President
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan
cc: Taiwan Administrative and News channels, American Universities, Scholars at Risk, Chronicle of Higher Education
bcc: NCKU Faculty
3 March 2011
To the American Academic Community,
There is a long-standing unresolved human rights case at National Cheng Kung University that should be remedied if academic exchanges are to continue on the basis of mutual respect and principles of law.
In 1999 I was illegally dismissed. A secret accusatory letter was circulated at several review hearings to insure my dismissal when previous accusations were challenged for not being properly investigated.
After my dismissal was canceled in December 1999 the university denied reinstatement on the claim that "foreigners" were not protected by Taiwan's Teachers Law, which insured employment except upon punitive dismissal. Thus the case was returned to the department, now as a "hiring" rather than a dismissal case, contradicting the purpose of appeal. (This claim was rejected by both Taiwan's Ministry of Education and Taiwan's Courts.)
After numerous futile university hearings, I appealed to the Ministry of Education and won in a ruling dated January 8, 2001. The university then claimed foreigners were not entitled to appeal, though it held numerous appeal hearings and attended one in Taipei. The university instead filed suit to contest the Ministry ruling.
When the court ruled against the university, it defied court and Ministry rulings, eight warning letters from the Ministry (attached), and two advisory letters from Scholars at Risk, a human rights group based in New York.
Finally, four years after my dismissal, and nearly two and a half years after the Ministry ruling, the university reinstated me, but promptly held punitive hearings to deny me promotion and increments for seven years. That decision was similarly overturned by the Ministry of Education.
To this day several university presidents have ignored my many petitions to resolve this case according to principles of international law to which Taiwan subscribes.
The student who wrote a secret malicious letter against me, which I saw only years later by court order, was never punished and is now teaching at our university. The officials who violated my rights by circulating unproved accusations and a secret letter were never punished. Committee members and chairs who chose to protect their colleagues instead of my rights, discrediting formal remedy at our university, were never held accountable. Apart from retroactive salary, I was never awarded due compensation for the interruption to my career and the financial costs in fighting this case to the present day.
The faculty has been mainly silent, at best expressing private sympathy and hope that I win. Administrative officials are merely urged by their more enlightened colleagues to follow laws, not told to do so. This allows the university to ignore laws to violate human rights then invoke laws to argue against remedy, which is the stand the university is now taking. Should a university that has no internal protocol to remedy its abuses be allowed to maintain academic exchanges with universities governed by human rights principles, laws, and prompt administrative remedy?
The English-language press, which almost daily publishes editorials about human rights issues in Mainland China, has ignored my letters, as have Taiwan's human rights groups. Ironically, only Scholars at Risk, thousands of miles away, responded to my petition for help, for which I remain grateful.
I feel American academics and human rights groups should insure the rights, dignity, and careers of American professors in Taiwan. The recent taekwondo incident demonstrated how sensitive Taiwanese are to their rights and dignity, though they seem indifferent to those of an American professor in Taiwan. This is not a just basis on which to establish the moral legitimacy of a university or its right to maintain academic exchanges with American universities.
Sincerely,
Richard de Canio
formerly Associate Professor
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan
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