Seven of the 24 ministers of education who were in Romania after the December 1989 revolution were suspected of plagiarism. Only one – Yoan Mang – resigned after being accused of plagiarism, although he claims he did not plagiarize and that the authors of some articles would include his name in them without his knowledge because he was their boss and “it used to be then in education.” Mang is now advising current education minister Sorin Kimpean, at the center of a plagiarism scandal, to resign.

The list of education ministers accused of plagiarism includes the current minister, Sorin Kimpeanu, who says those making the accusations are “some scum in education”.

However, the works of most of them have never been analyzed by academic integrity specialists, even if professors from abroad or the investigation of journalist Emilia Serkan from PressOne proved plagiarism, writes scoala9.ro.

List of 7 ministers of education accused of plagiarism

• Ekaterina Andronescu, four times Minister of Education
• Pavel Nestase, former Rector of ASE and Minister of Education from January to June 2017
• Valentyn Popa, Minister of Education from January to September 2018
• Liviu Pop – in 2018, journalist Emilia Serkan participated in a public meeting at the National College of Internal Affairs (CNAI) of the Police Academy, where Liviu Pop presented his doctoral thesis. The journalist stated before the commission that Pop engaged in plagiarism in his work. In the end, the commission did not award him the title of doctor, writes scoala9.ro.
• Mihai Gardeu, Minister of Education from November 2005 to April 2007
• Yoan Mang – Minister of Education for only eight days, in May 2012, in the Ponta government. He resigned due to allegations of plagiarism.
• Sorin Kimpeanu – acting Minister of Education

Yoan Mang, “advice” to Sorin Kimpeanu: “The most elegant thing would be to resign”

Ioan Mang, education minister in Ponta’s government, was the only education minister accused of plagiarism to resign, although he still maintains his innocence.

Ioan Mang has been the head of the PSD Bihor branch since 2010, he was twice the vice president of the Bihor County Council, he was also a senator, and now he is a member of parliament and a professor at the University of Oradea, where he has been teaching since 2003.

Contacted by HotNews.ro, Mang recommended that Minister Kimpean resign and “see what he does.”

• “I believe that these accusations of plagiarism must have a basis, I did not read what exactly Minister Kimpeanu plagiarized.
• Of course, the most elegant thing is to resign and not be involved in such a ministry.
• On the other hand, I had to see what he plagiarized and who discovered this plagiarism, because I think plagiarism is a very controversial issue in Romania and often unfounded. (…) This is a sensitive topic.
• (…) Everyone knows better what to do. I think that if there is going to be … especially since it’s also about changes to the education law, I think the healthiest thing would be for him to resign, retire and see what he does.
• But everyone knows exactly what he did and what he didn’t do. If there is even the slightest fault in this case, I would leave,” said Yoan Mang.

“I resigned then not because I felt guilty, but on the contrary”

The current PSD MP considers it the right decision to resign after the plagiarism scandal, but continues to say that he didn’t do it because he felt guilty:

• “I resigned then not because I felt guilty, on the contrary, but there were some problems related to the family, which suffered, did not understand what it was about. There were the following reasons. (…)
• I believe that I did the right thing when I resigned, although after 3 years it turned out that I did not plagiarize, but only that I did not quote the author enough times in one work.”

In response to a journalist’s remark that the verdict of the National Ethics Board in 2015 was that the article was plagiarized, Mang said that there were “about 7 articles” at the beginning, and at the end there were 3 that were not written by him:

• “There was no verdict on plagiarism. If I had plagiarized, I would have been expelled from my studies. The commission decided to withdraw the articles, and I withdrew them all, submitted a request for all of them. In 4 articles, those who wrote them gave statements before a notary public that they I was not informed about them. It was about some students and a former assistant.”

Why did his name appear in the articles if he did not participate in them? “Because I was their boss, and unfortunately that’s how it was in Romanian education,” answers Mang, who is a professor in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Oradea.

How Yoan Mang resigned after 8 days as minister

Yoan Mang was appointed Minister of Education on 7 May 2012 by then Prime Minister Victor Ponta. On the same day, Stefan Vlaston, then president of the EDU CER Association for Education and Research, posted excerpts of a research paper signed by Ioan Mang on Contributors, saying that a reader had pointed out the similarity.

Two days later, Emil Bock presented another scientific article, signed by Yoan Mang, claiming that it was “100% plagiarism”: “If in the previous days you had the opportunity to see some articles that were almost complete reproductions from other academic sources, Today I present to you 100% plagiarism. This is the minister’s article completely copied from a Japanese source, that is, he copied the article of other Japanese researchers and put his name on an article that does not belong to him. will also provide you with evidence.”

Mang has since maintained that he did not plagiarize, that if found guilty he would leave education, and that his name appeared in the relevant articles without his knowledge because other authors wanted to “do good”.

On May 15, Viktor Ponta announced the resignation of Ioan Mang from the post of minister.

On September 5, 2012, the National Board of Ethics determined that Mang had plagiarized several scientific articles, but in order for this decision to become official, an opinion from the Ministry of Education was needed, writes Mediafax.

Only in 2015, the National Council of Ethics (CNE), under the Ministry of Education, found “elements of plagiarism” in one of the articles signed by former minister Ioan Mang. The CNE decided to apply a written warning, revocation of articles and a 3-year suspension of the right to register for the competition in the field of higher education to Mang, reports HotNews.ro.

Sorin Kimpeanu is accused of plagiarizing a specialized course of 92 pages of the work of two professors of the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine in Bucharest, with whom he signed in 2000 as the fourth author of a nine-page university course.

Journalist Emilia Sherkan wrote in PressOne that Sorin Ciempeanu plagiarized 13 chapters previously published by two other professors from the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine in Bucharest.

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