From: Richard John <rdca25@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, May 16, 2011 at 12:14 AM
Subject: Regarding the National Cheng Kung Web Site
To: em50000@email.ncku.edu.tw, hhhwung@mail.ncku.edu.tw
Dear Colleagues,
Recently this so-called "explanation" was recently posted on the NCKU web site at
http://news-en.secr.ncku.edu.tw/files/13-1083-78482-1.php
Farcical as it is, I must address glaring errors in the statement titled "A Letter of Explanation for the Discontinued Employment Case of Associate Professor Richard De Canio," dated March 4, 2011.
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Recently, Dr. Richard de Canio, former associate professor of Foreign Languages and Literature Department of National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), has delivered email messages where he conveyed resentment at his being declined for employment renewal in 1999. This case, as I understand it, was dealt with by NCKU following the resolution of the Teacher Grievances Committee of the Ministry of Education. Dr. de Canio was re-employed and reimbursed with the overdue salary. Legal procedures were carefully observed. In 2010, Dr. de Canio retired from NCKU at the legal retirement age.
First, the law doesn't deal with "resentment." The law deals with laws and human rights. Resentment has nothing to do with the law or human rights. A person may or may not resent having money stolen; it's still a punishable crime.
The circulation of a secret student letter containing false accusations has nothing to do with resentment. It's a violation of my rights, which includes due process of law, the right to defend against libel, and other rights.
The denial of the right to be informed of accusations against me has nothing to do with resentment. The denial of appellant rights has nothing to do with resentment either.The right to be protected by a uniform law (not a special law for "foreigners") has nothing to do with resentment.
I find it comical in this so-called "explanation" that there is not a single mention of all the legal rights violations committed by National Cheng Kung University, the fourth-ranked university in Taiwan, with numerous long-standing academic exchanges with US universities. The administration wants my colleagues to believe this is just an issue of personal "resentment," as if rape can be handled by dealing with the woman's personal resentment.The case violated so many human rights that the Ministry of Education boldfaced them to be sure officials got the point; and, I was told by someone who knew my case at another college that it was actually used as an example for inaugurated officials of what not to do as an official.
Yet there is no sense of shame among NCKU officials or faculty that their university is an example not of paradigm justice, but of the miscarriage of justice. This is not mentioned in the self-serving "explanation" on the NCKU web site. Nor are the numerous violations committed by NCKU officials. This is "revisionism" of the kind Taiwan deplores in the "comfort women" issue, Nanking, or the 2-28 incident. Why do you accept it in my case?
Human rights violations included:
Making unsupported, unproved, or uninvestigated accusations.
Failure to notify the accused of those accusations. (I heard I was dismissed after the fact.)
Failure to allow the accused to defend himself at the first (departmental) meeting, which I heard of only after the fact, as stated above.
Soliciting and circulating a secret accusatory letter at "appeal" and "review" meetings.(Orwell would have loved the Newspeak at NCKU, where "oversight" committees are "coverup" committees. For some of you who need to be told, the purpose of an oversight committee is to protect the appellant, not to protect corrupt officials.)
Failure to apply a uniform law, the Teacher's Law, to the professor, presumably because he was a "mere" foreigner from a country that has invested millions defending Taiwan and complicating its international relations to insure stability and prosperity in Taiwan for half a century, without taking credit away from the millions in Taiwan who have worked hard to deserve their prosperity. The real point is we Americans accord Taiwanese the exact same Constitutional rights native Americans have; we deserve the same respect. But committee members kept repeating the dismissal action. Either they knew I was being treated by a different law and didn't care about justice, or they didn't care what the facts were, which means they still didn't care about justice. Presumably it was sufficient they sat at the committee for the time required, indifferent to the fate of an American citizen who was being deprived of his rights. "After all, he must be guilty or why would they have dismissed him?" That's not democracy; that's authoritarianism.
Failure to observe due process when the dismissal was canceled in December 1999. The university then disingenuously treated the case as a hiring action, not a dismissal action, and returned it to the department for further "review" (Orwellian Newspeak again). You, my colleagues, show me a single case of a person who goes through an appeal, has an action against him canceled, and then wins nothing but the opportunity to be reviewed again. A man goes to court charged with theft. The jury acquits him. The prosecutor then starts the case again, since the accused is from Taiwan and is not protected by human rights (the right to a single trial ending in a verdict).
Mend the hold. "Mend the hold" is a legal term meaning accusations change until one of them sticks. The term may have come from wrestling where one tries one disabling hold and if that doesn't work one tries another. This is illegal in US law. I can't fire someone for being late and when he successfully defends himself against that claim he's being fired for another reason (being drunk, rude, stealing, etc.).
"Mend the hold" is related to another action illegal in US courtrooms but apparently legal in Taiwan courtrooms, namely "estoppel," the principle that disallows one party in a legal action to contradict a previous claim either explicit or implicit.
Now the university held numerous "appeals" and "reviews" in my case (there's Orwellian Newspeak again) and attended the one in Taipei. But when it lost it then claimed I had no right to appeal in the first place.
None of this duplicity is mentioned in the so-called "explanation" on the NCKU web page. Taiwan students and professors in the US are protected by the same rights as Americans, but the NCKU administration had no shame going to court and claiming Americans were not protected by the same rights as Taiwanese in Taiwan. Yet NCKU maintains academic exchanges with numerous universities in the United States. If that is not selfish duplicity I don't know what is.
Even worse, after NCKU loses the appeal at the Ministry of Education, which it never contested during the appeal itself, it then argued I had no right to appeal. Have i touched a nerve of conscience among my former colleagues yet, or am I wasting my time?
I regret that Dr. de Canio was displeased with how the case was handled. Should similar cases occur in the future, in the administrative procedure, the faculty's rights and interests will be the primal concerns. Emotional, rational, and legal perspectives on the cases will be equally considered to avoid sense of resentment by the faculty concerned. I believe few people are perfect in this society of great variety. It is my hope that we tolerate and encourage each other. With happy mood, we work together to contribute to the society in pursuit of the true, the good, and the beautiful. With this good faith, I hereby express my sincere gratitude for Dr. de Canio's devotion to NCKU for the past 20 years.
Hwung-Hweng Hwung
President
National Cheng Kung University
The above is absolute nonsense and my colleagues must recognize it for what it is, mere diversionary rhetoric, and not very good rhetoric either. Human rights have nothing to do with being "displeased." Either human rights are enforced or they are ignored. If they are ignored National Cheng Kung University must be considered a rogue institution, not a legitimate academic institution; not only because human rights are violated there without remedy but because if human rights are violated there is no insurance that academic standards are being maintained. If professors cannot rely on due process of law to protect their conscientious actions (say, disputing a student grade or research), it will discourage such conscientious actions, thus compromising academic standards. If I see a student unfairly passed but fear retribution from my colleagues; or if I detect spurious lab work but fear retribution if I report it; or know a female colleague who was sexually assaulted I fear retribution if I report it, clearly the university has compromised its future reputation. Which is exactly what happened in my case, where faculty's consciences presumably were seared shut by their relationships and their fear of losing them and thus compromising their own tenure. Even former students of mine for whom I wrote reference letters or assisted in other ways compromised me. That's why I don't depend on relationships; I depend on God: "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (ROMANS)
As for "future" remedy, I am concerned with past remedy as well as future remedy. I don't care about the rhetoric of what the university will do in the future. It does not change what happened to me and the fact that it must be formally resolved.
The rape victim wants to be sure the rapist doesn't rape again but also wants the rapist punished for his previous rape. I know of no rape victim who would be satisfied without a prison sentence even if the rapist volunteered for chemical castration, thus insuring he could never rape again. That may insure an early release from prison but would not replace a prison sentence.
I want my case handled according to international principles of justice, and, as God is my witness, I will do everything within legal channels to insure that. There will never be a compromise on this issue. The sooner my former colleagues realize this, the more surely you will insure administrative justice to protect the long-term reputation of your university, even if that includes the removal of Dr. Hwung Hwung-Hweng as university president, which I will require as part of a settlement once this case is exposed.
As for "tolerate," we tolerate transgressions; the person who accidentlly bumps into us on the street; the father who forgets our birthday; the spouse who forgets Valentine's Day; the bad weather; the electrical outage. We never tolerate injustice. To do so is unjust; it's social suicide. My former colleagues must understand this. The social injustice you tolerate today will come back to haunt you or your children in months or years to come. As the Bible (Hosea) says, who sows the wind, reaps the whirlwind.
And yes, we should "encourage" one another: We should "encourage" one another to enforce justice and human rights. That is all Plato meant by the good, the true, the beautiful. Plato would not wish to encourage others to cover up the abuses of their colleagues. Plato would not consider the circulation of a secret letter "good"; or false accusations "true"; or corrupt officials "beautiful." Corruption is never beautiful; it is the very meaning of disfigurement, which means "ugly," since corruption disfigures the law, which, as the Hebrews taught us in Psalm 119, is beautiful.
As for "happy mood," mental patients on medication have happy moods. Drug addicts have happy moods, for a brief time at least, until they "come down" into the real world, which Sigmund Freud, at the very end of Studies in Hysteria called "the common misery of everyday life." When you face life squarely, as the Greek tragedians did, as the biblical prophets did, there is no cause for the happy mood you speak of. Only those living in deliberate denial of the injustices around them can cultivate a happy mood.
Can you feel a happy mood over the injustices I've suffered at National Cheng Kung University? Over the fact that the student who wrote a secret accusatory letter against me is now teaching at our university? Over the fact that she was never punished by the court for doing so? Over the fact that a former student of mine, for whom I wrote a reference letter for admission to a university abroad, supported that student when I took her to court and claimed to believe her word over mine, his former teacher, even though the student had not a shred of proof? Can you feel a happy mood over the fact that he's now Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and, hence, shaping the minds of current students at this university, who are the future franchise and colleagues of Taiwan? Can you feel a happy mood over the fact that the current Chair of the Department of Foreign Literature also supported that student who wrote an accusatory letter, despite the fact she had no evidence whatsoever that she failed unfairly and her accusation was eight years after the class, and, moreover, that I gave her three high passes the years she failed one grade?
Perhaps your "happy mood" will change once this case is fully exposed in the international community, which will be sooner than you think.
Unfortunately, there's more of the same NCKU Newspeak below, which I feel compelled to address:
May 4, 2011
It has been almost 12 years since 1999 when the employment of Associate Professor Richard De Canio was discontinued by National Cheng Kung University (NCKU). The resolution to discontinue his employment followed the required procedure. It was approved by the Faculty Evaluation Committee of Foreign Languages and Literature Department (where he was teaching) in its four meetings, by the College of Liberal Arts Faculty Evaluation Committee in its four meetings, and by the University Faculty Evaluation Committee as a result of multiple rounds of review. However, this discontinued employment case came to an end in 2003 when NCKU reinstated his employment following the district court decision made upon his appeal. In addition, the lawsuit concerning his petition for national compensation on his case was judged three times and rejected two times by the Tainan District Court. Eventually, the case was closed in 2007 after it was rejected four times by the Taiwan Supreme Court Tainan Branch.
Are you being facetious here, because you may be crossing the line of actionable libel. Please think of what you're publishing here. My employment was not "discontinued." You make it sound like it was a legal action; like the university had the right to review whether it would continue my employment or not. That was the disingenuous argument used by the university in claiming I was not protected by the Teacher's Law.
But we know for a fact that both the Ministry of Education and the Taiwan court rejected that claim. So be careful what you write, because you may be crossing the line into libel. I was illegally dismissed, by definition (i.e. the MOE Appeal ruling, the court rejection of the claim foreigners are not protected by the Teacher's Law). (The issue why a university with academic exchanges with democracies abroad would even claim that in the first place is itself a serious human rights and reciprocity issue. Has NCKU no sense of shame?) And what do you mean by "followed the required procedure"?
Again, I caution National Cheng Kung University you may have crossed the line into libel. If you had followed the "required procedure" the Ministry of Education Appeals Committee would not have overturned the decision and boldfaced human rights violations throughout their decision (by the way, why don't you post the Ministry of Education ruling, or a link to it, since you want to "explain" what happened?); nor would members of the Teacher's Union have repeatedly warned departmental, college, and university committee faculty that they were engaged in illegal actions.
It's a proved fact that what the university did was illegal. The fact that it was "approved by the Faculty Evaluation Committee of Foreign Languages and Literature Department" doesn't mean it was just or legal by criteria established in law and by the Ministry of Education. We know for a fact all the NCKU committees committed numerous human rights violations rehearsed above: circulation of a secret letter at a meeting chaired by Lee Chian-er; unproved accusations at a meeting chaired by Li Chung-hsiung; defiance of a legal Ministry ruling by former president Kao Chiang; the refusal to implement the Teacher's Law, which both the Ministry of Education and the Taiwan courts called illegal.
(I won't even mention the illegal dismissal of 1994, when Ren Shyh-jong was chair, which used spurious (undated, unsigned, unclassified) "student evaluations." That dismissal was overturned, comically, by a single vote, despite the obvious illegality of the action, since I wasn't even informed of the "evaluations" until after I was dismissed and the "evaluations" were discredited. Then the committee minutes, I was told, was forged, to make it look like the committee had advised me to be a better teacher when members of the Teacher's Union who sat on the committee insisted no such vote occurred; but that helped the chair in charge of the dismissal action to save face. I can't help wondering all my colleagues care about are "face," "relationships," and "the harmony of the whole." That's not the way to advance a university to international standards.)
Additionally, what are you talking about by using the phrase "required procedure"? All the NCKU committees did was rubber stamp decisions made by each other committee, and even defying the Ministry of Education ruling. Do you call that "required"? Is that legal in your definition of "legal"? When I went to a law professor on campus after my dismissal was canceled in December 1999 he opened a law book and pointed to a specific law with his forefinger and kept telling me to go to the personnel department to pick up my retroactive contracts; he had a hard time believing me when I told him the university said that as a foreigner I had to be reviewed again. I wonder if your family were treated the same way in America if you would call that "legal" and "required procedure."
As for the case being "closed," no human rights case is ever closed. We're still debating issues of slavery, of the Nazi holocaust, of restitution for Chinese and Korean "comfort women"; we're still punishing holocaust camp guards, we're still debating the 2-21 incident and the Rape of Nanking.
I appeal to my enlightened colleagues, does it seem reasonable that university officials circulated libelous accusations against me yet the Taiwan court rules it's not libel because the accusations were not circulated outside the university? Google for the word "libel" on the Internet. Every single definition of libel says clearly that a false accusation is libel if one other party (apart from the discredited party) reads (or, in the case of slander, hears) the false accusation. Yet dozens of faculty members read or heard the false accusations against me; in fact they were told me by students even as of last year (see attached), that they heard rumors that I unfairly failed a student and the rumors favored the student (now NCKU professor); yet the court rejected that as libel on the claim it did not circulate outside the university, even though it seriously damaged my reputation within the university to the present day as the student attachment shows!
Try to understand the implications of such a ruling. Implicitly the court is saying it's all right to disseminate false accusations against a professor in a university. Can't you see the implications here? A court should act as a deterrent to prevent similar false accusations in the future; instead it's implicitly encouraging (or at least not discouraging) university faculty and officials to disseminate spurious claims about colleagues. The court is saying there will be no penalty if you do that. Can't the more enlightened colleagues at this university see the dangers in such a ruling? If you have nothing to lose by circulating false claims about a colleague you're more likely to do so than if you, and the administration, feared severe penalties, both civil and possibly criminal as well. That's how lawful relations are established, or at least as lawful as we can hope from a corrupt human nature.
But there's another issue even apart from the court ruling. Why would a university, presumably among the more enlightened institutions in a society, even contest compensatory claims? The university should have willingly admitted compensatory debts to a colleague who was illegally dismissed. If my child injured your child, first I wouldn't go to court to avoid a compensatory claim (hospital bills, loss of schooling, emotional trauma, psychological counseling, etc.).
What kind of university would appeal a legitimate compensatory claim like mine? I had to fly back and forth to renew my visa. I lost valuable time teaching, which can never be restored; and I count five rather than four years, since my fifth year back was not guaranteed early enough in the schedule so I got leftover speaking and writing classes. The damage to my academic career over five years was immense. The costs of court action were quite high. I dedicated years fighting this case (to the present day in fact, as in this letter), reading and writing to defend myself, picking up numerous documents at about eight different Tainan post offices, sometimes three a day at three different post offices (often the apartment buzzer awakening me to go downstairs to sign for one of numerous documents from the university, Ministry of Education, courts, etc. A colleague has drawers full of those documents. Where's the compensation for that?
As I said in a previous email, if your child is kidnapped and held ransom for four years would you consider it justice if the kidnapper is required only to return the child? If your child's advanced studies are interrupted by spurious accusations of cheating at an American university and the case extends over four years, would you consider it justice if the child is merely reinstated? If an American university administration treated your child like that would you consider that fair or would you and thousands of Taiwanese protest?
A Taiwanese taekowondo athlete is accused of cheating (and there's no proof the accusation was improper) but Taiwanese immediately take to the Internet; newspapers that ignore my case buzz with anger over the incident; one Taiwan citizen even throws stones at a South Korean children's school (yes; attack children; is that the way to establish justice in Taiwan?); yet you tolerate grievous human rights abuses against an American at your own university and "tolerate" officials who, presumably, represent, "the good, the true, and the beautiful."
I ask you once again, why would the university not willingly give compensation, much less vigorously contest compensation? You're supposedly fourth-ranked in Taiwan. Can't you see what is at stake? "What shall it profit to gain the whole world?" You're risking the reputation of a university that it took decades to establish.
The resolution to discontinue the employment of Associate Professor De Canio by NCKU was based on the following reasons. Since his course had been cancelled for a shortage of required number of enrolled students in four consecutive semesters, it would undermine the rights of students to study and the opportunities of local teachers to be employed. NCKU hence discontinued his employment as a foreigner in accordance with the Employment Service Law. Moreover, in view of the fact that the work authored by Associate Professor De Canio was involved in plagiarism and sold in public which went in violation of Articles 91 and 94 of the Intellectual Property Rights, NCKU could not continue his employment. However, he appealed to the University Teacher Grievances Committee and the Teacher Grievances Committee of the Ministry of Education; further, he filed the lawsuit for the applicability of Teachers Law to foreign teachers. With the decisions of the appeals and the lawsuit, the Ministry of Education stated in its letter to NCKU that the school should reinstate his employment and reimburse his salaries. Accordingly, NCKU issued to him his employment contracts, his salaries, year-end bonuses, and academic research stipends for the period between 1999 and 2003.
As for the reasons given above, I won't go into them because they involve issues that are not of primary importance in this case. If a woman is raped it doesn't matter whether she was walking out late at night, sported high heels, wore seductive lipstick, or even if she teased the man or cried "stop" during a consensual sexual act. Rape is rape. Period. There's no tolerance for rape.
The fact is the university made false accusations. It circulated a secret letter, even at so-called oversight committees. The university denied due process of law. The university denied I was protected by the same laws that protect Taiwan teachers. Finally the university refused to enforce a legal Ministry ruling even though it attended appeal hearings in Taipei. These are the issues that should be resolved. These are the issues that must be resolved. These are the issues that will be resolved, sooner or later.
One issue I will address is the issue of plagiarism. First, I deny it was plagiarism, as I will elaborate below. Second, how can a university claim to dismiss a professor for plagiarism if it doesn't even inform the professor of the accusation or investigate the accusation, or even have regulations defining plagiarism? Moreover the entire action was hypocritical since it was well known that plagiarism was rampant in Taiwan and several high officials were found to have plagiarized, with impunity, apart from the bad publicity.
The law must not only be written, with specific criteria, it must be applied impartially. From what I was told plagiarism was so rampant among Taiwan professors that some US academic journals had a blacklist of those names. Whether true or not I cannot attest. The main issue here is the selective application of laws which, in my experience, is common here.
For example, many teachers don't have enough students in their courses, but the department routinely allows it or gives extracurricular work (library, etc.). This only becomes an issue when a teacher is disliked, in which case the law is being applied in a discriminatory manner and it's no longer really law in a constitutional sense (i.e. equal enforcement). I know for certain that if I forgave one student for cheating on her exam, I would absolutely forgive all students, or vice versa; like when I told a tearful student, "I'm sorry, but I failed a student last year for that and I can't make an exception of you." One student was disrespectful and a troublemaker but when many students transferred to my Public Speaking class due to a colleague's illness, I allowed him in, because I allowed the other students in, and I don't believe in acting in a discriminatory manner.
The law (like St. Paul's definition of God) is no respecter of persons. This refers back to my earlier reference to "mend the hold." I was also accused of teaching different courses, for which I was not hired.
First, I should be respected for working hard enough to extend my academic range. Over the years I taught American Literature, British Literature, Public Speaking Critical Theory (from classical to postmodernism), Cinema, Bible Studies, Public Speaking (where students gave ONE SPEECH A WEEK that I had to analyze and discuss), and Composition. I wrote literally thousands of pages for my students over the years, now published in about 10 volumes of essays in the fields of fiction, poetry, writing, speaking, and cinema. One student joked years ago that her classmates said I wrote faster than they could read!
Second, the same university that tried to dismiss me for presumably teaching "outside my specialty" then allowed me to teach the Bible, which was not in my specialty, the year after I was reinstated after being dismissed for not teaching in my specialty! Now where's the logic? First the university tries to fire me for not teaching my specialty then it actually allowed me to teach a Bible class that was not in my specialty once I was reinstated in 2003. Moreover it asked me to teach a Psychology class that was also not in my specialty!
So you see there's a great degree of duplicity here. This is what George Orwell called "doublethink," where two points of view are maintained at the same time.
As for plagiarism, like beauty, it's in the eye of the beholder and covers a wide range of possibilities in the creative sphere, from the crude student copying of a complete text to the creative reworkings that is the basis of a great deal of art. Does West Side Story plagiarize Romeo and Juliet? We know that Brahms adapted the melody from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for his melody at the end of his own First Symphony, but the relationship, though perceptible to most ears, is too distant to be called plagiarism in the invidious sense.
Was Aaron Copland a plagiarist for using Mexican tunes in his superb orchestral showpiece, El Salon Mexico? Was he a plagiarist when he used a Shaker tune called "Simple Gifts" for a set of variations in his ballet Appalachian Spring. (The great film composer, Bernard Herrmann, angrily accused him of plagiarism; but no one thinks of it as plagiarism today, so far as I know).
Recently Bob Dylan was accused of plagiarism for taking strings of words from an American Civil War poet in songs on one of his albums, Love and Theft. These were complete strings of words, with no change; yet he was mainly defended by the intellectual community for doing so.
This doesn't even cover numerous pop tunes that adapt classical melodies. Neil Diamond took the melody from Mozart's famous Piano Concerto #21 for his song, "Song Sung Blue." He doesn't credit Mozart on the record. Paul Simon took the famous Hassler tune that Bach used in his Passions; neither Bach nor Hassler is credited on the record. There are hundreds of such examples. The US illustrator Norman Rockwell exactly copied the composition of a famous painter for his famous World War II illustration known as "Rosie the Riveter." Is that plagiarism?
Are the numerous robot films (RoboCop, Terminator and too many others to mention) plagiarism? They can all be traced back to Fritz Lang's Metropolis in the silent film era. At what point does one "own" an idea, plot element, chord progression ("I Got Rhythm" has been used by numerous jazz musicians for their own compositions), or design?
One 1960 film, Homicidal copied almost the entire plot of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (both 1960), with apparent impunity because Hitchcock never accused the director William Castle, of plagiarism, though we children couldn't stop laughing at the similarities between the two films (a killer dressed up as a woman, etc.) and one film followed the other in a matter of months, within the same year. A Clint Eastwood western adapted the plot elements of the western Shane with no credit; several recent films were almost direct "ripoffs" of previous films, without credit, such as a ripoff of Billy Wilder's The Apartment; while another film was traced to Jane Austen's Emma, just redone for modern audiences.
Most scholars have observed that Bugs Bunny was plagiarized from Walt Disney's cocky rabbit in his early short The Tortoise and the Hare, but Disney ignored it, as even the creators of Bugs Bunny admitted.
This issue is interminable. The plagiarism that I was accused of was not the crude kind where someone takes sentences from a book; I borrowed plot elements, as novelists and movie makers have done from time immemorial. Apocalypse Now, by the director of The Godfather films is obviously an updated version of Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness. Everyone recognizes this; Coppola never credited Conrad, nor is he ever accused of "plagiarism" in the invidious sense. That's because he reworked his source material and made it his own. As the poet T. S. Eliot once famously said, "Small poets borrow, great poets steal." I don't consider myself a great poet but I certainly never plagiarized in the invidious sense implied by those accusations against me. Incidentally, while teaching at another college I picked up an ESL book that used the same story I used as a source of one my own stories; there was not a single acknowledgment where the plot came from anywhere in the volume. That book was printed by a major British publisher.
But all of this is beside the point. University officials have a selective punitive policy that I'm familiar with. They can make an issue of anything they wish when they don't like you but ignore an issue when they do like you. I'm not going to reciprocate by saying my Taiwan colleagues committed blatant plagiarism with impunity, but such has been exposed to be the case even at top agencies in Taiwan. No action is taken against these people. And justice implies an impartial execution of laws. A law that is partially executed is no longer law even though the law itself is just. This kind of disparity of execution was all too familiar in the Jim Crow days of the Old South. It applies across gender lines too: A man with many sexual partners is "experienced" while a woman is a "slut."
On another front, Associate Professor De Canio filed a request for national compensation for entry and exit visa fees he had paid during his dismissal period. The Tainan District Court ruled that NCKU should refund his expenses for flights, hotel accommodation, lodgings and visa applications. Yet, an appeal by NCKU was approved so that the previous verdict was reversed, allowing the school to retrieve its compensation payments. In response, Associate Professor De Canio filed a complaint to the Taiwan Supreme Court Tainan Branch, which ordered the case be retried at the Tainan District Court. The retrial decision sustained that NCKU should make compensations. NCKU appealed to the Taiwan Supreme Court Tainan Branch, which ruled that NCKU was not required to compensate. Four subsequent appeals for retrial made by Associate Professor De Canio were dismissed. Thus, his lawsuit for national compensation was closed. As well, his lawsuit against a former student was lost and closed.
Regarding the above, the lawsuit may be closed, but not the issue. You must understand this. In a just society human rights issues are never closed; I discussed this principle above. Regardless of what the court ruled common sense requires the university to compensate an appellant for costs incurred while fighting the case, the interruption to his academic career, research, etc.
I'm curious why Taiwanese follow the law strictly when it's in their favor but then defy the law when they think otherwise? Apparently the ruling that disqualified the Taiwanese athlete did not matter, even though there is no evidence of inequity. More to the point, why did the university defy a legal Ministry ruling until it was more or less forced to execute it, but then confidently appeal to the law when it's in the university's favor?
Similarly, the university recklessly accepted the student's accusation against me and completed my dismissal in a few weeks, while I tried for years to punish the student and I'm told the student has rights. What is this, a joke? No student has a right to discredit a teacher without proof. If the university does not take action it's risking its international reputation sooner or later.
I appeal to my more enlightened colleagues. If the court ruling that I'm not entitled to compensation is reasonable, then, like the ruling that circulation of false accusations within a university is not libel, this will obviously not deter universities from risking illegal dismissal actions, just as they can risk false accusations based on another court ruling, or students can risk writing malicious accusatory letters against teachers based on yet another court ruling.
The law is a house built on numerous cases like mine and if the house is not built strongly enough, with a good foundation based on solid legal principles and human rights protections, then, when the first floods come, when hostile passions rule, the house will fall.
The Law must be built on the solid rock of strong legal principles, such as estoppel, mend the hold, libel as defined in all law dictionaries of which I am aware, compensatory and punitive awards, due process, appellate rights, etc. Take away those principles, remove that rock, and none of us will stand with dignity. And we never know what we have until we've lost it. You may discover this too late, when it happens to you and the only people who can help are those cultured in the politics of silence.
In any case, I will continue to pursue this case through all legal channels here and in other countries. The only way to end this case is to resolve it according to principles established in international human rights charters endorsed by your own president.
Sincerely,
Richard de Canio
formerly, Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Cheng Kung University
Tainan, Taiwan
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