Oxford’s deputy communications chief, Julia Paolitto, was not a fan of the Washington Free Beacon’s report on Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D.), which revealed the potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate boasted about being a "foremost expert" on radical Islam—though nobody can find his graduate thesis from Oxford, where he attended graduate school as a Rhodes Scholar.
Paolitto, an American who has lived in the United Kingdom for 20 years, demanded the Free Beacon print her comments in their entirety and provided a far more extensive explanation for Moore’s peculiar academic situation than Moore bothered to provide himself.
"To state there is a ‘missing thesis’ to suggests [sic] he did not complete his degree is incorrect," Paolitto said, adding that "it is not material to his degree status whether or not he submitted his thesis to the Bodleian [library]. It is completely and categorically false to assert that Mr. Moore never completed his degree on the basis that the Bodleian does not have a copy."
Moore’s graduate thesis is, in fact, missing, and the Free Beacon did not suggest he did not complete his degree. Oddly, Paolitto did not address Moore’s claim to have been enrolled as a doctoral student at Oxford and has not provided the name of his academic adviser.
According to LinkedIn, Paolitto is a graduate of Yale University, where she was Phi Beta Kappa "first election," graduated "Summa Cum Laude with Distinction in Major," and served as "Commencement Marshall for Branford College." In the event of any confusion, Paolitto notes that means she was "(college valedictorian)."
Paolitto is a Democratic donor and an active commentator on American politics. She defended former president Joe Biden’s mental acuity in a February 2024 X post, describing President Donald Trump as "a demented psychopath who likes drinking horse de-wormer and who actively wants to undo the entire US political project." She described America’s liberal northeast corridor as "dystopian in so many ways" and has accused black police officers of promoting racism. "Anti-blackness and cop culture both transcend race," she said. "Black cops can & do help to uphold racist power structures and often benefit from it (& are also harmed by it)."
Paolitto also waved away the conflicting and contradictory dates Moore claimed to have received his Oxford degree. On his application for an elite White House fellowship, he said he received his master's in 2003, though elsewhere on the application, he said he received it in 2004. Oxford says he received it in 2005.
Paolitto says that’s par for the course. The inconsistencies, which Moore himself did not address, "can be entirely explained," she said, because the date when an Oxford postgraduate student completes coursework and submits a thesis is "always" earlier than the date a student receives a degree confirmation. "Which in Governor Moore’s case was November 2005, though he will have finished the work on his degree and thesis at an earlier date," Paolitto said.
But a copy of Moore’s "degree confirmation" obtained by the Free Beacon indicates he modified his thesis sometime after November 2005. The document shows his thesis was titled Radical Islam in Latin America in the late 20th Century and its Middle Eastern Roots in November 2005. In 2006, when Moore applied for a White House fellowship, he offered a different title for his thesis: The Rise and Ramifications of Radical Islam in the Western Hemisphere.
