Busy, important people, like Germany’s defense minister and Muammar Gaddafi’s son, often have their dissertations written for them. We know this. Perfectly respectable universities, like the London School of Economics, sign off on these things because they hope to get money from the dissertation writer. Perfectly respectable professors, like David Held and Benjamin Barber, approve and promote the scholarship of people like Saif al-Islam Qaddafi because these professors like the image of themselves as kingmakers. It is hard to read Barber’s recent keening over the fact that “Oxford University Press, which contracted to publish the two extraordinary books Saif wrote on civil society and democratic reform in the developing world, will presumably now cancel publication” without laughing.

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From Mother Jones:

On his [dissertation’s] acknowledgments page, Saif noted that his thesis was made possible, in part, due to the assistance of a “number of experts…especially Professor Joseph Nye” of Harvard. One of the godfathers of the international relations theories of neoliberalism and soft power, Nye read portions of the paper and provided “advice and direction.” Probably not coincidentally, Nye twice visited Libya in 2007 and 2008 as a paid consultant for the Monitor Group, a Boston-based consulting firm then working for the Qaddafi government. He tells Mother Jones that he read one chapter of the dissertation and “found it intelligent.” After the 2007 trip, Nye wrote an essay for The New Republic, extolling Qaddafi’s efforts to clean up his image.

… In The New Republic piece, Nye noted that he had visited Libya “at the invitation of the Monitor Group.” He did not disclose that he had been there as a paid consultant for this firm — a relationship he acknowledged in an email to Mother Jones. That means The New Republic published an article sympathetic to Qaddafi written by a notable academic on the payroll of a company hired by Qaddafi to boost his standing in the United States.

… [The Monitor Group] helped [Saif] conduct research for his dissertation — raising the possibility that this thesis was another component of the Monitor Group’s makeover campaign for the Qaddafi regime. The consulting firm pocketed $3 million a year for its pro-Qaddafi endeavors.

Extraordinary.