Georgia’s Minister of Education Givi Mikanadze has confirmed that he did not obtain a PhD degree from the Free University of Amsterdam, despite Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze praising him for doing so during his appointment.
His comments came in response to a question from journalists regarding an OC Media article that revealed that Mikanadze did not complete his PhD.
Mikanadze remained defiant, claiming that neither he nor the prime minister had claimed he had obtained a PhD.
‘Irakli Kobakhidze didn’t lie about anything. Irakli Kobakhidze said I was a doctoral candidate at the Free University of Amsterdam’, Mikanadze told journalists on Thursday.
His claim, however, contradicted the recording from the 30 June briefing, during which Kobakhidze introduced Mikanadze as the new Minister of Education, following the resignation of the former minister, Aleksandre Tsuladze.
At the briefing, Kobakhidze listed Mikanadze’s accomplishments and explicitly stated that he had ‘defended a doctoral dissertation at the Free University of Amsterdam’.
‘You won’t find a single biographical resume of mine that says I’ve completed a PhD […] Irakli Kobakhidze didn’t lie. It [my CV] says ‘candidate’, and ‘candidate’ can be interpreted as, let’s say, having defended [it]’, Mikanadze added, claiming that ‘this is a very technical issue’.
Appearing irritated by the questions, Mikanadze called the journalists ‘ridiculous’ and ‘pathetic’. When asked a follow-up question about whether he planned to complete his degree in Amsterdam, Mikanadze replied, ‘Do you think I have time [for that]?’
Mikanadze’s publicly available biography on the Education Ministry’s website — which does not mention his Dutch PhD — states that in 2013 he was a researcher at a joint programme between the Free University of Amsterdam and the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement.
The biography also states that Mikanadze is a PhD student at Grigol Robakidze University as of 2025.
A spokesperson for the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement told OC Media that while Mikanadze was registered as a non-resident PhD student at the Free University of Amsterdam in the mid-2010s, he never completed his doctoral studies.
The spokesperson said he submitted only several chapters of his dissertation on probation supervision of life imprisonment in Georgia.
Beyond Kobakhidze’s statement, references to Mikanadze’s alleged PhD are found on his sparsely updated LinkedIn page without providing direct citations.
According to the information on LinkedIn, he pursued doctoral studies at the Free University of Amsterdam between 2013 and 2017, a period during which he was also employed by the Council of Europe. Afterward, he continued his career in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and later within the Georgian Dream party.
Mikanadze’s appointment as a minister was not without controversy, particularly due to his time in government under the United National Movement (UNM), which Georgian Dream has often labeled a ‘criminal regime’.
From 2005 to 2008, he served as deputy minister of justice, overseeing reforms to the penitentiary system, according to a ministry press release at the time.
The UNM has faced multiple objections by critics — including Georgian Dream — over its management of the prison system, particularly regarding the treatment of prisoners. A scandal involving the sexual abuse of prisoners has been largely attributed to their fall from power in 2012.
Rasmus Canbäck
