Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟) yesterday denied reports that he said on Monday that Academia Sinica could be “abolished if found to have performed poorly.”
Lu said his comments had been taken out of context and did not include a proposition to abolish the nation’s top research institution, as some media outlets reported.
The lawmaker said he had simply called for the possible “merging and restructuring” of some science institutes that are “going astray.”
Lu said he proposed “a reorganization of those liberal science institutes,” such as the Institutum Iurisprudentiae and Institute of Political Science, whose researchers “are violating the Civil Service Administrative Neutrality Act (公務人員行政中立法) by making [political] comments under the banner of Academia Sinica.”
Lu’s reported remarks came on the same day that an investigative team set up by the legislature’s Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee — of which he is convener — visited Academia Sinica’s premises in Taipei on Monday to review its performance.
Before the team’s visit, Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), an associate research professor at the institute’s Institutum Iurisprudentiae and a key figure in the Sunflower movement against the government’s handling of the cross-strait service trade pact, said he suspected the review was an “intimidation measure” against researchers who backed the protests, a claim Lu denied.
Lu reportedly said on Monday at a KMT caucus meeting that Academia Sinica could be scrapped to save the government money if it fails to live up to expectations. Various media outlets reported his remarks in direct quotes.
It was also reported that some KMT members at the meeting lashed out at the institute for “receiving funding on the one hand and criticizing the KMT on the other.”
Media also cited the lawmaker as saying that since Academia Sinica is under the Presidential Office’s administrative authority, “it also serves as an advisory body for the president” and has therefore “run afoul of administrative ethics when it protested against the president in the Sunflower movement.”
Lu’s alleged statements sparked outrage among academics, with Huang labeling them “abysmally ignorant” and other academics calling on the KMT to first probe the researchers and academics receiving research funding from the party’s think tank before it investigates the entire institute.
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