Dave Tomar

Ed Dante is the pseudonym of Dave Tomar, a freelance writer living in Philadelphia, USA. The writer claims to have assisted college, graduate and doctoral students by accepting money in exchange for writing their assignments over the course of a decade. The Shadow Scholar was met with extensive debate amongst students, educators, and parents. It became the most popularly commented-on article in the Chronicle Review history and brought wider attention to issues relating to student cheating, plagiarism, and academic integrity.

Reporting for the Journal of African Cultural Studies, Patricia Kingori wrote that “To date, Tomar’s work is one of the most detailed and influential autobiographies in the field. Almost ten years after The Shadow Scholar was published it remains important for shedding light on the perspectives of those involved in writing assignments and publications for others as part of the “fake essay” industry. However, increasingly, its reach has extended beyond American contexts to speak to African, and in particular Kenyan, writers as the term “Shadow Scholar” is now used to describe...a phenomena which is now an industrial global enterprise involving the labour of Africans on an unprecedented scale.”

Dave Tomar writes for various online platforms, such as the Huffington Post and Inflection, a college lifestyle publication. The scope of his work includes music; politics; and education, including topics related to academic ghostwriting and essay mills.

On July 17, 2022, Tomar published his second book—The Complete Guide to Cheating in Higher Education—through Academic Influence Press. The Complete Guide is a comprehensive resource on college cheating aimed at educators, administrators, and parents .