Wes Moore Won a Key White House Post Claiming He Was ‘Touted as a Foremost Expert’ on Radical Islam

Maryland governor Wes Moore, now considered a serious prospect for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, got his big break in 2006. Fresh off a one-year deployment to Afghanistan, President George W. Bush awarded Moore, then 27, a White House fellowship, a prestigious, year-long internship during which he served as a special assistant to then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. It put Moore on the path to ultimately becoming Maryland’s governor, and he won the fellowship—in the turbulent years after 9/11—claiming to be a “foremost expert” on radical Islam thanks to his academic work at Oxford University.

“As a Rhodes Scholar, I took advantage of the opportunity and examined radical Islam in the Western Hemisphere,” Moore wrote in his application to serve as a White House fellow, indicating that he had graduated from Oxford in 2003 with a Master of Letters, or MLitt, in international relations. “I completed my degree with honors and my research has led me to be touted as one of the foremost experts on the threat.” The White House parroted the claim in a press release announcing the 2006 fellowship class, borrowing from Moore’s application to note that his Oxford thesis, which it said was titled The Rise and Ramifications of Radical Islam in the Western Hemisphere, had “earned him praise as one of the foremost experts on the topic.”

That a 27-year-old could claim to be a “foremost expert” on the Islamic threat based on a year at an American military base in Afghanistan and two years at Oxford could be excused away as an ambitious young man’s puffery. But on close examination, Moore’s claims of expertise and of being a serious scholar completely unravel, as do his claims, also on his White House fellowship application, that he was working toward an Oxford doctorate.

The problems start with confusion—which neither Moore’s staff nor Oxford’s registrars were willing or able to clear up—about when Moore completed his studies, when he received his degree, whether he submitted his thesis, and what the title of the work was.

In his White House fellowship application—which is public record—Moore wrote that he graduated from Oxford in 2003. But in the résumé attached to that application, Moore reported a different graduation date: June 2004.

Asked to reconcile the two dates, a spokesman for the governor didn’t provide a photograph of Moore’s degree, but rather, a “degree confirmation,” generated last week by Oxford’s registrar’s office, indicating Moore completed his graduate studies as a full-time student and “has been awarded the degree,” but has not yet been issued a formal certificate. The “degree confirmation” generated by Oxford gives another contradictory date, showing that Moore completed his full-time graduate studies in November of 2005, a full four years after he began his Oxford studies, though a master’s degree typically takes two years to earn.

According to Moore, by November 2005, the month when Oxford now says Moore completed his master’s studies, he was serving in the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan. He also says he began working as an investment banker at Deutsche Bank in London in March 2004.

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According to the Oxford certificate, the title of Moore’s thesis was Radical Islam in Latin America in the late 20th Century and its Middle Eastern Roots. But in his application to the White House, and in all subsequent biographies, Moore says his thesis was called The Rise and Ramifications of Radical Islam in the Western Hemisphere. The reference to Latin America has been removed, creating the impression that Moore’s supposed expertise is on Islamic radicals in the “Western Hemisphere,” including their “rise” in the United States. The new title also removes the timeframe of “the late 20th century” (the 21st century was 6 years old at the time), making Moore’s area of study more timely.

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The mystery surrounding the title of and content of Moore’s thesis could be resolved with a cursory review of the document. But that, too, poses a problem for Moore. His office could not produce a copy of the document since we began requesting it in early November.

And good luck finding it at Oxford’s legendary Bodleian Library, which archives all MLitt theses from the university’s graduate students. A senior librarian told the Free Beacon she couldn’t find “any trace” of Moore’s paper, because he never submitted it.

“I can see on his record that he has not submitted his thesis to the Bodleian, so they wouldn’t have a record of it,” Oxford deputy communications chief Julia Paolitto told the Free Beacon. “MLitt students are required to submit their thesis to the Bodleian in order to confer their degree at a ceremony, however as Mr. Moore has never had a ceremony this is not a requirement he would have needed to fulfil.”

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So long as Moore is unable to find a copy of his thesis and submit it to the Bodleian Library, he cannot walk at an Oxford graduation ceremony and obtain his formal master’s certificate.

The confusion about when and where Moore was when he was doing his graduate studies—along with the convenient change in the title and subject matter of his missing thesis—is part of a pattern of self-serving, self-aggrandizing, and not entirely true claims that have persistently dogged, yet heretofore not tripped up, the ambitious Democrat.

Moore claimed on his 2006 White House fellowship application, for example, to have been inducted into the Maryland College Football Hall of Fame, an organization that doesn’t exist; that he received a Bronze Star for his service in Afghanistan, which he had not; and that he was born in Baltimore, which he was not.

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The problems surrounding Moore’s academic claims extend beyond his missing and title-shifting graduate thesis. He also claimed in his White House fellowship application that he went on to become a doctoral candidate at Oxford in 2006, studying for a Ph.D. The prerequisite for doctoral work is usually the completion of a master’s degree. It also requires the cooperation and oversight of an academic adviser, and typically doctoral students are formally enrolled at the university.

But Moore’s office declined to provide the name of his academic adviser or any evidence confirming he was ever a doctoral candidate. Oxford’s Wolfson College, where Moore was admitted as a graduate student, the university’s Department of Politics and International Relations, and the Rhodes House all declined to verify Moore’s doctoral candidacy claim.

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As evidence of his expertise, Moore said in his White House fellowship application that, by 2006, he had authored four articles and was “featured in two books on the threat of radical Islam in Latin America.”

His office could not locate the four articles. Academic databases, including Google Scholar and JSTOR, contain precisely zero articles by Moore on the topic of radical Islam, nor do the databases contain any scholarly works that cite Moore’s thesis or any other scholarly works as a source.

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