Reply to President Kao's email regarding legal rights issues at
National Cheng Kung University
Date:
Thu, 12 Jun 2003 09:22:34 -0700
To:
Kao Chiang
CC:
moe
President Kao Chiang
The Office of the President
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan
Cc: The Ministry of Education
The Department of Higher Education
The Faculty Union of National Cheng Kung University
12 June 2003
Dear President Kao,
Please consider reading my email again. I asked that you, as
president of our university, effect a just resolution to this case,
including the prompt nullification of the meeting chaired by Dean Su;
travel, court, and salary compensation; and apologies for official
misconduct. Therefore I advise that your secretary schedule a meeting
for this purpose as soon as possible.
As you know, my colleagues at the NCKU Faculty Union and I have
already devoted nearly five years correcting abuses committed by
university officials, some of whom have either little knowledge of, or
little regard for, laws and are seemingly indifferent to moral
principles. The university's own lawyer contested a legitimate ruling
sanctioned by the Ministry of Education, as if there were no law in
Taiwan or the university were a law unto itself. Later, two officials
threatened to contest the Ministry ruling for years unless I resigned
from the university. Another official accepted a secret letter from a
student complaining about a grade eight years before, merely on the
basis the student said she would repeat her claim in court. If I told
this official I was willing to claim in court I was Santa Claus, I
suppose he would believe I was Santa Claus. Other officials insist that
although my illegal dismissal was canceled, I should receive only half
pay compensation.
Although laws are ignored when persecuting a foreign professor,
they are invoked when the professor appeals for justice. When I
requested that the student who wrote her letter be punished, one
official talked about the student's rights. What about a professor's
rights? What rights protect a student from penalty for misconduct?
What rights entitle an official to ignore an official complaint?
But to evade responsibility, officials delegate responsibility to
one another in a circle game that's played for months or years. One
official even suggested that God, not he, would punish the student
involved in misconduct. As far as I know, God is not an official at our
university; and if he were, even he would have a hard time convincing
some officials here to act in accordance with principles of justice.
In this system of delegated responsibility, presumably no official
is responsible. But in a lawful society, all officials are responsible,
beginning with the highest, as the recent tragic incident at Ho Ping
Hospital shows.
As far as I'm concerned, disciplining officials at our university
is your responsibility, not mine. The Ministry ruled in my favor on 8
January 2001 and canceled my university dismissal. In doing so, it
insured full compensation for salary and other losses related to my
illegal dismissal. It also insured that all accusations formally
adjudicated by the university and rejected on appeal are final, or no
appeal would ever be final until the appellant finally loses. Since an
appellant can never match his limited resources against the greater
resources of an institution, the university would always win. Appeals
would be useless. Power, not justice, would prevail. But the intent of
the law is to insure that justice, not power prevails.
Besides, as I said in my last email, I pleaded to have accusations
investigated by university officials in 1999. But, contrary to Ministry
rules and common sense, officials ignored me. Yet after I won the
Ministry ruling, instead of holding meetings to review the officials who
illegally effected my dismissal, the university held a meeting to review
me.
In view of these facts, I advise you to decide whether the meeting
chaired by Dean Su was legally proper or whether the university's
actions in general are defensible.
Regarding a final settlement, please arrange a meeting between us
as soon as possible. If you wish our dialogue to be conducted in
Chinese, that is not a problem with me. Our main consideration should
be the language of the law and principles of justice.
Sincerely,
Professor Richard de Canio
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan
(06) 237 8626
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