The London School of Economics (LSE) on Tuesday ordered an investigation into allegations that the Libyan leader Colonel Qadhafi's son Saif al-Islam plagiarized parts of his PhD thesis which was examined by eminent economist and Labour peer Meghnad Desai.
It has been alleged that nearly a dozen passages in Mr Qadhafi’s 400-odd pages thesis appeared to have been lifted from elsewhere. It is also alleged that he might have used a "ghost-writer’’ for his work.
Lord Desai was reported as saying that there was no evidence to suggest that the thesis was ghost-written.
"I read the thesis, I examined him with an examiner, he defended his thesis very, very thoroughly. He had nobody else present, and I don’t think there’s any reason to think he didn’t do it himself,’’ The Times reported him saying.
The university said: "LSE is aware that there are allegations of plagiarism concerning the PhD thesis of Saif Qadhafi. The School takes all allegations of plagiarism very seriously, and is looking into the matter in accordance with standard LSE procedures."
The Oxford University Press was reported to have put off plans to publish the thesis.
Mr Qadhafi, who was a student at LSE from 2003 to 2008, donated £1.5m to his alma mater from the Qadhafi International Charity and Development Foundation. Over the past week, students have staged protests demanding that the university "pay back’’ to the Libyan people the £300,000 that it has received so far.
LSE director Sir Howard Davies, admitted he felt "embarrassed" by the university's links with the Gaddafi family. He told the BBC that the decision to accept the funding Gaddafi had "backfired".
"We looked at the pros and cons of engaging with someone like Saif Qadhafi and with the problems in North Africa and we decided that we would do so…In retrospect we can say that, knowing what we know now and how he has behaved in this crisis, that's a judgment that we might have made differently," he said.
