The controversy over the master’s thesis of Kaohsiung City Councilor Jane Lee (李眉蓁), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) candidate in the Kaohsiung mayoral by-election on Saturday, is as jaw-dropping as could be imagined.
After initial reports alleging that four pages of her thesis were plagiarized, it has been reported that 96 percent of the thesis was copied and pasted.
Those who spoke up for her have been left with egg on their faces.
How did Lee finish her thesis — An Analysis of China-Taiwan Trade?
Faced with a surging public furor, Lee on July 23 announced that she was giving up her master’s degree from National Sun Yat-sen University.
Following the recall of former Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the thesis scandal has struck another blow to the KMT, for which the problems never seem to end.
If the scandal is allowed to spin out of control, that would be the beginning of the real problems for KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) and his party.
The scandal has not only harmed politicians, but also the reputation of the university and the professional authority of Lee’s thesis adviser and oral exam committee members. It is hard to believe that such an obvious case of plagiarism could have happened in one of the nation’s top universities, and that the institute’s quality management procedure has failed so completely.
Does plagiarism go unnoticed due to systemic loopholes or careless supervision? The scandal has also brought shame and embarrassment to the university, and its students and alumni.
A student at the university has launched a petition calling on it to rescind Lee’s degree if the allegations of plagiarism are found to be true.
Even after the case was submitted to the university’s supervisory mechanism for academic ethics, the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) still tried to divert attention by dragging in President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) doctoral dissertation and a research paper authored by former vice premier Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) candidate in the by-election, on Taiwan’s efforts to contain COVID-19.
This is tantamount to someone running a red light and blaming the police for not punishing others.
In what way does the KMT demonstrate its “progressive values” when it treats a person breaching academic ethics as “a mistake by an amateur politician”?
The issue at stake is plain and simple: Scammers are not acquitted just because they return the money, nor are thieves treated as innocent if they give up their loot when caught red-handed.
It was not surprising that neither society nor the academic community sympathized with Lee. When she was first confronted with the allegations, she did not admit to any wrongdoing, nor did she apologize to her alma mater, professors, elders or the public.
Instead, she tried to shift the blame, saying that she graduated in accordance with the unversity’s common procedures, implying that, instead of plagiarism, the key problem was the university’s failure to fulfill its duty to supervise her thesis.
By doing so, is Lee risking the academic careers of her adviser and oral examiners, as well as destroying the university’s reputation?
The university, Lee’s adviser and oral examiners are perhaps not all that innocent either. Saying this is not aimed at belittling them, but to call attention to common problems among institutes of higher education.
To raise funds and build connections with high-profile political and business figures, some universities throw the door open by setting up in-service master’s programs for the convenience of politicians who want to “prettify” their educational background.
The Kaohsiung-based university is not the only one offering these “public-relations services,” and the program inevitably raises questions over whether people taking this shortcut have worked hard to fulfill their responsibilities and write their thesis or dissertation by themselves.
When the scandal broke, Lee initially reacted as if she did not find think she was at fault. By announcing that she would “give up” her degree, she seems to have given in to public pressure.
Perhaps she believes that plagiarism is common and feels upset, thinking that it was the election that caused a fuss over what she saw as a trifling matter. If that is the case, then it is not so much a political crisis as an educational one, which raises the question of why universities would put aside academic professionalism to help politicians, as if it were a matter of exchanging benefits.
Is this an aftereffect of the academic sector serving politics during the authoritarian era or is it using public resources to seek private benefits in the name of university autonomy?
From a wider perspective, the issue of “prettifying” an educational background involves a widespread accomplice structure. For one thing, politicians seeking a prestigious degree to appeal to voters suggests that Taiwanese society values a degree more than talent and expertise. Such formalism constructs a hotbed of fraud and self-deception.
For years, KMT and DPP administrations have been obsessed with appointing academics to government positions, many of whom are clueless about the daily hardships the public faces. The policies they formulate are often out-of-touch.
If Lee’s thesis scandal can draw public and government attention to the perverted trend of credentialism and alleviate it, that would be a good thing.
As the Degree Conferral Act (學位授予法) does not regulate voluntary relinquishment of a degree, Lee’s case would eventually be sent back to her alma mater.
Lee should not so much think about “relinquishing” her degree as about giving up her by-election candidacy due to a loss of credibility.
The KMT and the TPP have been playing down the seriousness of Lee’s alleged plagiarism, instead dragging Tsai and Chen into meaningless mudslinging, without considering the controversy over a conference paper coauthored and presented by National Taiwan University president Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔).
People who have speculated about the authenticity of Tsai’s doctoral dissertation — despite proof to the contrary by the London School of Economics and Political Science — are not commenting on Lee’s alleged plagiarism. Such a partisan mindset is lamentable and implies that corruption is spreading in the political and academic communities, and it is not surprising to see politicians such as Lee push their luck and try to get away with it.
The incident might have had its greatest impact on the KMT and its chairman. Since Lee has registered her candidacy for the by-election, the KMT will not change its candidate, as it did before the 2016 presidential election, when it replaced Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) with then-KMT chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫). The pan-blue camp has no choice but to watch the rather hopeless by-election drag on.
Seeing Kaohsiung City Council Speaker Zeng Li-yan (曾麗燕) and Lin Ssu-yu (林絲娛), the widow of former council speaker Hsu Kun-yuan (許崑源), standing next to Lee when she apologized for the controversy, the KMT knows only too well that the central party leadership had better step back and refrain from interfering with powerful local factions.
That being said, Chiang still has to bear responsibility for Saturday’s results. Chiang, who says he is determined to reform the KMT, took over as chairman in a time of distress, but he has been unable to do anything with the party’s deep-seated “1992 consensus” ideology and “comprador culture.”
Despite lacking the power to influence Han’s recall and the resulting by-election, Chiang still has to shoulder responsibility for the outcome. Chiang’s international relations doctorate from the University of South Carolina can stand up to public scrutiny.
However, should questions over the the dissertations of other KMT members bring him down, he can only blame destiny.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
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