Liviu Pop


Liviu-Marian Pop is a Romanian politician, who is a member of the Social Democratic Party. He was a very controversial Romanian interim Education Minister in the cabinet of Victor Ponta.
He played an important role during the Victor Ponta doctoral thesis plagiarism controversy scandal.
A session of a committee charged with validating academic titles analyzed the Victor Ponta doctoral thesis and decided with a unanimous vote of members present that Ponta had committed copy and paste plagiarism, subsequently requesting the withdrawal of Ponta's doctoral title. In response, interim Education Minister Liviu Pop contested the committee's jurisdiction and dismissed the findings, citing the lack of a quorum. The minister had already signed an order reorganizing the committee the previous day, but, due to technical reasons, the order came into effect during the very session analyzing the thesis.
Another committee, subordinated to the Education Ministry, later found that Ponta did not commit plagiarism.
On July 27, 2016 the CNATDCU has reconfirmed the plagiarism verdict, subsequently requesting the withdrawal of Ponta's doctoral title.
He is also known for making very embarrassing grammar, spelling and logical mistakes, for example misspelling the word "knee" in Romanian, or that "mistakes can be fixed, while errors cannot", or that "12th grade students have been in school for 17-18 years". In 2018 a mistake in a by the ministry of education published mathematical manual was discovered. It stated that the number 9 is larger than the number 12. In defense Pop publicly argued that this could be the case in another number system for example base 5. With basic mathematical knowledge however it can easily be proven that this is impossible.