Arakhamia's dissertation defense was postponed due to a lack of a quorum
On September 8, David Arakhamia’s dissertation defense did not take place due to a lack of a quorum. The head of the “Servant of the People” faction attended the meeting, but the academic council could not be convened, so the defense was postponed.
As it turned out, Larysa Komakha, director of the Educational and Research Institute of Public Administration and Civil Service at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and chair of the academic council, submitted a request to Valery Kopiyka, the university’s acting rector, asking for two days of leave beginning September 8.
The request was registered at 9:23 a.m. Due to the chairperson’s absence, there was no quorum required to hold the defense.
At the same time, Arakhamia did show up for the scheduled defense. He had planned to defend his dissertation in a field related to public administration and government management.
No date has yet been announced for the new defense.
Arakhamia’s dissertation defense was scheduled for September 8 at 1:00 p.m. The topic of his dissertation is “Features of the Activities of a Parliamentary Faction with Coalition Status in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.”
On the eve of the defense, the civic organization “Chervonyi Huber” raised concerns about possible violations of academic integrity and errors in the work. In particular, the authors of the analysis noted that the dissertation repeatedly dates a 2014 law to 2024 and describes the collapse of the parliamentary coalition as an automatic grounds for the government’s resignation.
Experts also questioned the “stability matrix” of the parliamentary coalition proposed in the thesis. According to them, it essentially consists of nine general recommendations and contains no specific indicators or data.
The organization also pointed out extensive repetition of passages from Arakhamia’s previous publications and stylistic signs of artificial intelligence use. In light of this, “Chervonyi Huber” appealed to Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, calling for an official review of the dissertation prior to its defense.
At the same time, these allegations are assessments made by a civil society organization and experts and do not constitute established evidence of a violation of academic integrity.
Source: Bankova Mail
As a reminder, Arakhamia distanced “Servant of the People” from calls by individual lawmakers to form a coalition government.
