The Aletheia University Student Association yesterday called on the university to apologize to retired professor Chang Liang-tse (張良澤) after it prevented him from accessing the Taiwanese literature archive at its Tainan campus by changing the lock on the building.
Last month, the university changed the lock on the building without warning, barring Chang’s access to the archive that he had “singlehandedly established,” Chung Yen-wei (鍾延威), the son of the late writer Chung Chao-cheng (鍾肇政), wrote on Facebook on Friday.
The university in 1997 created the first department of Taiwanese literature in the nation, and Chang, now 82, was the department’s first-ever chairman, he wrote.
Photo: CNA
The archive was established in March of the same year at the university’s Tamsui campus, and moved to the Madou District (麻豆) campus in September 2001, he added.
After Chang was named the honorary director of the archive in 2009, he moved his personal collection to the building, and many writers or their descendants also stored their manuscripts there because they trusted Chang, Chung wrote.
On Dec. 1, two librarians from the Tamsui campus told Chang that the university was moving the collection back to the New Taipei City campus, and Chang responded that parts of the collection do not belong to the school, Chung wrote.
A few days later, the university changed the lock on the building, Chung said, adding that Chang was thereafter required to borrow a key from the administrative office in Madou to enter.
Although Chang felt “humiliated,” he continued to work in the building, Chung added.
As a preventive measure, Chang began to organize and move his personal collection to other locations and notified writers or their family members who had stored their manuscripts at the school to retrieve them, Chung wrote.
On Dec. 29, the university changed the lock on the building again, he added.
Although the university might have its reasons for wanting to move the archive back to the university’s main campus in Tamsui, the way it handled the matter was “overly rough,” Chung wrote.
Chung called on university president Chen Chi-min (陳奇銘) to explain his decisionmaking process and his “uncivilized” treatment of Chang, and to apologize to Chang.
The university said in a statement on Facebook on Saturday that it admired Chang’s lifelong dedication to Taiwanese literature and, as such, has allowed him to continue using the facility to conduct research in the 17 years since his retirement.
However, taking into account the rights of the faculty and students of its Department of Taiwanese Literature, the university is moving some historical materials to Tamsui, where the department is based, to give them easier access, it said.
To help with the transfer, the university needs to sort out the rights to the property in the archive, it said.
The building where the archive is located has not been used by students or teachers for many years, and there is not enough staff to clean and maintain it, it said, adding that too many people had keys to the building.
The school changed the lock to prevent materials from the archive from being damaged or going missing, it added.
The university said it was in the process of preparing a suitable place for Chang to continue his research, as well as arranging for a meeting with Chang, Chung, former university president Yeh Neng-che (葉能哲) and other donors in hopes of reaching a consensus on the matter.
Members of the student association and the National Students’ Union of Taiwan, as well as students from other universities, held a news conference yesterday in Tamsui to urge Chen to apologize to Chang for changing the lock on the building.
The university should postpone the transfer of the archive until the dispute is resolved, and the plan has been discussed and approved by the university affairs committee, they said.
It should respect the achievements of historians of Taiwanese literature, and should not treat historical assets lightly, they added.
“The student association supports professor Chang,” and “defend Taiwan’s historical dignity,” they chanted.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods