Senator John Walsh's Thesis Presented Others’ Work as His Own

Is a final paper required for a Masters degree usually something as short as 14-pages?

 

Many masters don't involve a thesis (mine didn't). For those that do, standards/expectations* vary widely.

The story doesn't delve into it, but Walsh's "work" doesn't sound like a thesis so much as an end-of-course paper, with the course being some capstone kind of thing. As these aren't typically "published" (as are theses/dissertations), I'm curious as to how this got into the Times' possession.


*As an aside, I had a classmate who now holds an endowed chair at a Big Ten school. The first "chapter" of his dissertation (in double-spaced 12-point Arial, no less) was ONE page long.

 

Thanks.

The Times never called it a thesis, so I was unclear about what this was. But, I also thought a thesis was "published" and available for review, which is why I thought this paper probably was a thesis, since the Times was able to review it.

Either way, you'd think it wouldn't be too difficult to bang out a 14-page paper.

 

I shudder to think what Obama will come up with to Distract™ us from this.

 

Me too. He's the best.

He's working this board about two levels above 95% of the posters.

 

Walsh is claiming PTSD..

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/23/sen-john-walsh-cites-ptsd-in-thesis-plagiarism-explanation/

 

Next up will be claim of delayed treatment due to VA medical mismanagement.

 

Me three. Even if he is making what seems to be a perfectly innocent observation abut the Knicks or Jets or whomever I have to read it again to see if he is going somewhere else with it. And he rags on my man JR better than even I can do in person with the old boy.

 

Daniel W. Drezner in the Washington Post:


On what academic planet does a 14 page paper merit John Walsh an M.A.?

...

It’s worse than that, actually. Having read Walsh’s thesis, it’s not just that it’s only 14 pages of text; it’s that even if you ignore the plagiarism, it’s a pretty bad 14 pages. The thesis is ostensibly about whether the United States should prioritize democracy promotion in U.S. grand strategy. If I was supervising this thesis — and I’ve supervised a fair number them for my day job — then this is what I’d have e-mailed Walsh if he’d handed this in to me:

John, this is an intriguing topic, and you’ve got the bare bones of an interesting thesis topic here, but you’re going to need to do a lot more work before handing in the final draft. Your definition of democracy is incomplete, without any discussion of whether it’s democracies or liberal democracies that matter. The literature review is thin and out of date. You do not mention the most damning pushback in the literature against your thesis, which is Ed Mansfield and Jack Snyder’s argument that democratizing states are the most war-prone, and therefore that a push for democratization would destabilize a vital strategic area for the United States. If Mansfield and Snyder are correct, then won’t your strategy create significant short-to-medium term costs? And if that’s the case, how sustainable is this strategy? Most important, however, your empirics are very thin. You need more data, or more cases, where the U.S. has pushed for democratization to examine the pros and cons. As it stands, your conclusions are untethered from the rest of this draft.

For your next draft, I’ll want to see a much fuller discussion of the literature, at least one of two cases to highlight the ways in which this strategy could harm or help the United States, and a much tighter linkage between your arguments and your policy recommendations.

Even if I didn’t detect the plagiarism, there is no way this passes muster for an M.A. thesis. No. Way.

So here’s my question to the Army War College, an institution that I have heretofore admired greatly — how in the hell did this piece of s**t result in the awarding of an M.A. degree?

http://wapo.st/1z7Rf7u

 

Academic rigor at military war colleges is not up to snuff?

http://www.fpri.org/articles/2012/01/reform-military-education-twenty-five-years-later

 

Boom rules and you're a fool if you think he didn't make that Walsh "error" on purpose.

 

This might cost me a scholarship.