Dr. Wu Ching-Ji,
Minister of Education
Taipei, Taiwan
cc:Dr. Hwung-Hweng Hwung
President
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan
Scholars at Risk
New York, N.Y.
15 March 2011
Dear Minister Wu,
National Cheng Kung University has a chronic history of human rights violations that began in 1999 with my illegal dismissal. University officials circulated a secret letter, invented accusations against me after other accusations were discredited, then canceled my dismissal on appeal but refused to honor its own ruling on the basis that foreigners were not protected by the Teachers Law, a claim rejected by the Ministry as well as the courts.
When your Ministry ruled in my favor on 8 January 2001, the university refused to honor that ruling for nearly two and a half years, despite ten warning letters (attached). Instead it used tax-paid money to contest a legal appeal at which the university deposed and never contested until it lost.
In the meantime, university officials tried to extort my resignation by threatening to delay the case in the courts indefinitely. After it reinstated me, the university contested my right to retroactive salary and held further hearings to penalize me.
To the present day the university has not apologized, issued compensation, or punished faculty and students in their conspiracy to obstruct justice and deny an American professor his rights.
Several presidents, including the present one, have failed to resolve this case according to principles guaranteed by international law. One president, Kao Chiang, defied the Ministry for years, as if NCKU were a rogue institution instead of a top-ranked university in Taiwan.
Academic exchanges cannot and should not be maintained except on a basis of mutual respect. There are also principles called "human rights," which Taiwan has recently endorsed as a guarantee of both law and appeal, if necessary, above the law, based on universal ideals rather than local prejudices.
Only prejudice could explain why Kao Chiang's administration was extended by another three-year term even after he defied the Ministry of Education (see attachments)? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights insures officials will be punished despite official position, power, or nationality.
Similarly, the Taiwan student who made secret accusations against me not only has never been punished but is teaching part-time at the university where she discredited me. An American professor is not without honor, except in Taiwan. Only nationalistic prejudice could explain why a Taiwan student was allowed to discredit a teacher without proof and eight years after a disputed grade.
The Golden Rule is part of Western and Chinese moral codes, but apparently is only observed under the American justice system, where the student would have been discredited, not the teacher. That's called due process of law, which is no respecter of persons.
The university's refusal to punish this student has impacted my life to the present, as, twelve years later, NCKU students still think I failed a student unfairly (see attached student Internet post, dated August 2010). Similarly, in a Wikipedia Edit dated 20 October 2010, it's claimed my illegal dismissal never occurred (see attachment)!
Whether the writer is associated with NCKU is irrelevant. The university's refusal to formally close this case has fostered a revisionist history that exculpates the university, though NCKU officials repeated human rights violations defiantly and obstinately (see MOE attachment).
Thus there can be no compromise on the issues of a formal apology, compensation, and punishment of the student. Apart from losses in time and money, compensation is an earnest of sincerity. If I sincerely apologize for breaking someone's window I will pay for it. If I don't, my apology is insincere since it ignores the harm caused.
Recently an NCKU official drafted an "apology" that appealed to "the True, the Good, and the Beautiful." As if those could exist without human rights and a remedy that insures them. When Plato used those words he meant justice, not the denial of justice.
A university that does not observe those principles must be considered a rogue institution, with no right to academic exchanges with American universities or universities that guarantee human rights.
This case will soon be in its thirteenth year. I regret to say if I don't receive an adequate reply to this petition by Thursday, I will, as a further step, circulate this letter to the student newspapers of universities with which NCKU has academic exchanges. Perhaps if American students expose this case it will force an open discussion of these issues on college campuses to insure a just resolution so far denied me in Taiwan.
Sincerely,
Richard de Canio
formerly, Associate Professor
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Cheng Kung University
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