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Norway’s higher education minister resigns over plagiarism scandal

Norway's research and higher education minister Sandra Borch resigned on Friday after admitting plagiarising other students' work, including their faults, in her masters' dissertation.

Published: 20 January 2024 08:52 CET

Minister of Research and Education Sandra Borch is pictured on 19th January 2024 at a press conference in Oslo

Minister of Research and Education Sandra Borch is pictured on 19th January 2024 at a press conference in Oslo where she announced she was stepping down after it was revealed her 2014 masters' thesis contained passages that were identical to olde theses from other students. Photo: Rodrigo Freitas / NTB

“I made a big mistake,” the 35-year-old Borch told a hastily arranged press conference. “I used the texts of other dissertations without quoting the source. I am sorry.”

Norwegian media had earlier highlighted similarities between her 2014 text and other works, notably those of two other students. None had been quoted in references.

A student who revealed the affair on X, the former Twitter, said Borch had lifted word for word a passage from another dissertation and left the typing mistakes.

The issue is particularly embarrassing for Borch because she decided last week to take to the Supreme Court the case of a student who had been cleared on appeal of self-plagiarism for using passages of her own work.

The Centre Party deputy became higher education minister last year in the centre-left government after previously serving as agriculture minister from 2021 to 2023.

Borch’s dissertation at Tromso university in 2014 focused on safety regulations in the oil industry.

Several members of the Norwegian government have resigned in recent months because of conflicts of interest controversies.

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Norway to quadruple aid to Palestinians amidst famine fears

Figures in the revised budget presented on Tuesday, show a roughly quadrupling of the 258 million kroner provided in the initial finance bill adopted last year.

“The urgent need of aid in Gaza is enormous after seven months of war,” Norway’s Minister of International Development, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, said in a statement.

“The food situation in particular is critical and there is a risk of famine,” she added, criticising “an entirely man-made crisis” and an equally “critical” situation in the West Bank.

According to the draft budget, Norway intends to dedicate 0.98 percent of its gross national income to development aid this year.

The figures are still subject to change because the centre-left government, a minority in parliament, has to negotiate with other parties to get the texts adopted.

For his part, Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide again warned Israel against a large-scale military operation in Rafah, a city on the southern edge of the besieged Gaza Strip.

“It would be catastrophic for the population. Providing life-saving humanitarian support would become much more difficult and more dangerous,” Barth Eide said.

He added: “The more than 1 million who have sought refuge in Rafah have already fled multiple times from famine, death and horror. They are now being told to move again, but no place in Gaza is safe.”

As part of the response to the unprecedented Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7th, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he is determined to launch an operation in Rafah, which he considers to be the last major stronghold of the militant organisation.

Many in Rafah have been displaced multiple times during the war, and are now heading back north after Israeli forces called for the evacuation of the city’s eastern part.

On May 7th, Israeli tanks and troops entered the city’s east sending desperate Palestinians to flee north.

According to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), “almost 450,000” people have been displaced from Rafah since May 6th.

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