Hmmm… I was searching the LSE online catalogue for the entry for Saif Gaddafi’s legendary Ph.D dissertation. But it doesn’t appear to be listed.

Curious. Maybe the LSE doesn’t catalogue dissertations.

LATER: As usual, the cock-up theory is the best explainer: I was searching under the wrong name.

Many thanks to Lawrence Osborn for his tactful hint about search technique.

Peter Spiro at opiniojuris.org reveals that Oxford University Press had plans to publish the dissertation, and wonders if they will persevere with that plan. He also provides a link to the downloadable pdf of the dissertation on the Mother Jones site. “Leaving aside the dubious provenance”, he writes, “from a quick scan it looks pretty interesting.”

It does. One of the most interesting sidelights is that Gaddafi expresses fulsome thanks to the celebrated Harvard scholar, Joseph Nye, who is credited as being one of “a number of experts with whom I met and who consented to read portions of the manuscript and provide advice and direction.”

And then, of course, there’s the small matter of Footnote #259: