Kao Chiang
President
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan
cc: Ministry of Education, Department of Higher Education, Prime
Minister, Control Yuan, Taiwan Commission on Human Rights
28 June 2004
Dear President Kao,
As you know, your administration has not yet resolved remaining
issues regarding human rights abuses committed by university officials
during my illegal dismissal in 1999. You yourself defied a legal
Ministry of Education Appeal ruling for more than two years. Only after
eight warning letters issued by the Ministry of Education did you
finally comply, and then only partly. What kind of standards are you
trying to set at our university, when a government official can decide
when to comply with a legal ruling?
Meanwhile, your administration has still not issued a formal
apology for abuses committed by university officials before and during
your administration. Confucius said that gentlemen admit their
mistakes.
Moreover, the university continues to contest my right to full
compensation, even though law and human rights principles require full
compensation. Instead, I'm forced to litigate my rights. However, a
university cannot be founded on litigation but on law and rights, the
same law and rights that protect Taiwan citizens when they teach or
matriculate abroad.
Finally, in defiance of the Ministry ruling, under your
administration, a university committee held hearings approving
accusations already rejected in that Ministry ruling dated 8 January
2001. This not only defies the Ministry ruling and universal human
rights principles to which Taiwan subscribes, but also commonly shared
principles of fair play that even children learn. Children, after all,
are taught to "play fair" and not to be "sore losers," but to lose
graciously.
You're the head of a national university in Taiwan; yet when the
university loses an appeal, your administration responds by pretending
the appeal has no legal force or practical benefits to the appellant.
Indeed, your lawyer "interpreted" the ruling to mean I should be
reviewed again.
Would you like it if a Taiwan citizen won an appeal in America only
to be told by the school that he had to appeal again? Is this a moral
principle you would publicly support? Is this a concept of reciprocity
that justifies our university's ties with "sister universities" abroad?
Those ties are based on academic integrity, moral principles, and
mutual repsect. Yet as soon as the university loses a case, it
disregards all these principles. For the record, let me sum up our
university's abuses in this case:
1. First, the university held secret meetings, made secret
accusations, and circulated a secret letter in order to effect my
dismissal in 1999;
2. Second, you defied a Ministry ruling, dated 8 January 2001, for
more than two years, impeding enforcement of a ruling that canceled my
dismissal;
3. Third, after I won the appeal, your lawyer claimed I had no
right to appeal in the first place. You might as well claim after a
foreign student at our university passes all her required courses for a
Ph.D. that she had no right to take those courses in the first place.
4. Fourth, despite making this outrageous claim, and without even
issuing me a contract in compliance with the Ministry ruling of 8
January 2001, the university continued to convene "review" meetings
subject to appeal using the same accusations disposed of in the Ministry
ruling of 8 January 2001!
In sum, so that others may be able to follow the deviant "legal"
logic here:
(a) the university held an appeal meeting in my case in 1999; (b)
after it lost a Ministry appeal, it claimed foreigners have no right to
appeal; (c) even after claiming this, the university, first to defy the
Ministry ruling, then to punish the appellant, held further "review"
and "appeal" meetings.
If a foreigner has no right to appeal, what is the university's
legal basis to review the appellant in the first place? Since, as you
claim, foreigners have no legal rights at our university, and therefore
any claim can be made against a foreigner, a so-called "review" or
"appeal" hearing at our university is simply a clever way to spread
malicious gossip against foreigners, apparently outside the jurisdiction
of libel and slander laws.
5. Fifth, although finally complying with the Ministry ruling of 8
January 2001, the university continues to withhold compensation and an
apology;
6. Sixth, although the university defied the Ministry ruling of 8
January 2001 for more than two years, the university now claims, in
court, that I am not due compensation since the deadline has passed!
A university cannot stand on money alone; it can only stand on law
and moral principle, as well as reciprocal relations with foreign
academics. Your refusal to understand this has discredited our
university.
Besides these matters, the issue remains of the student who wrote
a letter secretly circulated by university officials. As you know, the
current Dean of Student Affairs, Ko Huei-chen, gave me the "runaround"
for about two years before she claimed she could do nothing about the
student, even refusing to call the student into her office. When, on two
different occasions, the Dean and the Vice-Dean finally called this
student to the Office of Student Affairs, I was told the student decided
she didn't want to come.
What kind of university administration would allow a student
accused of misconduct to decide for herself whether to appear for a
hearing on the matter? Why have an Office of Student Affairs at all?
Let me repeat yet one more time that a university not founded on
moral principles has no foundation at all. Apart from laws, human
rights, moral principles, and academic integrity, taxpayers' money is
being misspent on contesting a legal Ministry ruling and the benefits of
that ruling, as if your administration has as little regard for public
money as it has for public laws and moral principles.
Regardless of your obstinancy and defiance, I assure you, I will
continue to use every resource and channel, within Taiwan and outside
Taiwan, to resolve these matters according to principles that protect
both the rights and the dignity of professors under democratic law,
regardless how long you defy that law.
Sincerely,
Richard de Canio
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan
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