On Saif Gaddafi & LSE

[For full disclosure: I am a PhD student at the LSE, and a very happy one].

Now that the dust has settled it is possible to have an adult conversation on the relation between the LSE and Gaddafi. First to the facts:

1 - Saif-al-Islam Gaddafi took a Master and a PhD degrees at the LSE.

2 - There are claim that Saif's PhD thesis contained plagiarism.


3 - The LSE offered consultancy services to Lybia.

4 - One LSE research centre received a £ 3 million donation from a fund managed by Said Gaddafi.

My positions:


1 - the school has a very respectable selection process - indeed the most disputed one in the UK - and none has given evidence that Saif shouldn't have been selected in the first place. However, if he was selected on the grounds that he was potentially the most influential person in Lybia's politics and therefore the school had a great chance to positively impact the development of that country, then (a) the school was right - present facts fully supports this claim - and (b) it was arguably morally grounded as well.


If you want to contend with (b) you will have to show that the potential negative impact of the LSE having one "unfit" student exceeded the potential overall benefit of the LSE influencing policy in a country such as Lybia.


2 -The thesis can be read here. Again it is not too much to stress that the PhD evaluation process at the LSE is a highly rigorous one and that there are no reasons to believe that it could have favoured someone on any grounds whatsoever.


If the inquiry that is currently being conducted by the school finds out that the claims are legitimate and there is evidence of plagiarism, then of course the PhD title given to him will be revoked as it shall happen to anyone in the same situation. But so far there seems to be no definitive evidence of plagiarism, so we had better to be cautious and wait.


The fact that he was given advice by top academics working for a US consultacy called "The Monitor Group" (which also happens to have received US$ 3 million from Gaddafi for consultancy services to Lybia) does not delegitimize his thesis in any way. Quite to the contrary. Every good PhD student takes advantage of opportunities to interact with people who may contribute to their research, and if these opportunities are of easy reach, all the better.


Neither does using data gathered by the cited consultancy hurt the value of his thesis in any possible sense. All of us PhDs rely on the availability of evidence to support the arguments that we make in our researches, and there should be no disapproval of someone who uses personal connections to obtain access to such empirical information. I am myself trying to use family connections to government officials to gain access to a database that is of no open access, and if I succeed I don't expect anyone to be able to convincingly argue that I took a morally or scientifically questionable action, let alone plagiarism related claims.


Even if plagiarism is found in Saif's thesis the attacks that have been made to LSE staff by uninformed emotional analysts and more generally throughout the media will not be grounded. Anyone who has been on a post-grad evaluator's position (I have so far been only on the opposite side of the table) knows that plagiarism can be quite hard to detect, so nobody ought to be judged solely for having approved a thesis containing plagiarism.


[By the way, some of the attackers are plagiarists themselves - I know of at least one -, and journalists are by far the champions of plagiarism.]



3 - The role of University is to positively impact the world through the production of solid and robust knowledge. The particular case of the LSE is that of a world-level social sciences school that has historically focused on "discovering the causes of things" and on development issues.


The fact that the school's staff is constantly requested to provide consultancy services to individuals, companies, cities and nations all around the world is but one sign that it produces relevant knowledge and is able to channel it to real life policy making processes. Now if a consultant is asked to offer advice to a dictator on whatever issues that are clearly relevant to a whole country, are there any reasons why she shouldn't accept?


I don't think so. Unless the advice asked is on "how to design a cost-effective way of killing citizens who protest against us", or similar themes, one can't miss the opportunity of causing a positive impact solely because one's advice may end up being used for the evil. If one is really to follow such a doctrine in a coherent fashion then the best is to abandon the consultancy enterprise altogether; or would one be able to sustain the decision of giving advice to Bush's USA? To Blair's UK? To Fidel's Cuba? To Obama's USA?


4 - Receiving money from Lybia was a risky decision taken by the LSE because Gaddafi had a history of doing crazy things and the media would have inevitably turned against anyone with links to him if he were to honour his record (e.g.: do another Lockerbie). But it was not morally reprehensible. Otherwise receiving money from the UK, US or China, and from companies such as Petrobrás (you can see why here - in Portuguese) would have to become morally reprehensible too. Or can it be proved that this company / these countries are not responsible for killing people?


I strongly support the LSE's decision of receiving money from / giving advice to Lybia and believe that it should continue accepting kind donations from anyone who believes in its commitment to sound scientific research and decisive efforts to influence the policy making process anywhere in the world.