Democrat Maryland Governor Wes Moore is an ambitious guy. The Washington Free Beacon now does its thing giving Moore the kind of treatment the New York Times loves to give to Republicans. As always, however, the Free Beacon’s story is fairly (and, in this case, intensely) reported. Moore has been engaged in a classic case of self-help enhancing his résumé. Andrew Kerr reports “Wes Moore Won a Key White House Post Claiming He Was ‘Touted as a Foremost Expert’ on Radical Islam and Was Studying for an Oxford PhD—But His Thesis Is ‘Missing’ and There’s No Evidence He Was Ever a Doctoral Student” (“As he positions himself as a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, the governor with the golden résumé is likely to face mounting scrutiny for repeated exaggerations and falsehoods regarding his athletic, academic, and military achievements”).
This is almost funny:
The mystery surrounding the title of and content of Moore’s thesis could be resolved with a cursory review of the document. But that, too, poses a problem for Moore. His office could not produce a copy of the document since we began requesting it in early November.
And good luck finding it at Oxford’s legendary Bodleian Library, which archives all MLitt theses from the university’s graduate students. A senior librarian told the Free Beacon she couldn’t find “any trace” of Moore’s paper, because he never submitted it.
“I can see on his record that he has not submitted his thesis to the Bodleian, so they wouldn’t have a record of it,” Oxford deputy communications chief Julia Paolitto told the Free Beacon. “MLitt students are required to submit their thesis to the Bodleian in order to confer their degree at a ceremony, however as Mr. Moore has never had a ceremony this is not a requirement he would have needed to fulfil.”
Paolitto’s confirmation that Moore did not submit his thesis puts the governor in a tough position. Moussa, his press secretary, insisted that Moore submitted his thesis and said the Free Beacon would be spreading a conspiracy theory by suggesting otherwise.
The Walz may be closing in on Wes:
Moore claimed on his 2006 White House fellowship application, for example, to have been inducted into the Maryland College Football Hall of Fame, an organization that doesn’t exist; that he received a Bronze Star for his service in Afghanistan, which he had not; and that he was born in Baltimore, which he was not.
Maybe he took in the HBO series The Wire, filmed on location in Baltimore.
Laughter is the best medicine:
The problems surrounding Moore’s academic claims extend beyond his missing and title-shifting graduate thesis. He also claimed in his White House fellowship application that he went on to become a doctoral candidate at Oxford in 2006, studying for a Ph.D. The prerequisite for doctoral work is usually the completion of a master’s degree. It also requires the cooperation and oversight of an academic adviser, and typically doctoral students are formally enrolled at the university.
But Moore’s office declined to provide the name of his academic adviser or any evidence confirming he was ever a doctoral candidate. Oxford’s Wolfson College, where Moore was admitted as a graduate student, the university’s Department of Politics and International Relations, and the Rhodes House all declined to verify Moore’s doctoral candidacy claim.
The questions and discrepancies surrounding Moore’s missing graduate thesis notwithstanding, his claim to be a “foremost expert” on the threat of radical Islam is ridiculous.
“I have never come across Gov. Moore’s name in the course of my academic life,” said the French political scientist Gilles Kepel, described by the New York Times as “France’s most famous scholar of Islam.”
Several other prominent academics in the field, including Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the Program of Extremism at George Washington University, said they’ve never heard of Moore in the context of any scholarly work.
“I have been studying political Islam in the West for the last 25 years and Moore’s name has never popped up on my radar,” Vidino told the Free Beacon. “It’s a small, niche field, I’d know.”
Former CIA case officer Reuel Marc Gerecht, now a scholar of Islamic terrorism at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said he’s never heard of Moore in the context of his expertise in Islamic terrorism.
“If there was an up-and-coming scholar in radical Islam, if he had written something novel, then yes, I would certainly have heard of it,” Gerecht said. “This is news to me.”
Read the whole thing here.
