When Melania Trump’s much-anticipated address at the Republican National Convention on Monday provoked outrage for plagiarizing Michelle Obama’s speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, the typically demure member of Trump’s campaign suddenly became the center of a lot of negative press.
The ensuing wave of critical attention towards Melania Trump dug up other questionable details about her position in the campaign—among them, its claim that she obtained “a degree in design and architecture at University in Slovenia”, according to her bio in the GOP Convention’s program. The same information appears on Melania Trump’s official website.
An obvious red flag, pointed out by snopes.com, is that “There is no ‘University in Slovenia,’ nor is there a ‘University of Slovenia.’” Previous to the RNC, multiple profiles of Melania Trump (including those for GQ and The New Yorker) had looked into her academic background and reported that she did indeed attend the school of architecture at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, to become a designer, but dropped out to pursue modeling.
snopes.com also looked into the archives of Ljubljana University, for any records pertaining to any version of Melania Trump’s name (before marrying Trump, she went by Melanija Knavs, then Melania Knauss), and came up with nothing. Further investigations for records of her name at “any other university in the country” also yielded nothing.
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79 Comments
Shutuprickshutuprickshutuprickshutuprick
Huh - when I type that it looks a little different than it did when I imagined saying it ;-)
@Donna Sink:
Thanks! Yes, I live in Ljubljana (born here, also) and it's really a little gem hidden under the Alps. They probably told you that our numero uno arch was Plečnik, but don’t trust them ;) There’s so much more to see, from Jugendstil to (ugly as hell) postmodernism and some quite likable soc-brutalism.
I hope you'll have the chance to enjoy Ljubljana again!
Just to be clear, I am NOT voting for Donald Trump. I will look at what Hillary and her choice for V.P. and then other options when that comes.
I'm not voting for Donald "Khrushchev" Trump.
Donald is no Ronald.
(incorrect grammar is intended)
tomažsajovic I definitely LOVE Plečnik, but I also just loved the overall layout of the city, the urban density around the river and the way the castle sits above it all, and the historic walls weaving through. Urbanistically it's one of my favorite places, and also reminds me of Portland, Oregon, another favorite city. But yes I also love Plečnik!
So what I don't get is why two people claim to live in Slovenia and say there is only one university that offered an architecture and design degree. And coincidently you were also both in her class. Well I for one don't believe you or Melanija I don't think any of you attended university in Slovenia. Because I could name at least 1 other university that offered a similar degree at the time (University of Mariboru) and being that the population of the whole country is smaller than the city I live in..... I mean I applied to like 40 schools before making a decision. However the university you mention does have a website, in English even, and it just so happens to contain this same line "Faculty of Architecture (Fakulteta za arhitekturo), which is part of University of Ljubljana (Univerza v Ljubljani)". A little to convenient that your Slovenian is limited to a quote from the university's site. (http://www.fa.uni-lj.si) <---need the http://www. since this is Slovenia no auto complete. I'm not saying its impossible but the odds of someone being in her class and reading this website are like 5 billion to one. But if you are real you should contact an American news outlet could be some money in it for you. On another note I can totally see lying about having a degree happens all the time. Your successful you want people to admire you for more than your looks, you did spend sometime at university, and whose going to check; its not like your spouse is going to run for president ( 1 in 6,360,000) I mean I wouldn't ever have guessed Trump would run for president.
any architect worth their salt in slovenia would be a forum regular here. any architect worth their salt anywhere would be a regular here.
In that case, due to curtkram's comment I would like to apologize to tomažsajovic and x_x_x. I am not an architect just a journalist and my research led me here. I still think it is a forgivable lie. And I now believe that it is more likely Melanija is the only one that told a fib.
Maybe one of her Professors will step forward and testify they had her as a student. She would be hard to forget.....
great journalistic standards.
So what I don't get is why two people claim to live in Slovenia and say there is only one university that offered an architecture and design degree. And coincidently you were also both in her class. Well I for one don't believe you or Melanija I don't think any of you attended university in Slovenia. Because I could name at least 1 other university that offered a similar degree at the time (University of Mariboru) and being that the population of the whole country is smaller than the city I live in..... I mean I applied to like 40 schools before making a decision. However the university you mention does have a website, in English even, and it just so happens to contain this same line "Faculty of Architecture (Fakulteta za arhitekturo), which is part of University of Ljubljana (Univerza v Ljubljani)". A little to convenient that your Slovenian is limited to a quote from the university's site. (http://www.fa.uni-lj.si) <---need the http://www. since this is Slovenia no auto complete. I'm not saying its impossible but the odds of someone being in her class and reading this website are like 5 billion to one. But if you are real you should contact an American news outlet could be some money in it for you. On another note I can totally see lying about having a degree happens all the time. Your successful you want people to admire you for more than your looks, you did spend sometime at university, and whose going to check; its not like your spouse is going to run for president ( 1 in 6,360,000) I mean I wouldn't ever have guessed Trump would run for president.
You misread. They are talking about AT THE TIME that Melania Trump was or would be attending college. You might want to do a little research on the history of Slovenia. Slovenia as we know it today became its own country in 1991. Before 1991, it was part of Yugoslavia. Therefore, in the Yugoslavian university system and architecture schools were spread out over the different parts of the larger Yugoslavia. It wasn't considered a program with enough students with interest in that field of study at the time to have that many colleges with architecture programs. There was probably about half a dozen (maybe less) universities with architecture programs in Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia wasn't a very rich country in terms of money and economy. This isn't a country that people really would have wanted to go to to learn architecture.
They aren't saying there isn't other schools with architecture programs nowadays but they didn't exist until after 1991 and probably not until after 1995. At the time, there was only one university in the Yugoslavia university system in the Slovenia area that had an architecture program.
Melania started college prior to the actual independence of Slovenia from the Federation of Yugoslavia and subsequent breakup of Yugoslavia.
I doubt it made sense for them to have developed more architecture programs until some time after.
Since the source of Melania's claim is that she had a degree in architecture from a university in Slovenia.
I only raise the caution flag about claiming she doesn't have here degree until we can verify our side. While she has the burden to prove her side. We also have the burden to prove our side. While, I may personally think she doesn't have this so called degree. I won't claim a person doesn't have such a degree until proven.
Snooker,
Why would they? She wasn't married to Donald Trump and her national TV recognition wasn't really up there until more recent. She may not have been a very memorable student. She was probably very average as far as academic performance. Lets also not forget that while she may have been a model, there are plenty of Slovenian women that would be comparable to her in looks and they had women in the school. I just am not sure why she at the time would have been very memorable.
Ricky, see below:
http://www.dezeen.com/2016/07/29/melania-trump-website-deleted-architecture-degree-claim-debunked/
N.S.,
Thanks for pointing that out. This further leans my support in the idea that she doesn't have the degree she claimed. It is still good to absolutely know for certain.
However, I would still recommend a complete fact finding mission to have a complete fact finding that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that she never had a degree in architecture so the claims are fact with full fact based support of such claims.
Therefore, there would be no aura of doubts.
I don't think you can blame a person from not wanting claims to be fact-based supported. When this thread began, I saw some holes in the research.
Again, thanks for the link.
I would still recommend a complete fact finding mission to have a complete fact finding that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that she never had a degree in architecture so the claims are fact with full fact based support of such claims.
I agree. I nominate you as chair of this mission.
Go get 'em, tiger.
old balka-rusky cheerleading for those unlicensed, half-assed educated building designers.
all that methane in his parent's basement has turned him into a babbling lunatic. poor fool. if he goes to heaven he'll argue with god that he's not dead.
"In some circumstances it can be safely assumed that if a certain event had occurred, evidence of it could be discovered by qualified investigators. In such circumstances it is perfectly reasonable to take the absence of proof of its occurrence as positive proof of its non-occurrence."
-- Irving Copi, Introduction to Logic
E_I,
There is a certain level of imperative that this information is obtained now and not later because if you wait, Donald Trump will pay the Sloven university to lock and secure Melania'a academic degree or even have one forged by the University giving her a degree that she did not earn but in a world the is ran by money, money can get you anything. Everyone has a price even colleges and universities.
Get it before hand. The ones that can get that are those who are physically able to go there.
http://web.archive.org/web/20160720172020/http://www.melaniatrump.com/my-world/
Wayback Machine's must be a bitch isn't it..... Melania.
@tomažsajovic
holy shit, did a google image search...guess my next vacation will be in slovenia!
Perhaps they should have searched another name, i.e. Melania Vanderlay. You know that one, the author of the Art of the Tecture?
Apparently Melania said under oath - in a garbled word salad that sounds like Trump talking, too - that she graduated with an architecture degree.
http://www.racked.com/2016/8/22/12556786/melania-trump-caviar-skincare-lawsuit
My main takeaway from the article, though, is revulsion that the flabby and pasty conservative rich old men in Indiana are getting up to threesomes. I've been in these folks' house. Gross.
PERJURY !!!!
@ adamreese
Well, this site isn't that obscure, you know. And Slovenia isn’t some weird third world ex-Soviet country either. It’s a part of EU w/ euro and all (not that this is necessary a good thing).
As was mentioned before. At the time when Melanija Knavs was a student, there was only one Ach university in Slovenia. And that was “Fakulteta za arhitekturo, gradbeništvo in geodezijo”, part of “Univerza Edvarda Kardelja v Ljubljani”. No other univ existed here at that time. Later in the nineties we got a bunch of other faculties and universities, both private and state owned (Univerza na Primorskem, GEA college, Univerza v Mariboru… more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_universities_in_Slovenia).
Anyway, I really don’t care if you believe me or not, but nobody named Melanija Knavs got a degree at University of Ljubljana. Her lying didn’t go well over here either.
Thanks for the info you gave tomazsajovic (apologize for not digging through the Alt-code for the 'z' with the accenting symbol above it).
I believe you.
I'm currently studying architecture at University of Ljubljana (4th year). Slovenia is indeed very small, and everybody knows everybody, especially in our profession. From what I heard some of my professors say (some have taught here for more than 30 years), they've never heard of Melania before the recent events, especially as a student here. Also, our university offered an architecture programme from the day it was established back in 1919. University of Maribor is the only other institution in Slovenia that offers an education in architecture, established in 1975. At the time when Melania would have been studying, there were already two universities in Slovenia offering this kind of education, and almost certainly many other institutions throughout Yugoslavia (Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo...), but she would've picked University of Ljubljana, as it is considered one of the best in this part of Europe, and in her home country. If there are no records in Ljubljana or Maribor saying that she attended uni here or there, we can be certain that she made it all up.
Well, no shit. I was just saying that since 1975 there have only been two universities offering an architecture course in Slovenia, and that this also applies to the period when she would have been attending college, which would in fact have been in the late 80s or early 90s :)
I wonder if she will practice Architecture once again after being the "First Lady to 45"?
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