I would like to explain why I decided to resign as minister of education after only 41 days.
From the moment I was appointed minister, members of the opposition party were relentless in vilifying my professional and personal reputation.
In the legislature, some lawmakers even refused to let me speak.
The media has reported false information about me, including claims that I have US citizenship, which I do not.
Their appetite for making untrue accusations against me came at the cost of the public good.
The attention on me made it difficult for my colleagues at the Ministry of Education, as well as other members of the Executive Yuan, to carry out their daily duties.
I ultimately decided to step down out of respect for their work.
I am hopeful that those in the media and legislature who have spent so much energy opposing me will now return to the work of transforming the ways young people in Taiwan learn.
I want to address several accusations that have been lobbed at me.
The first involved a 2005 conference in China.
I attended two meetings in China between Oct. 17 and Oct. 23, 2005, when I was minister of science and technology.
The first was the International Council for Science meeting in Suzhou from Oct. 17 to Oct. 21.
The second was a meeting in Hangzhou on Oct. 22 and Oct. 23 at the Science and Technology Summit, a conference that included eminent academics who were in charge of the science and technology funding in their respective countries.
My opponents looked at the paperwork that I submitted for both meetings.
They acknowledged that the Executive Yuan had approved my participation in the first meeting, but they then went on to claim that since I had not received formal approval for the second meeting, I contravened the law by attending it.
Actually, the official papers from the Executive Yuan did not simply say “yes” or “no” to my request.
It was only in the past month that I learned of the ambiguity of the Executive Yuan’s decision.
Given the prestigious nature of these conferences and the benefit to Taiwan, I believed both had been approved.
This accusation was the last straw — I realized at this point that members of the opposition would not cease in mischaracterizing minute acts.
The second relates to an international patent application made through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).
I wish people to understand that my decision to serve as president of Donghwa University was deeply personal: I grew up in Hualien.
I hoped to make Donghwa University a center of vibrant activity and be of service to my hometown.
The opposition and media have claimed that I stole a patent from Donghwa, when in fact I sought to obtain a patent for Donghwa that would give it powerful international protection.
Their accusation reflects a lack of knowledge of patent law.
The patent in question relates to the discovery of special qualities in the plant spiranthes, an orchid abundant on Donghwa’s campus.
In 2014, a research program that I helped to lead obtained results showing that the plant extract has excellent anti-inflammation functions.
For me personally, the most thrilling aspect of this entire program was that young, energetic, hard-working students got to take part in the entire process.
They applied for patents in Taiwan and the US.
By early 2015, further experiments showed even more promising features, so that an extension of the patent application was filed, again with Donghwa University as patent applicant.
At that time, the US patent attorney suggested that we tried for a patent through the PCT.
This powerful procedure provides for a unified method of filing patent applications and protects the patent in many countries.
By August 2015, our patent attorney sent me a note — it turned out that Taiwan was not eligible to apply for the PCT, because the treaty does not recognize Taiwan.
As all of our inventors and assignees were from Taiwan, we were not permitted to apply for the PCT.
What to do?
The standard procedure — recommended by lawyers — is to add a member of a PCT nation to the patent application.
We decided to ask a long-term supporter in the US to continue the case application.
He formed a holding company in the US with the sole purpose of shepherding the patent application through the PCT process.
No one put in any money and nobody made any financial gain.
The accusation that the patent was stolen from Donghwa totally misunderstands the patent application process.
The route that we took is standard practice and basically the only possible legal route for Donghwa to obtain international patent protection through the PCT.
The controversies surrounding this patent reflect the problem of Taiwan’s sovereignty, and of course, the patent belongs to Donghwa; it always has.
The third involves the dispute regarding National Taiwan University’s (NTU) presidency.
All public universities in the nation come under the auspices of the education ministry.
When the position of university president is open, the respective school’s University Assembly forms a selection committee to take care of the presidential search.
The committee then submits the selected candidate to the ministry for appointment.
It is the right and responsibility of the ministry to oversee the selection process.
After carefully examining the selection processes at NTU, we found that the selection committee failed to disclose the close financial relationship between the selected candidate and a member of the search committee, which is a textbook case of conflict of interest.
This non-disclosure strongly contravenes the academic integrity and honesty that the selection committee should have exercised.
The ministry decided to request the selection committee re-examine the case.
It also asked NTU to disclose the information to its University Assembly, which had no knowledge of the conflict of interest.
Unfortunately, NTU refused to respect the ministry’s request.
Instead, it has used all kinds of political influence to force the ministry to accept its selection.
Most troubling to me was the fact that NTU moved the meeting of its University Assembly on the matter at the last minute, not disclosing the new location — a tactic that appeared to have been deployed to prevent students from attending.
These kinds of tactics seem fundamentally opposed to a university’s place as a space for open and free discussion.
Throughout my career as a scientist, I have been committed to the values of academic freedom, integrity and honesty, and the idea that I oppose academic freedom — as I have been painted by the media and legislature — is bewildering and so far from the truth.
It has also pained me to see the ongoing political divisions and vituperative political climate in Taiwan.
We have very real problems to tackle in the world of education, including the elimination of inequality, expansion of resources to primary and secondary schools in rural areas, and increasing Taiwan’s global competitiveness.
Taiwan has come so far in public education, but there is still so much we need to do.
Wu Maw-kuen resigned as minister of education on May 29.
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