Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) on Monday said that he had invited exiled Chinese dissident Wang Dan (王丹) to teach in the special municipality, following Chinese-language news reports over the weekend that Wang had been “surprised and happy” by a telephone call from Lai on Saturday.
However, Lai said Wang told him that he was in contact with several universities and was still assessing his situation.
Lai said he decided to make the call after learning Wang’s contract at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu would not be renewed.
Wang holds a doctorate in history from Harvard University and has performed well at Tsing Hua, Lai said, adding: “If Tainan’s universities, such as Chang Jung Christian University, can hire Wang to teach, it will be beneficial to students.”
Reports said that Lai had checked with Chang Jung Christian University to see whether there were any courses suitable for Wang to teach.
Wang had earlier written on Facebook that Tsing Hua president Hong Ho-cheng (賀陳弘) had informed him on Wednesday last week that his contract would not be renewed after it expires in July because the school has a policy of not renewing contracts of faculty working on a contractual basis.
Wang, one of the student leaders of the 1989 pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, was hired by Tsing Hua in 2012 on a three-year contract.
Wang recently made comments in defense of Sunflower movement student leader Chen Wei-ting (陳為廷) — after incidents of purported sexual harassment came to light following Chen’s decision to run in a Miaoli County by-election — that were sharply criticized and triggered demands by some that the school not retain Wang.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift