Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) yesterday resigned over what he said were political manipulations and slander directed at the ministry amid a months-long controversy surrounding the legality of National Taiwan University (NTU) president-elect Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) heading the nation’s leading university.
Pan yesterday told the media that he had tendered his resignation to Premier William Lai (賴清德).
Although he is not one to fear challenges at work, he decided to resign after much thought, to curb “politically motivated attacks and slander” leveled at the ministry over the case, Pan said.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
The political manipulations had given ministry employees unnecessary stress and placed an uncalled-for burden on them, he said.
Kuan was on Jan. 5 elected NTU president, but his inauguration was postponed after he faced allegations of a conflict of interest in the election, plagiarism and illegally teaching in China as a government-contracted professor.
Throughout his career as a public servant, he always abided by the law, including in his handling of the controversy surrounding Kuan’s election, Pan said in the statement.
The ministry, as the university’s governing agency, is obligated to ensure that the election was entirely procedurally sound and that the NTU president-elect has the qualifications to assume the post, he said.
Despite the university discussing issues surrounding Kuan’s election in internal meetings, questions still remain, and the ministry would be negligent if it did not try to clear up these doubts, Pan said.
The university’s president has a high status in academia and should stand up to public scrutiny, he said, adding that Kuan has a responsibility to clarify controversy stemming from his “own behavior.”
Kuan’s reticence over questions raised about him runs counter to public expectations and the doubts have in turn made the ministry a source of public criticism, Pan said.
He said he hopes that all political manipulations surrounding the issue would cease following his resignation, so that public attention would focus on the legitimacy of the elections and Kuan’s qualifications.
Lai yesterday said that he “reluctantly” approved Pan’s resignation.
Hopefully, Pan’s resignation would help establish a socially acceptable standard for the election of university presidents, Lai said.
Lai said he admires and respects Pan’s work to clear up doubts over Kuan’s suitability, while acknowledging his contributions as a tenured educator.
The premier also conveyed the hope that Kuan would address the public over the allegations that he illegally taught in China, so that the controversy can be laid to rest.
Additional reporting by Lee Hsin-fang
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
‘VERY SHALLOW’: The center of Saturday’s quake in Tainan’s Dongshan District hit at a depth of 7.7km, while yesterday’s in Nansai was at a depth of 8.1km, the CWA said Two magnitude 5.7 earthquakes that struck on Saturday night and yesterday morning were aftershocks triggered by a magnitude 6.4 quake on Tuesday last week, a seismologist said, adding that the epicenters of the aftershocks are moving westward. Saturday and yesterday’s earthquakes occurred as people were preparing for the Lunar New Year holiday this week. As of 10am yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) recorded 110 aftershocks from last week’s main earthquake, including six magnitude 5 to 6 quakes and 32 magnitude 4 to 5 tremors. Seventy-one of the earthquakes were smaller than magnitude 4. Thirty-one of the aftershocks were felt nationwide, while 79
RSS