One of America’s most controversial politicians is causing a stir far north of the election campaign: at a Canadian university that awarded him a Ph.D.
Students at the University of New Brunswick are pressing their university for details about its role in awarding Doug Mastriano the top academic achievement on his resume in 2013.
A UNB associate professor listed on Doug Mastriano’s doctoral dissertation describes it as an atrocious piece of academic work and says he can’t understand why the paper includes his name.
“This thesis has bothered me for nine years,” Jeffrey Brown told CBC News in an interview.
“[Mastriano] he was awarded a doctorate for very uncertain reasons.”
The famous alumnus is now running for governor of Pennsylvania in next month’s midterm elections on a far-right platform with potentially far-reaching implications far beyond his home state.
Mastriano earned a doctorate in history here at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton in 2013. (The Canadian Press)
The electoral denier could gain power over the election
Electoral denial is what made Mastriano famous nationally.
State lawmaker tried to nullify 2020 election on behalf of Donald Trump; he was in the Capitol when the riot began there January 6, 2021 and even helped transport protesters to Washington.
He is now the Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania. The polls prove it tracking. But if he wins, he would gain new power over national elections.
The Governor of Pennsylvania will appoint the chief election administrator and also judges who would hear electoral cases in the state of critical change.
Mastriano tried to overturn the 2020 election for Donald Trump. It made him a celebrity on the right. And he won a Republican nomination for governor for this fall’s midterm elections. (Mary Altaffer/The Associated Press)
In New Brunswick, Brown’s objections to Mastriano go way back, well before his political career.
That old dispute within the university has resurfaced publicly as Mastriano runs for high office.
The teacher describes the work as dishonest, careless, bigoted
Mastriano’s campaign used his doctorate to defend a recent political controversy. When a photo surfaced showing Mastriano dressed in a Confederate uniform at a 2014 educational event, an adviser dismissed it as smear work against a historian, pointing to his academic credentials.
Brown was part of Mastriano’s thesis review panel.
Mastriano’s campaign has used his doctorate to deflect criticism, including when Reuters reported in August this 2014 photo showing Mastriano, left, dressed in a Confederate uniform at a 2014 education event. (Army War College/Reuters)
Mastriano’s work was dishonest, sloppy, tinged with religious bigotry and indifferent to facts that contradicted his claims, said Brown, a U.S. history scholar at UNB and a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen. .
He expressed alarm when the university awarded the doctorate and has provided CBC News with emails he sent to colleagues at the time.
Brown lamented that the same traits he denounced at the time are materializing in Mastriano’s public life: namely, bigotry and indifference to the facts.
“The prospect of Doug Mastriano having any power, anywhere, is horrifying,” said Brown, who met and worked with Mastriano on several revisions of his thesis.
Eventually, Brown withdrew from the project. Or so he thought.
Dissertation Topic: A Christian Soldier
Mastriano’s thesis involved a legendary American soldier, one of the most decorated of the last century.
Alvin York was a deeply religious army sergeant who described being touched by God before a World War I battle where he killed 25 Germans.
A statue of Alvin York at the Tennessee Legislature. Other scholars accuse Mastriano of cutting corners and dishonesty. (Mark Humphrey/The Associated Press)
His life story inspired a Gary Cooper movie. Mastriano has a long-term project to spread his story to younger generations, with a web sitea doctorate dissertation and then to book.
Nevertheless, Mastriano’s project was controlled from the beginning.
Even before arriving in New Brunswick, Mastriano, then an army intelligence officermade news in 2008 for his work to identify the location of York’s heroics on a French battlefield.
Other scholars and a French bureaucrat accused him sloppy research methodsmisidentifying the site of the battle, ignoring conflicting details, digging without permission and ruining an archaeological site.
Mastriano dismissed his detractors as jealous and maintained his certainty that he had found the true battleground.
The archaeological controversy was the initial reason Brown, the New Brunswick professor, expressed concern about the project.
No one examining Mastriano’s work had any archaeological knowledge, so, he asked, how were they supposed to scrutinize a document full of archaeological claims, hotly contested claims?
The list of concerns grew over time.
Mastriano’s academic work is dedicated to reviving the memory of York, a legendary World War I soldier inspired by his religious faith. (Associated Press)
One was the quality of the writing: Brown said it took several revisions to correct basic grammar, style and punctuation issues on nearly every page.
A cursory reading of the finished paper still shows basic errors: a of the colonel repeatedly misspelled name, an Italian military award misspelling in intro and wrong release year (1940) for Gary Cooper’s 1941 film.
There were more substantive complaints.
He said Mastriano offered opinions without facts or attributions to back them up, an approach Brown said was unscholarly.
“This is what God wanted”
In a dramatic example of this, Brown said, Mastriano would make factual claims even when referring to celestial phenomena.
In one example, on page 260, Mastriano writes, “The idea that York survived the carnage because of divine intervention also speaks of a miracle.”
Brown said this approach is not scholarly.
“It wasn’t so much, ‘Sergeant York reported it,’ or, ‘York believed it,’ as it was, ‘God spoke to York,'” Brown said in an interview.
“That’s where Mastriano wanted to go with it: that this guy was literally directed by God to start fighting people. That would be fair. That’s what God wanted.”
A rally by Mastriano last month in the Pennsylvania state capital included prayers and the unfurling of a giant American flag. (Alexander Panetta/CBC)
Faith is central to Mastriano’s life, and in his gubernatorial campaign.
He says that journalists who seem to mock his faith it will be prohibited to cover his campaign events and has bristling by being described as a “Christian nationalist”.
In the past, he has explained how Alvin York’s story fits his faith.
In a 2019 speechhe advocated York as an alternative to the pacifist philosophy, of the other cheek within Christianity, as proof that the faithful can be warriors.
Prayer is a regular part of his campaign events. It was a recurring theme in speeches at a rally last month at the Pennsylvania legislature.
“Lord, you told us to pray for our enemies,” said one speaker, in a prayer to open the rally.
“We pray they lose.”
The critics are piling up
Criticism of Mastriano’s academic work goes back years and spans several countries.
In Oklahoma, a professor and doctoral candidate in history wrote to UNB last year warning that Mastriano’s work was riddled with academic fraud.
James Gregory, who first learned of Mastriano’s work in his published book, says he has since found more than 150 problems with the thesis.
There are fake footnotes, he says, meaning the paper often makes a claim, cites a footnote to back it up, and then when you actually go to check the source cited in the footnote , says something else.
He showed some examples to CBC News.
For example, Mastriano’s paper says that a reporter first became interested in York’s story because of its religious aspect; A footnote below quotes a telegram that the journalist, Canadian George Pattullo, sent on January 30, 1919. But Gregory traced the telegram and there is nothing about religion, only Pattullo’s travel plans and a request for battlefield data.
“His thesis is just full of these problems,” Gregory said. “He’s making it up.”
“It’s academic fraud.”
Mastriano’s dissertation claims that York’s faith is what first inspired a journalist to write about him. As proof, he cites this telegram. This telegram does not say that. One researcher says Mastriano’s work is riddled with problems like this. (James Gregory)
Gregory insists he has no political ax to grind. He says he’s a registered Republican, in Oklahoma, and doesn’t care who the governor of Pennsylvania is.
His complaint, he says, is strictly academic. And a little personal. That’s because Gregory has, too written about York; he quoted Mastriano in his work and now feels cheated.
“It’s contaminated,” Gregory said.
“I was wrong. Therefore, my article was wrong. And everyone who cites Mastriano’s work in the future, now, his work is tainted.
“It’s not just that he’s changing history by lying and making things up. He’s also ruining the work of everyone who trusts him.”
Gregory said he actually had a cordial relationship with Mastriano, exchanging messages online about their shared academic interest in York.
Then, suddenly, Gregory says, when he began to pick up details that contradicted Mastriano’s work, the politician cut off contact and blocked him on Facebook.
UNB students worried, frustrated
Some New Brunswick students began to worry about reputational taint after the Associated Press first reported on the controversy at his school.
A owner in a Fredericton newspaper cuts to the heart of his concern, asking, “Will employers question the value of UNB Ph.D.s?”
A dozen master’s and doctoral students met last month to discuss plans to press the university for details about Mastriano’s degree.
The students plan to publish a letter soon.
“Many of us took out our frustrations on…