Barely have I remembered that I hold a B.S. degree in Agricultural Economics until recently when scant press reports popped up saying that National Taiwan University is considering to abolish the display room for President Lee Teng-hui's donations located at the Department of Agricultural Economics.
In the early 1980s, while applying for a job, I was bluntly challenged: "What on earth can possibly an AE graduate do?" Without being much intimidated, I retorted bravely, if not restlessly: "To become the Mayor of Taipei or the Governor of Taiwan!" If I had ever envisioned that Mr. Lee would become the future President, I could have been more assertive.
I eventually managed to receive my MA in Political Science in 1986 from Iowa State University, where Mr. Lee happened to have spent some time. As I recall, the campus newspaper once took pride in the fact that the rebel leader of southern Sudan is an ISU alumnus. If not deterred by China, Mr. Lee could have been the first Cyclone head of state visiting the Alma Mater.
A supervisor of the KMT branch in the mid-west challenged me: "Since politics is none of your [native Taiwanese] business, why bother studying Political Science?" As informed observers of Taiwanese history would certainly verify, alien rulers since the 19th century had persistently discouraged the natives to study politics since it was not "practical," in the sense that there was no political career available for them.
Undaunted, I was fortunate enough to receive adequate assistantships from universities in my graduate years, and finally received my Ph.D. in Political Science from the Ohio State University in 1991.
The former chair of the Department of Agricultural Economic was said to scorn Mr. Lee years ago: "Your mandarin is too poor to be qualified as a college teacher!" Destiny always plays ironic wonders. If Dr. Lee had been allowed in the NTU as a full-time professor, he would not have been the President, whose academic books are being kicked out of the campus as political artifacts.
Had Mr. Lee, as the President, initially mandated the department to set up the display room? Or rather, was the department merely attempting regretfully to redress the humiliation rendered on their most distinguished alumnus they had unfairly rejected decades ago? Are any study notes, books, and sculpture donated by Mr. Lee meant for political worship as charged by those self-styled campus guardian angels?
As is well known, Mr. Lee has in the past decade been acrimoniously resented by those who perceive their career interrupted by an ostentatious puppet initially designed to symbolize reconciliation between the Mainlanders and the native Taiwanese. Mr. Lee's unexpected ascendancy means the termination of the lopsided political domination among some uncompromising Mainlander elites who seek unremittingly to cling to power in whatever rationales, ranging from anti-Communist, anti-Taiwan Independence, to democracy.
On campus, especially nationally run universities, it is exactly this conservative element that still persists in maintaining the iron grid of the former reactionary authoritarian structure. In the name of "campus democracy," they are determined to protect the last strongholds of the "authentic" KMT, in the hope that they will retake the regime again.
Equipped with the corruptive techniques of vote brokerage, rationing, hoax, and even buying, which are invariably found in rural areas but largely phased out in urban areas during elections, these professors waste no time seizing the opportunity to grasp the power released by the KMT in the process of liberalization. The selection of the chancellor turns out to be the most crucial battle for their raison d'etre.
Patronage and loyalty, rather than professional excellence, is the rule of the game. Innocent faculty members, especially those junior ones who have received their degrees in the West, are astonished to discover that only submitting themselves to coercion and co-optation can guarantee their own peace of mind. Otherwise, the sternest punishment could be their academic life clogged in associate (and recently imposed assistant) professorship forever.
Indeed, these guys are unabashedly running a clandestine inter-university network like organized crimes, which testifies to the outcry made by Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Lee Yuen-Jer recently that the white-way (politicians, civil servants) is more dreadful that the black-way (gangsters).
Behind this ugly anti-Lee campaign at the NTU are essentially ethnic prejudices in the cloth of campus cleansing against the first native Taiwanese president. I wonder whether there would have been any objection at all if Mr. Lee were currently a distinguished clergyman as he himself has promised to be.
Although politics and ethnicity are intertwined from time to time, they don't have to be juxtaposed in such a distasteful way as to instigate ethnic animosity. To consolidate Taiwan's much valued democracy, we must make our sincerest way to genuine reconciliation, without necessarily relinquish one's fundamental political beliefs or values.
If the natives are ready to pay their respects to both Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Chin-kuo as the Moses of the Mainlanders in their exodus to this island, would the latter be inclined to be polite to Lee Teng-hui as a most respectful leader of the former?
As a political scientist, I regret my Alma Mater's negative predisposition against people political. It is political manipulation of academic professionalism, rather than consideration for political affairs, that should stay away from the campus. Apathetic students or professors are not conducive to democracy.
As a citizen, I despise an educational institute that fails to show minimum courtesy to our Head of State.