Kaohsiung City Councilor Jane Lee (李眉蓁), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) candidate for the Kaohsiung mayoral by-election, yesterday said that she would give up her master’s degree from National Sun Yat-sen University following allegations that she plagiarized her thesis.
She said she would also ask the Kaohsiung City Election Commission to remove the degree from the column in the election bulletin where candidates’ education backgrounds are listed.
The by-election is scheduled for Aug. 15 and the commission said that it was nearly finished printing the election bulletins.
Photo: CNA
However, the Kaohsiung-based university said that the Degree Conferral Act (學位授予法) has no regulations covering voluntary relinquishment of a degree.
Lee’s case is being reviewed by outside experts, it said, adding that if it is found that she breached academic ethics, her degree might be revoked.
Her thesis adviser might also be punished if a dereliction of duty is determined, the university said.
Photo: CNA
The KMT said in a statement that it supported Lee in “bravely facing” her mistake and giving up her degree.
“All political workers should examine themselves by the same standard,” the party said.
“As an academic, I cannot accept academic plagiarism,” KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) wrote on Facebook.
“This standard has never changed,” whether I was an educator, a lawmaker or the leader of a political party, he said.
“As a political worker, integrity is a standard that cannot be compromised,” he said.
National Dong Hwa University Vice President Chu Chin-peng (朱景鵬), who was a member of the oral exam committee that examined Lee’s thesis, yesterday said that he would cooperate with any investigation.
The two other members of the committee were Lin Teh-chang (林德昌), former director of Sun Yat-sen’s Institute of China and Asia-Pacific Studies, and Chao Su-cheng (趙甦成), former director of the Chinese Social and Economic Research Institute, which is affiliated to National Chengchi University’s Institute of International Relations.
Meanwhile, Huang Po-hsiang (黃柏翔), a sociology student at Sun Yat-sen, launched a petition to have the school rescind Lee’s degree if the allegations of plagiarism are found to be true.
From 6pm on Wednesday to 9am yesterday, more than 500 students and alumni at the school reportedly signed the petition.
The incident has severely damaged the reputation of the university, Huang added.
Lee on Wednesday had said she would only explain the matter if President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) also clarifies controversy surrounding her doctoral thesis.
Asked for comment on the matter at an event in Taipei yesterday, Tsai said the authenticity of her thesis and doctoral degree have been verified and that her alma mater, the London School of Economics and Political Science, had also offered an explanation.
Tsai said that Lee should face the problem and clearly explain the matter.
Democratic Progressive Party spokeswoman Yen Juo-fang (顏若芳) said that Lee was trying to smear Tsai with groundless insinuations to shift the media focus away from herself.
“Why is the KMT’s mayoral candidate stooping to such a level?” Yen asked.
Additional reporting by Huang Hsu-lei, Ko Yu-hao, Jason Pan and CNA
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS