Media personality Dennis Peng (彭文正) and academic Hwan C. Lin (林環牆) on Friday held a news conference in London to question the authenticity of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) doctoral dissertation at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
National Taiwan University (NTU) professor emeritus Ho De-fen (賀德芬) on Aug. 29 accused Tsai of having forged her diploma and falsely stating that she obtained a doctoral degree from the LSE.
Tsai on Sept. 4 filed a defamation lawsuit against Ho and Lin, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s Belk College of Business who also questioned the legitimacy of Tsai’s dissertation and launched an independent investigation.
Photo: CNA
At the news conference at the Savoy Hotel in London on Friday, Lin unveiled the results of his investigation and said that it was not politically motivated, but rather aimed to uphold academic integrity.
Peng, a former NTU journalism professor, urged the British media to press the LSE for answers to numerous questions, including whether Tsai had passed an oral defense of her thesis in 1984, who was on the oral defense committee and why her dissertation had “gone missing” until June this year, when a personal copy supplied by Tsai was placed in the LSE’s Women’s Library Reading Room.
The news conference was livestreamed on Peng’s YouTube channel, True Voice of Taiwan (政經關不了).
Peng and Lin reportedly invited local media to the news conference, including the BBC, but no more than five reporters were in attendance, Chinese-language online news outlet Up Media reported.
After the authenticity of the president’s education came under scrutiny, the Presidential Office last month held a news conference, at which it detailed Tsai’s time at the LSE, presented a certificate recognizing that her oral defense was successful, outlined the process of Tsai’s successful application for a professor position at National Chengchi University and showed two reissued graduation certificates by the LSE in 2010 and 2015.
Following the Presidential Office’s news conference, Tsai placed a copy of her dissertation, titled “Unfair Trade Practices and Safeguard Actions,” in the National Central Library’s electronic archives for public viewing.
On Tuesday last week, a statement on the LSE’s Web site said: “We can be clear the records of LSE and of the University of London — the degree-awarding body at the time — confirm that Dr Tsai was correctly awarded a PhD in law in 1984.”
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