TV 2 reports that Health Minister Ingvild Kjerkol has hired a top lawyer to defend her against the accusations of cheating.
– We are facing such a special situation that it is natural for Kjerkol and her co-author to seek legal assistance, says Kjerkol’s lawyer Marianne Klausen to the channel.
For two periods, the lawyer was head of the Joint Complaints Board for student affairs. However, she had to resign as head of the tribunal after it was revealed that she had been illegally appointed by the now-departed Research and Higher Education Minister Sandra Borch.
Now Kjerkol has hired her as a lawyer.
It was at the end of January that several media outlets revealed that the master’s thesis must have text similarities with other assignments, including VG.
Kjerkhold therefore wrote a master’s thesis in 2021, together with a fellow student, on welfare technology in home care. The assignment must contain a number of passengers that are identical to other texts. Texts relating to a master’s thesis from 2019, a master’s thesis from 2015, a master’s thesis from 2014 and a specialist book from 2021.
NRK also found textual similarities in the assignment. They sent the text similarities to law professor Tarjei Bekkedal at the University of Oslo. He believed that no conclusions should be drawn in the matter until the students have explained themselves.
On the other hand, he believed that the textual similarities in Kjerkol’s assignment are clearly above the threshold for calling the students in for a conversation.
Kjerkol has previously claimed that the thesis she wrote together with a fellow student stands up academically.
