It’s absolutely not legitimate. Theses are screened through a plagiarism software suite these days. There’s a whole thing about plagiarism or passing off ideas of others as your own. It’s one of the cardinal sins in serious academia.
You’re confusing two things:
1) Having your thesis written by someone else
2) Copying stuff from other authors. That’s plagiarism, which is what you’re talking about.
In this case, we seem to have detected (1). We haven’t yet checked for (2).
My original comment was not clear. Sorry.
I meant to say: “Ghost writers. Or very good (and kind) proofreaders who, as much as I disagree with the practice, are perfectly legitimate.”
You cannot have a ghost writer producing your dissertation or thesis (not even at undergraduate level, let alone at doctoral level), but proofreaders are OK.
Now I have come across several instances where proofreaders were encouraged by their student clients to prettify (to borrow a term used in IT circles) the content as much as they wanted. The proofreader would not be remotely familiar with the subject matter, therefore cannot really write the thesis for their client, but anyone with decent language skills can save a written piece otherwise destined for shipwreck. I know this borders on ghost writing, but it’s a practice which is rampant, as much as I disagree with it.
That said, I cannot for the life of me understand how someone could complete his PhD thesis in the stipulated time while holding an MEP post full time (no, not even an Aloysian with excellent time management skills, as he once said in an interview).
But you cannot jump to conclusions simply because a written sample “isn’t [the author’s] English at all.”
I would start by asking his doctoral supervisor. Surely he must have been tracking his progress throughout the 3 years, right?
So we have people getting PhDs who are incapable of doing their own proofreading.
No wonder the world is in the fucking gutter.
If you can’t write your own thesis, properly and beautifully, and do your own proofreading, then you shouldn’t be getting a PhD, whether it’s in IT or any other subject.
PhDs are now worth jack shit precisely because every two-bit zaghzugh with a keyboard is being let through. You only have to look at our parliamentary line-up. There are more PhDs between them than there are brain cells.
@Qeghdin Sew
Saif Gaddafi, most notoriously, had a PhD supervisor. The much respected – and now reviled – and accomplished academic David Held supervised Gaddafi’s PhD ‘research’.
That infamous thesis passed muster, because no one involved had any interest in preventing its progress until, well, you know what happened next.
Now Gaddafi senior is dead, Gaddafi junior is a guest of his country’s security forces, the LSE’s director has been replaced, and Saif Gaddafi’s former supervisor has washed up at a quiet univeristy, well out of plain sight.
Muscat’s supervisor may well have known what he was (or was not) doing. Don’t make the common mistake of assuming that every academic is beyond reproach.
Yes, but it shouldn’t happen with PhDs. In any normal country, the media would be on to this like a pack of hounds. But Malta isn’t a normal country.
We promoted someone who was caught cheating in exams and, in a separate case, let a semi-illiterate policeman graduate with a LLD. (Heck, half of all law graduates are semi-illiterate or at least severely lacking any form of intellectual prowess typically expected of any university graduate.)
To hell with your calls for academic honesty and standards, Baxxter.
@Qeghdin Sew. What you say doesn’t undermine Baxxter’s accurate assessment. On the contrary, it proves his point.
This biography leaves out a crucial detail that reflects plenty on the author’s character – the Great Leader (or his ghost writer), omitted to point out that the Great Leader also owes his roots to being a militant journalist and puppet to the leader of Opposition from Sept 1998 on.
Being the blue-eyed boy that he is, he was automatically in a position of favour to join the gravy train when the time was opportune. This inevitably led him to be able to read for his doctorate – a chance that surely would have passed him by if he had remained in the employ of MDC.
This suspiciously sounds more like your English, Daphne. Did you write it for him?
[Daphne – I can’t write in that academic style at all. The other bits always creep in. So no, I didn’t.]
Jista Jason Micallef jitfa xi dawl fuq dan is-suggett? X’jaf Jason Micallef fuq Joseph Muscat biex ghandu daqshekk arja u ardita? Ghax donnu Joseph ‘irrikatat’.
Iz-zmien itiena parir.
My thoughts exactly!
Muscat’s biographical note quotes Mario Vella, whose vision, we are told, is outstanding among Malta’s intellectuals.
That’s a classic ghost writer’s mistake: caving in to the overwhelming urge to cite oneself as primus inter pares.
Someone should now doorstep Mario Vella and Muscat about this, and should also contact Bristol University for their comments.
It’s disgraceful that Muscat got away with this at all. It’s beyond disgraceful that he’s allowed to do so even now that he expects to become prime minister.
If Muscat claims to have written this, then he owns up to lying.
The text says he arrived ‘late’ and as an ‘outsider’ to the Labour Party, when his Mintoffian grandmother is on record as having said that she used to take Muscat to Mintoff’s meetings when he was a child.
Whoever wrote that snippet is almost certainly Maltese. You can immediately see that from the author’s slightly archaic sentence structure.
Also, the preference of overly long sentences punctuated by commas, over a sequence of short sentences, is a sure sign of a Mediterranean author. And if you still aren’t convinced, then just look at how he uses “affected permanently” instead of “permanently affected”.
This writing belongs to someone Maltese but the style has been polluted but his PhD advisor, who no doubt would have altered large tracts of the text.
That being said, I’m sure it’s a crap doctoral dissertation as almost all distance learning PhDs are. I’m sure he doesn’t deserve the title of Doctor any more than Laurence Gonzi does.
Abulafia, I’m a huge fan of yours. Your comment on distance learning PhDs and the ridiculous title of Doctor has just increased my admiration tenfold.
You ended your book on Frederick II with something about “ex oriente lux”. I suppose you could have added that ex meridione stercus.
Halli nghidha bil-Malti.
Meta qrajt din in-nota bijografika, ma stajtx ma ninnutax kif Joseph Muscat huwa wiehed minn dawk in-nies li gawdew u redghu kemm felhu taht kull gvern li kellha Malta fl-ahhar 39 sena, u x’aktarx li ser ikompli sejjer hekk wara d-9 ta’ Marzu.
Taht il-Lejber tas-sebghinijiet u tmeninijiet, kien protett, ghax nanntu rawwmitu kmieni fil-partit u kien Laburist Mintoffjan.
Taht il-gvern tal-PN tas-87 sas-96, ha l-edukazzjoni terzjarja tieghu bil-bibien miftuhin u bl-istipendji.
Fl-1996 reggha kellu il-gvern tieghu, din id-darba il-gvern ‘Manigerjali u Modern’ ta’ Alfred Sant, u dahhluh jahdem f’korporazzjonijiet tal-gvern f’pozizzjonijiet manigerjali.
Fl-1998, kompla l-process tad-dhul fl-Unjoni Ewropeja, li bih fl-2004 sar Membru tal-Parlament Ewropew.
Bis-sahha tar-rebha tal-PN fl-2008, sar Mexxej tal-Partit.
Fl-2013, jista jsir PrimMinistru.
This is the stellar career of Joey:
Education:
St Paul’s Bay Primary.
Stella Maris School.
St Aloysius College.
St Aloysius College Sixth Form.
University of Malta: 1995 B.Comm in Management and Public Policy; 1996 BA (Hons) in Public Policy (Thesis on public funding of political parties); 1997 MA in European Studies.
University of Bristol, 2007 Ph.D in Management Research.
Career
1992-2001 – Super One radio and TV.
2001-2004 – Editor, Maltastar.com
1997-2004 – Market intelligence manager, investment advser.
1994-97 – Finance secretary of the Labour Youth Forum and acting chairman.
1995-2001 – Member, MLP national executive.
2001-2003 – MLP education secretary.
2003 – Chairman of the MLP national conference.
1997-1998 – Member of the National Commission for Fiscal Morality.
2004 – Elected Member of the European Parliament- served as vice president of the EP Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, substitute on the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection.
Dr Muscat is married to Michelle, Dr Sant’s former secretary. They have twin girls.
In his spare time Joseph Muscat follows sport, notably football, trains regularly and likes playing table tennis. His favourite teams are Rabat Ajax and Milan.
He also follows the rock music scene and has a collection of material from the group Marillion, having met their former frontman Fish twice.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20080606/local/joseph-muscat-second-youngest-mlp-leader.211216
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Whoever wrote this is certainly not a native English speaker.
It’s stilted and awkward. It almost seems that The Author made a list of impressive words he wanted to use and constructed his sentences around them.
And I have a feeling we are not talking about one author here, but more likely, but at least two. There are some words or phrases that jar with the rest and strengthen this suspicion, like:
“zoomed out ” and “of a sudden” .
Yes, there are now available ‘word generators’, based on random number theory.
I have a programmer friend who produced a ‘pornograhic generator’, utilizing the same theory, hilarious.
‘Petty bourgeoisie?’ Indeed! No truer words spoken.
The real term is ‘petit bourgeoisie’.
I see that he used a Crystal Finance email address when contacting survey respondents.
So what do we have here? A member of the European Parliament who kept his job at Crystal Finance? A former Crystal Finance employee who retained access to company servers even after he left his job?
However you slice it, it doesn’t look good. It’s devious, underhand, and sly. Just like Muscat.
Jesus.
This is dead serious.
“The atmosphere in the week following the general elections was almost that of a tribal war […]”
Bingo.
So, it turns out that Muscat DID have a proof reader. Her name was Michelle Muscat.
Petty bourgeoisie indeed.