Broadwell failed in her PhD attempt at Harvard, faces ethics review at fallback school [View all]

[nichomachus]

More of a "personality" than a "student."

Paula Broadwell, the biographer with whom former CIA ­director David Petraeus had an extramarital affair, abandoned her bid for a doctorate from Harvard in 2007, failing to advance to PhD candidacy after four semesters at the Kennedy School of Government, and now faces the prospect of an ethical review at King’s College London, where she has resumed pursuit of a doctorate.

She enrolled later that year as a PhD student in the war studies department of King’s College London, where her military leadership research focused largely on Petraeus, according to Broadwell’s profile on the school website. But four years on, Broadwell remains far from earning her degree, according to the department chairman, and her relationship with the subject of her research could jeopardize her progress toward a doctorate.

One of Broadwell’s former professors at Harvard described her as a self-promoter who would routinely show up at office hours. “It was very much, ‘I’m here and you’re going to know I’m here,’?” said the professor, who did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of ongoing investigations. “She was not someone you would think of as a critical thinker. I don’t remember anything about her as a student. I remember her as a personality.”

The professor said when Petraeus chose Broadwell to write his biography, there was shock among the national security faculty at Harvard because “she just didn’t have the background — the academic background, the national security background, or the writing background.”

Just an all-around fraud.