NSVO does not allow the plagiarism of Jelena Trivan to be established

The National Council for Higher Education (NSVO) refuses to appoint a new member of the commission that should assess whether Jelena is Trivan, the first woman of Telekom Srpska, plagiarized her doctoral thesis at the Faculty of Philology.

As written in the letter addressed to the Faculty of Philology, published by "Vreme", the NSVO simply decided at its session at the end of January that "it is not in a position to propose a new member at this time".

Thus NSVO, the majority of whose members are chosen by the government, continues to undermine the work of the expert commission.

So far, the members of the commission appointed by the NSVO have submitted their resignations twice, which led to the collapse of the entire commission.

Tif the saga that has been going on since 2019 is prolonged when "Time" is in the text "Anatomy of a Dissertation" published evidence that large parts of Jelena Trivan's doctoral thesis were copied without citing from other works.

In the letter, now the president of NSVO, Bela Balint, states that their previous member of the commission, Bojan Bojanić, in the explanation of his resignation, informed them that the rest of the commission allegedly does not work according to the law and acts outside of its jurisdiction.

NSSO therefore decides not to appoint new members "until the aforementioned irregularities are eliminated."

At the Faculty of Philology, it is unofficially heard that the decision of NSVO is "scandalous" and "tragicomic". The faculty does not have many options because the procedure states that one member of the Expert Commission for the assessment of non-academic behavior must be appointed by the NSVO.

Three members of the committee say it is plagiarism

As we wrote in December, the second attempt by the commission to deal with allegations of plagiarism against Trivan failed just like the first. This time, professor Bojan Bojanić from the University of Pristina moved to Kosovska Mitrovica.

The other three members of the commission - who long ago prepared a preliminary draft of the report according to which Jelena Trivan's work was assessed as plagiarism - again worked in vain. The rules are such that the commission must submit a report in full composition, otherwise it must be formed from scratch.

Bojanic then ignored the questions of "Vremen" why he withdrew from the Commission, whether someone put pressure on him and where did he come from as a lawyer in the commission dealing with a doctoral thesis in the field of librarianship.

The president of that failed commission, Boban Arsenijević from the University of Graz, told "Vreme" at the time that Bojanic "strongly opposed the position of the other three members that we can discuss the report already at the second session and submitted his irrevocable resignation."

Unprofessional persons

Thus continued the undermining of the commission for the doctorate of Jelena Trivan, former vice-president and deputy of the Democratic Party, who in the era of the SNS government became the first woman of the Official Gazette and Film Center of Serbia, and today heads Telekom Srpske.

Back in 2019, "Vreme" wrote in the text "Anatomy of a Dissertation" that Trivan copied about 15 percent of her work without citing sources. Entire articles from Wikipedia and chapters of books by other authors were found there.

Recently, the Appellate Court in Belgrade condemned "Vreme" with the force of law for that text, estimating Jelena Trivan's mental pain at 80.000 dinars.

Neither Trivan nor the Court disputed that there was copying, but claimed that journalists are not "experts" who can assess whether something is plagiarism. "Vreme" requests a review of the verdict from the Supreme Court of Cassation.

The Commission as a Sisyphean task

In parallel with that procedure, there were attempts by "experts" to determine whether it was plagiarism.

A group of university professors submitted an official application in 2022, the Faculty of Philology appointed two members of the commission, the University of Belgrade a third, but the National Council for Higher Education (NSVO) has been waiting for more than a year to appoint a member.

They first appointed Borivoj Baltazarević, a media expert from the Institute of Serbian Culture in Pristina, transferred to Leposavić. But Baltazarević withdrew after a few sessions, citing personal reasons.

Then Bojanic followed the same matrix, again destroying the Expert Commission. And now NSVO absolutely refuses to choose a new member. "It is difficult to escape the impression that the commission's work is being obstructed by the NSVO, the government body whose high-ranking official was the author of the dissertation," Arsenijević said earlier.

By the way, Aleksandra Vraneš, former acting dean of the Faculty of Philology and mentor of Jelena Trivan's doctoral thesis, is also a member of NSVO at the proposal of the Ministry of Education. With her, Trivan took almost all the subjects of her master's and doctoral studies, receiving only tens.