National Taiwan University president-elect Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) yesterday criticized the Ministry of Education (MOE) for stalling on approving his appointment and said he would continue to fight for academic freedom and university autonomy.
“The Ministry of Education’s procrastination and failure to perform its duty in approving the appointment of the university’s new president has caused difficulties to the school’s operations and financial planning,” he wrote on Facebook yesterday afternoon.
The ministry and other responsible authorities must bear the legal consequences for the delay, he wrote.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
“According to Article 9 of the University Act (大學法), the ministry should approve the appointment of university presidents within a certain timeframe,” he said, adding that the deadline for approving his appointment was March 18.
“I will persist to the end to protect academic freedom and university autonomy,” he wrote.
In a Facebook post on March 22, Kuan asked the ministry to make a decision about his appointment by the end of last month, the first time he had commented publicly about the issue since a series of allegations over integrity issues raised doubts about his eligibility for the post.
Kuan has been accused of conflict of interest, plagiarizing a student’s master’s thesis in a conference paper he coauthored with National Chi Nan University professor Chen Chien-liang (陳建良) and having illegally taught at Xiamen University and several other Chinese universities.
He has not commented publicly on any of the allegations.
Despite the concerns over Kuan’s eligibility within and outside the school, the university has repeatedly defended him.
During an extraordinary university council meeting on March 24, five motions calling for probes into his election and various allegations were shelved, while the College of Management said it had determined that Kuan had never held a formal teaching position in Xiamen or served as a thesis adviser.
The Web site hi-on.org on Saturday posted photographs of what it said were two of Kuan’s resumes that it said proved he had worked at Xiamen University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Xi’an Jiaotong University.
The Web site said that the two resumes were submitted to Chiang Mai University in Thailand and the Huazhong school by Kuan in August 2007 and August 2005 respectively.
The 2007 English-language resume included work experience at the three Chinese universities under “other professional activities.”
It states that Kuan worked at the Xiamen institution from “April 2005 to present,” at the Huazhong school from “2006 to present,” and at the Xian school from “2007 to present.”
The 2005 resume, written in simplified Chinese, states that Kuan worked in Xiamen as an “adjunct professor” from “April 2005 to present.”
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