Letter to NCKU president

Office of the President
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan

cc: Office of the Premier, Ministry of Education, Department of Higher
Education, Taiwan Commission for Human Rights,
Control Yuan

9 January 2003

Dear President Kao,

I am reminding you yet again of your duties, as president of a university,
to govern according to laws, moral principles, and
principles of justice. Apart from laws, a university without moral
foundation cannot stand, regardless how many students or
how much money it has.
Yet National Cheng Kung University officials have undermined those
principles and those laws. They repeatedly held
secret meetings, solicited or accepted secret letters, accredited those
letters without proof, used committees to harass
faculty, and prevent administrative remedy. Your administration has openly
declared that foreign faculty should be denied
legal protections guaranteed to native faculty. The fact that I am a
foreign professor, from a country committed to Taiwan's
democracy, adds insult to injury.
Officials involved in administrative misconduct at our university have
not yet, under your administration, been punished
(although this is long overdue). You yourself defied a legal Ministry of
Education appeal ruling for more than two years,
costing taxpayers millions of dollars. Before you finally complied with
that ruling, two officials (including a vice-dean of
Academic Affairs) warned me to leave the university with half pay or the
university would contest the Ministry ruling for
years in the courts. Moreover, the Dean of Academic Affairs, Ko Huei-chen,
has refused to mediate a hearing for a student
who wrote a secret and spiteful letter used at my dismissal hearings in
1999.
Apparently this administration does not wish to govern a university by
laws and moral principles but by delay,
intimidation, and litigation. This is not a wise way to govern a
university. A university is not a business, as some
administrators at our university may believe, but an institution, teaching
values to the next generation. If those values are
undermined, so is the institution. As president of a university you are,
for better or for worse, also custodian and guardian of
its values and its reputation. It seems to me you have undermined both.
What kind of university would accept a secret complaint from a student
but ignore a formal complaint from a teacher
seeking proper administrative remedy? What president of a university
anywhere in the world could defy a legal Ministry
ruling for more than two years and remain in office? In what lawful country
could university officials undermine
administrative remedy like officials at our university have done, so far
without penalty?
But this is a matter for the Ministry of Education and the Control
Yuan. I can only hope they take this case as seriously
as the case of administrative negligence at Ho Ping Hospital. Indeed, more
seriously, since this case involves not merely
negligence, but defiance.
Right now my concern is to remind you that I am committed to a full and
just resolution of all matters related to my illegal
dismissal in 1999, including a formal and sincere apology and admission of
wrongdoing from the university; full
compensation, including complete back pay and costs; and a formal censure
of, and apology from, the student who wrote a
secret and spiteful letter accusing me of unfailing her eight years before.
I will continue to use all proper channels until these matters are
formally closed, according to recognized principles of
justice.

Sincerely,

Professor Richard de Canio
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan