By Matt Robinson
BELGRADE (Reuters) - British-based Serbian academics behind plagiarism allegations against Serbia's interior minister said dubious degrees posed serious economic and ethical dangers and they would pursue the problem despite being termed 'stupid' by the prime minister.
Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic has denied an accusation, published by three academics on Sunday, that his doctoral dissertation at a private Belgrade university was "heavily plagiarized".
The row has revived debate over the credibility of higher education and the power of political connections in the former Yugoslav republic, which hopes to join the European Union in the next decade.
The Pescanik (Hourglass) website that published the analysis was downed on Sunday night by a denial-of-service attack, which it said originated from a server registered to the Megatrend University where Stefanovic received his PhD in 2013, two years after his MA. Stefanovic was serving at the time as speaker of the Serbian parliament.
Megatrend, founded in 1989 when Serbia was ruled by strongman Slobodan Milosevic and federal Yugoslavia was hurtling towards war, has denied wrongdoing. Critics say it is among private universities in Serbia favoured by many in the political elite seeking to burnish their academic credentials.
Police say they are investigating the attack on the website, which follows complaints by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) about what it called a "worrying trend" of censorship of online criticism of the government.
Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, a close party ally of Stefanovic, on Tuesday dismissed the academics' allegation.
"I've never heard such a stupid argument in my life," he said.
In emailed comments to Reuters late on Tuesday, the three academics said: "We are ... very surprised by the reaction of the Prime Minister, which brings into question his readiness to deal with the problem of dubious academic degrees."
BRAIN-DRAIN
The three are law lecturer Ugljesa Grusic of the University of Nottingham, Branislav Radeljic, senior lecturer in international politics at the University of East London and Slobodan Tomic, a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics.
"Our main motivation was to raise awareness of the problem of dubious degrees, which produces or contributes to negative selection, brain-drain, the degradation of values and an uncreative and non-competitive economy," they wrote.
"Although all of us are busy with other projects at the moment, we do plan to analyse other dubious degrees."
The academics obtained Stefanovic's dissertation after an investigative reporter invoked Serbia's law on freedom of information. In an analysis published on the Pescanik website, they described the document as falling short of "the minimum technical standards" and containing a "staggeringly small number of footnotes".
Pescanik published the dissertation as a PDF file on Tuesday but the site still appeared to be struggling to stay online.
Vucic has denied accusations his government stands behind online censorship. The accusation is particularly sensitive for Vucic, who has rebranded himself as a democrat having served as information minister in the late 1990s when independent media were fined and shuttered under draconian legislation designed muzzle dissent against Milosevic.
(Writing by Matt Robinson)
