The highest ranked Slovak universities issued their stance regarding the conclusions of the special commission that looked into allegations of plagiarism. The top representatives of the Bratislava-based Comenius University, the longest running institution of its kind in Slovakia, claim that Parliamentary Chair Andrej Danko (Slovak National Party/SNS) failed to observe elementary ethical rules that have been in place in academia for centuries when drafting his rigorous thesis. "By downplaying them (the conclusions) and maintaining that his approach was legitimate, he's making a mockery of academic principles, disparages our work and fails to be a role model of courage and virtue for the studying youth, as we should expect from one of the top constitutional officials, but, on the contrary, is an example worthy of condemnation," reads the text. According to Comenius University, this is unacceptable for any individual who takes their educational and scientific profession seriously. "Andrej Danko copied the absolute vast majority of his work from other authors and did not acknowledge it," Comenius University stated.
According to Pavel Jozef Safarik University in Kosice, eastern Slovakia, the thesis of Parliament's Speaker Andrej Danko is a classic case of plagiarism. "Our conclusion needs no special definition of plagiarism," the university writes in the statement. The two respected universities have also been joined by the Faculty of Informatics and Information Technologies of the Slovak Technical University as well as the Slovak Academy of Sciences on Friday. Danko has not yet replied officially to their statements.
A week ago, the Special Commission of the Matej Bel University (UMB) Academic Senate created to investigate suspicions of plagiarism in rigorous theses at the university confirmed that the two doctoral theses reported in the media "contain parts that are slightly modified in comparison with the source literature, however, most of them also show a high degree of accordance with the source literature, while the division into chapters and subchapters of the original sources has been preserved in some places." Based on the analysis of the selected sample, we can state that in several cases we have identified shortcomings at the Faculty of Law at UMB that we consider to be violations of academic rules," added the Commission Chairman Vladimir Janis. As it was revealed, 63 out of 72 pages were identical.
