Norway’s health minister quit on Friday because of accusations that he copied other people’s work. This is the second member of the Norwegian government to resign for this reason this year.
Ingvild Kjerkol quit her job at Nord University in Bodoe, Norway, one day after an investigation found that her 2021 master’s thesis contained a lot of plagiarism.
“We have decided that Ingvild should quit her job as minister,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said in a press conference. He said the investigation found that the plagiarism was done on purpose.
Kjerkoll said that she and another person did not mean to copy other people’s work.
“She said it’s tough that they don’t believe us, but we have to accept that the university thinks differently,” she said at a press conference with Gahr Støre.
Kjerkol, who is 48 years old, has been in his job since October 2021. This was when Gahr Støre introduced a coalition government made up of his Labor party and the smaller Center Party.
Kjerkol is the second government official to be accused of copying someone else’s work at school this year.
In January, Sandra Borch quit her job as minister for research and higher education because a student found out that she had copied some parts of her master’s thesis without giving credit to the original author.
Gahr Støre’s group has had some ministers leave because they did something wrong. In September, it was found out that the husband of the former Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt had been secretly trading stocks for a long time, which could make her more wealthy.
In September, the Labor party lost in local elections to the conservative Hoeyre party, which hasn’t happened since 1924. The party that used to be the biggest in local elections in Norway for many years, came in second place in September. There will be elections for local government in Norway’s 356 towns and 11 counties.
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Norway’s health minister resigns following accusations of plagiarism
