cc: Department of Higher Education (MOE)
Michael Ming-Chiao Lai, NCKU University President
Da Hsuan Feng, Senior-Executive Vice-President
Dr. Hwung-Hweng Hwung, Senior-Executive Vice-President
Dr. Woei-Shyan Lee, Secretary-General
30 July 2010
Dear Committee,
I was puzzled to find your bulletin regarding National Cheng Kung University's recent presidential search, including these words:
The selection committee announces a presidential search to openly solicit individuals of stature and integrity to lead NCKU further towards its goal of becoming one of the world’s top universities, after the current President Michael Ming-Chiao Lai finishes his term of office on January 31, 2011.
With all due respect, a university president "of stature and integrity" should acknowledge human rights abuses when the evidence is indisputable (see attachment). She or he should also insure a formal apology, compensation, and institutional changes to prevent a recurrence of those abuses.
However since my illegal dismissal in 1999 not a single university president, including the current president, Michael Ming-Chiao Lai, has contacted me in order to resolve these issues. One president, Kao Chiang, actually defied a legal Ministry ruling for nearly two and a half years! Does that reflect "stature and integrity" or concern for human rights at our university?
Yet human rights principles are not only the fruit of a democracy but also the foundation of a university. For without those protections there is no guarantee of a university's academic integrity. A university, in other words, that does not insure human rights cannot insure academic standards either. Faced with so-called "oversight" committees that will pass any dismissal, regardless of human rights violations, few professors, much less foreign faculty, will risk dismissal to uphold academic standards. Such a university cannot become "one of the world's top universities."
As recently as yesterday The Liberty Times (attached) quoted an NCKU official that the university might agree to thank me for my teaching here the last 22 years. This is presumably instead of a formal remedy for human rights abuses committed against me by university officials, including many who sat on your so-called "oversight" ("appeal" and "review") committees. These committees repeatedly passed my illegal dismissal, and even circulated a secret defamatory letter against me, which I was allowed to see only after taking the student who wrote it to court.
Such a compromise for these abuses as suggested in The Liberty Times quote of an NCKU official is not only unacceptable, it's insulting. I am an American citizen. I will pursue this case, no matter how long it takes, until it's resolved according to international principles of human rights charters, not to mention common sense and common decency. This includes acknowledgment of wrongdoing, a formal apology, and reasonable compensation for the four years I lost of my academic career here and the time, up to the present moment, dedicated to effect a final resolution in this case.
My legal options, some of which I have already exercised, include informal and formal petitions to US sister universities to terminate exchanges here on the basis of NCKU's human rights violations and its failure to effect remedy according to established principles of human rights and academic reciprocity.
Sincerely,
Richard de Canio
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan
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