Professor Andrew Reynolds at the University of North Carolina did the legwork to expose Seb Gorka’s Ph.D as just this side of bogus. Here’s a snippet:

The dissertation is online and includes the ‘evaluations’ of three referees who each presented a page of generalized comments - completely at odds with the detailed substantive and methodological evaluations that I’ve seen at every Ph.D defence I’ve been on over the last twenty years.

Two of the three referees did not even have a Ph.D. One was the US Defense Attaché at the American Embassy in Budapest at the time, while the other was employed at the UK’s Defence Academy and just had a BA from Manchester University awarded in 1969. This ‘neutral’ examiner had published a book in Hungary with Gorka three years previously. While graduate students sometimes collaborate with their advisors the independent external examiners must have no nepotistic ties with the candidate. More important, a basic principle of assessing educational achievement is that your examiners have at least the degree level of the degree they are awarding. Undergraduates do not award Ph.Ds. In Gorka’s case the only examiner who lists a doctorate was György Schöpflin - an extreme right wing Hungarian Member of the European Parliament who recently advocated putting pigs heads on a fence on the Hungarian border to keep out Muslims. I have been told that Schöpflin was a family friend. Both Schöpflin and Gorka’s father fled from Budapest to London in the 1950s and both moved in exile right-wing nationalist circles.

Lots, lots, lots more at the link.

reynolds.web.unc.edu

I went to my ex’s dissertation defense and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. He had five people on his committee. Two were all in favor of the dissertation. Two were OK with it. One, the guy who had done research prior to a couple of revolutions in the country where my ex had done fieldwork really hated it. They grilled my ex with questions while I sat in a corner and stared at copies of various foreign language editions of James Michener’s works. After the questioning, we were escorted out of the room into another area, where we could hear them arguing through the sliding room divider. Finally, we were asked back in and the doctorate was granted, although some changes were required.

The irony is that professor who had done his work in country in 1948 and completely disagreed with what my ex wrote about in 1987 asked my ex to talk to a class that evening. I can’t…

ETA: My shock was that the grilling was far worse than the questioning we got in law school when reciting cases. I had thought of grad school as slightly more collegial. Nope.

tl;dr: Gorka’s Ph.D is sketchy/bogus. No surprise there.