Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) of the Taiwan People’s Party today was sentenced to 10 months in prison for falsely accusing a US academic of defamation.
The ruling handed down this morning by the Taipei District Court can be appealed.
The accusation stems from Facebook posts made by in 2021 and 2022 by Chen Shih-fen (陳時奮), political pundit and director of the Center for International Business at Western Washington University, writing under the pseudonym Ong Tario (翁達瑞).
Photo: Hung Mei-hsiu, Taipei Times
Chen claimed that Kao in her doctoral thesis for the University of Cincinnati pulled significant amounts of uncited content from two Institute for Information Industry studies that she had coauthored.
He also claimed that her academic advisor removed her name from the role and the university had removed her thesis from its database.
Calling the accusations untrue, Kao sued Chen for aggravated defamation.
The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office decided not to pursue litigation, saying that Chen had correctly identified 18 areas in which Kao’s thesis closely resembled the two institute studies.
Chen later filed a countersuit accusing Kao of making false accusations against him.
He said that Kao returned to the university twice in August 2022 to revise her thesis and add the missing citation, yet sued him for defamation the following month without informing the prosecutor of the changes.
Her actions show she knew his accusations to be true, yet she still accused him of defamation, he added.
Kao’s lawyer said that before they filed the lawsuit, the university and institute said there was no issue with her thesis.
The institute later changed its mind, but it had nothing to do with the lawsuit and Kao did not intend to make a false accusation, the lawyer said.
Additional reporting by CNA
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