University of New Brunswick investigating how Trump ally was awarded PhD in 2013
Global News
Scholars have questioned the academic credentials of state senator Doug Mastriano, saying his doctoral dissertation was plagued by factual errors and amateurish archeology.
A high-profile ally of former U.S. president Donald Trump is at the centre of an academic controversy at the University of New Brunswick, where the administration has promised an independent review of how he received a PhD in 2013.
Doug Mastriano, a retired U.S. army colonel, was a little-known state senator in Pennsylvania until he took an active role in the movement to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat. In May, with Trump’s support, he won the Republican nomination to run for state governor, catapulting his far-right campaign into the national spotlight.
On Sept. 9, Mastriano’s academic credentials from UNB were called into question when The Associated Press reported allegations from scholars asserting that his doctoral dissertation was plagued by factual errors and amateurish archeology.
Mastriano has yet to publicly respond to the allegations. Calls to his Pennsylvania offices — in Chambersburg and Gettysburg — were not returned.
Richard Yeomans, a PhD candidate in UNB’s history department, said students on the Fredericton campus want to know what the university is going to do to uphold its academic standards.
“I think that everybody is just shocked at the fact that the department has said nothing since this became an international news story,” Yeomans said in a recent interview. “The university has chosen to save face rather than come to terms with what this means. A certain level of trust has been breached.”
Yeomans said graduate students have raised their concerns with the chair of the history department, Lisa Todd. Todd did not respond to a request for an interview.
Earlier this month, the university issued a statement acknowledging the allegations against Mastriano were causing “concern or confusion” among students, alumni and the public.
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