A Norwegian official combated plagiarism. Then she was caught copying.

As Norway's Minister of Higher Education, Sandra Borch was responsible for ensuring that students adhered to the rules. When one of those students was acquitted of plagiarism, Ms. Borch appealed and took the case to the country's Supreme Court.

So it shocked the country when Ms Borch was forced to resign just a few days later after it emerged that parts of her master's thesis appeared identical to other reports she had not referenced.

“When I wrote my master's thesis about ten years ago, I made a big mistake,” Ms. Borch said at a press conference on Friday as she resigned. “I copied text from other assignments without citing the source.”

The person who exposed Ms. Borch's misdeeds was Kristoffer Rytterager, a 27-year-old student in Oslo, who said he became “a bit angry” because the minister went after an individual student over what he saw as a minor mistake and decided to look at the minister's own scientific work.

“When you act like you're holier than a saint,” Mr. Rytterager said in an interview. “You can't have skeletons in the closet.”

The case that angered him involved a student who had handed in an exam with some excerpts from a test she had turned in last year – and failed. The student was suspended for two semesters in 2022 and her lawyer said the case had devastated her psychologically. More than a hundred professors and other academics signed a petition objecting to her treatment.

A court ultimately acquitted the student, but the Ministry of Research and Higher Education, led by Ms Borch, appealed the decision, arguing that it raised a number of issues that the Supreme Court should clarify. The Supreme Court has not yet ruled.

“It is important for all students, universities and colleges in Norway that the rules on cheating, and their enforcement, are easy to understand,” the ministry said in a statement. statement to the Norwegian newspaper Khrono at the time.

The government has proposed doubling the penalty for cheating and plagiarism, from a two-semester suspension to four, in a bill expected to be introduced in parliament later this year.

Mr. Rytterager said he was inspired by accusations of plagiarism against Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard, to check Ms. Borch's work. Ms. Gay resigned earlier this month after her presidency was engulfed by accusations and accusations from some that her response to anti-Semitism on campus following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel was inadequate.

When Mr. Rytterager searched on Google, he found that parts of Ms. Borch's 2014 law thesis were virtually identical to a government report that she had not referenced. After he his discoveries on Xthe Norwegian newspaper E24 has published an article on plagiarism. The thesis – on the regulation of oil extraction in Norway – even contained the same typographical errors as in a 2005 text, E24 reported.

The reports also prompted intense scrutiny of the academic work of other lawmakers, and reporters found that parts of the health minister's statement resembled other texts. The minister, Ingvild Kjerkol, acknowledged that some references were missing, but she denied that there was any deliberate copying. Still, some academics called for her resignation.

Some politicians criticized what they saw as a media witch hunt against the work of 25-year-olds who later became politicians.

“Are the statements of newspaper editors also checked?” Kristin Clemet, former Minister of Education, wrote on X.

Mr Rytterager, who, when not studying, drives a tractor and listens to audiobooks on his mother's farm north of Oslo, said the case revealed something his work in farming had already taught him.

“On a farm you have to do your own work,” he said. “You can't steal that from other people.”