The Pál Schmitt academic misconduct scandal refers to allegations of plagiarism concerning the 1992 doctoral thesis and the circumstances of the doctoral defence of the President of Hungary Pál Schmitt, which led to Schmitt's resignation from his presidential post. The scandal broke in January 2012, when Hungarian news organizations published a number of articles claiming that about 197 pages of Schmitt's 215-page thesis had been lifted from works by other, foreign scholars, without giving appropriate credit.