Former Hsinchu mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅), the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Taoyuan mayoral candidate, is currently at the center of a controversy over his master’s theses.
Lin has been accused of plagiarism by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) when he was studying at Chung Hua University and National Taiwan University’s (NTU) Graduate Institute of National Development.
Lin on Sunday provided an attestation of the evidence at a news conference at the DPP’s headquarters.
“I am the original author,” he said. “There was no plagiarism.”
Furthermore, Lin’s adviser, professor Chen Ming-tong (陳明通), published a 4,000-word statement on Saturday to demonstrate that Lin did not commit plagiarism, and said he would submit evidence to the College of Social Sciences’ Research Ethics Review Committee for investigation.
However, Su Hung-dah (蘇宏達), dean of the College of Social Sciences and chair of the review committee, sent an e-mail to NTU students saying that the “scandal” has greatly damaged the university’s image, and reminded students to remember the importance of honesty, discipline and honor.
Does Su really think he is eligible to talk about “honesty”?
The former director-general of the Osaka branch of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, Su Chii-cherng (蘇啟誠), committed suicide in September 2018, and there was speculation that a fabricated news report of stranded Taiwanese travelers at Kansai International Airport had contributed to his mood.
After the incident, Su Hung-dah published an anonymous article titled “Who murdered our diplomat? A Taiwanese diplomat’s heartbreaking confession.” The article criticized the DPP, and was clearly intended to sow division within Taiwan’s diplomatic corps.
Su Hung-dah was exposed as the diplomat-masquerading author, and he republished the article with the phrase “as fellow diplomats” removed.
Is this Su Hung-dah’s idea of “honesty”?
Furthermore, in November 2018, Su Hung-dah uploaded two videos to Facebook that alleged the DPP’s “destruction of the museum by 2025.”
After being sued, Su Hung-dah accused the government of “reading his water meter” — an expression that refers to unlawful investigations of citizens by the state security apparatus.
Days after the release of the videos, the National Palace Museum issued a statement that refuted Su Hung-dah’s theory of the museum’s “destruction.”
To quell rumors and false accusations, the museum also released another statement in July 2019 to clarify that, during the renovation of the northern branch, the museum remained open to the public and would not be closed for three years as the rumors said, and that there was no plan to relocate artifacts.
Nicknamed “the KMT professor” and “rice ball professor,” Su Hung-dah has never been shy of letting his political affiliations be known. To support Kuan Chung-ming’s (管中閔) 2018 bid for the NTU presidency, Su Hung-dah tried to sway students by sending out an e-mail in an attempt to rally them to endorse Kuan.
In exchange for attending Kuan’s campaign event, the students were relieved of one class assignment for handing in their reflections afterward, and would receive a free rice ball at the event.
With such a strong and obvious political bias, Su Hung-dah’s bold accusation of Lin’s controversy as a “scandal” before the report of the investigation has been published, and his parroting of KMT narratives, surely raise doubts over the impartiality and authority of Taiwan’s “rice ball professor.”
Chin Ching is an educator.
Translated by Rita Wang
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