Mexico president plagiarized law thesis: report News
Mexico president plagiarized law thesis: report

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto [official website, in Spanish] plagiarized the thesis for his law degree according to a report [documents, in Spanish] released on Sunday. A group of academics and experts found [Aristegui Noticias report] that of the 682 paragraph thesis, at least 197 paragraphs were taken from other writers and that 20 of those paragraphs were copied word for word from another author without citation or reference in the bibliography. At least 28.8 percent of the thesis was plagiarized [Guardian report] and in one instance, of the 36 paragraphs written about Mexican Revolutionary General and President Álvaro Obregón, 35 of those paragraphs were copied word for word from a number of sources. A government spokesman has since assured [Time report] the public that the president met all the requirements to graduate from Panamerican University (UP) and that the lack of citations are style errors.

Peña Nieto is not the only major politician that has been accused of or found to have plagiarized in the past. Most recently last month, Melania Trump’s speech at the Republic national convention was reportedly [Guardian report] taken verbatim from First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech in the 2008 Democratic convention. In 2013 Senator Rand Paul was accused [CNN report] of heavily plagiarizing for a book and several speeches. In 2006, Brookings Institution researchers reported [Brookings Institution report] that there was evidence that showed that there was extensive plagiarism in Vladimir Putin’s dissertation which he submitted to the St. Petersburg Mining Institute in 1996. In 1987, Joe Biden, the then-presidential candidate was accused [NYT report] of plagiarizing the speeches of various politicians including British Labour Party Neil Kinnock and John F. Kennedy.