UNB releases controversial U.S. politician's PhD dissertation after months of refusals

After months insisting it was not possible — or even legal — to share a maligned doctoral dissertation by controversial U.S. politician Doug Mastriano, the University of New Brunswick suddenly made the document public in August, in a move that appeared to undermine excuses used to keep it secret in the first place.

Mastriano, the Republican nominee running to be governor of Pennsylvannia, rose to prominence there as an early opponent of mask and vaccine mandates to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, and as an ardent supporter of former president Donald Trump.

A state senator, author and retired army colonel, Mastriano obtained a PhD in history from UNB in 2013, toward the end of his military career.

Numerous attempts to access the dissertation that Mastriano wrote in order to earn the doctorate have, however, been repelled for the last two years.

"The choice to embargo a thesis is at the discretion of the author, not the institution," UNB's Heather Campbell wrote in May, while rejecting a CBC request to access Mastriano's dissertation.

She said an author's reasons for not wanting work shared "are not scrutinized," and an embargo could last indefinitely under university rules.

"It is by default for four years, but an author may request an extension," she wrote.

That is contrary to the policy of many North American universities, which view scholarship as a public good to be shared except in rare circumstances.

For instance, York University in Toronto says on its website that its policy is to allow the embargo of a dissertation for a maximum of three years, and only when it meets certain conditions and is agreed to be necessary by a student's supervisor.

"As a publicly funded institution, York University has an obligation to ensure that research produced by its graduate students is available for the benefit of the public, particularly by making successfully defended theses and dissertations available through York University Libraries and Library and Archives Canada," states the university policy.

Nevertheless UNB used its more restrictive policy to deny at least four separate requests since 2020 to view the dissertation. 

Chris Rodkey, a Pennsylvania Democrat running to represent his local district in the state election this fall, made one of those requests. 

Rodkey, who has a PhD himself, was surprised in November 2020 when he could not find a record of Mastriano's dissertation in UNB's library system.

That changed to shock when UNB responded to a formal written request for information by declining to disclose even the title of Mastriano's dissertation.