|
Protecting freedom of
expression
By Hsu Chia-shin 許家馨
There has been a lot of controversy over a bid by Want Want Broadband to acquire
the cable TV systems owned by China Network Systems. Speaking about the case in
the legislature, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Tsai Cheng-yuan
(蔡正元) threatened to have funding for Academia Sinica’s legal research institute
— the Institutum Iurisprudentiae — halved after associate research fellow Huang
Kuo-chang’s (黃國昌) said he opposed the bid. Tsai’s remarks have caused an uproar
among academics.
It is understandable that Academia Sinica president Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠) did not
have a ready response when he was suddenly confronted by Tsai. Nevertheless, the
controversy continues, and Tsai has not been reprimanded for throwing his weight
around.
Academic figures commenting on the case have made accusations of connivance
between politicians and business interests. Some have compared Tsai’s threat to
the witch-hunt that swept the US academic community 50 years ago, known as
McCarthyism.
Even amid the harsh red-baiting atmosphere of the McCarthyist era,
then-University of Chicago chancellor Robert Hutchins stood firm in defense of
academic freedom and freedom of expression. In 1949, US senator Joseph McCarthy
was on the verge of launching his anti-communist campaign. At the beginning of
that year, the University of Washington dismissed three professors said to be
members of the US Communist Party, and the University of California sacked 25
professors just because they refused to sign a “loyalty oath.” It was amid such
an atmosphere that Hutchins appeared before an investigative commission in the
Illinois General Assembly. In his address to the commission, Hutchins firmly
stated that the University of Chicago guaranteed its professors “absolute and
complete academic freedom.”
“The American way has been to encourage thought and discussion ... The whole
educational system ... is a reflection of the American faith in thought and
discussion as the path to peaceful change and improvement. The danger to our
institutions is not from the tiny minority who do not believe in them. It is
from those who would mistakenly repress the free spirit upon which those
institutions are built,” Hutchins said.
When state legislators asked Hutchins whether he agreed with then-US president
Harry Truman’s comments, in which he called members of the US Communist Party
“traitors,” Hutchins retorted by asking whether he was duty-bound to agree with
whatever the president said.
Such a legacy may also be found among our forebears. In 1947, Fu Ssu-nien (傅斯年),
director of Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology, blasted
government policy by publishing three articles in which he demanded the
resignation of Soong Tse-ven (宋子文) as premier. In 1949, Fu was appointed
president of National Taiwan University. When the April 6 Incident (四六事件) took
place and army and police personnel raided colleges and arrested students, Fu
had the guts to challenge Peng Meng-chi (彭孟緝), head of the Taiwan Garrison
Command, saying that he would fight him if there was any bloodshed involving
students.
One should also take into consideration the concept of institutional protection,
as laid out in Interpretation No. 380 by the Council of Grand Justices regarding
the constitutionality of the Enforcement Rules of the University Act (大學法施行細則).
What Tsai said in the legislature was injurious not only to Huang, but also to
Academia Sinica as a whole, and to all institutions of higher education and
research. Since academic freedom has its institutional aspects, leaders of
institutions should use their authority to defend it — as seen in the examples
set by Hutchins and Fu.
Freedom of speech is not absolute. When giving an account of the true situation,
there is no freedom to concoct bogus facts. However, public affairs are complex
and multifaceted, and information about government and corporations is often not
very transparent. It is therefore especially important in a civil society to
allow people to analyze and comment according to the facts they know. This is
known as the principle of “fair comment.”
As long as someone who comments on major matters of public interest does not
intentionally lie, or willfully and seriously depart from factual evidence and
rational deduction to the extent of “actual malice,” they should be allowed to
go on revealing the truth ever more clearly through the market of opinion. That
is why the defamation case filed by the Formosa Plastics Group against National
Chung Hsing University professor Tsuang Ben-jei (莊秉潔) constitutes a threat to
freedom of expression.
As to Tsai, he has acted in an even more underhanded manner than the Formosa
Plastics Group. If anyone were to sue Huang for defamation, the opinions he
expressed would certainly be protected by the “fair comment” principle. Be that
as it may, Tsai’s threat to cut funding was intended to muzzle Huang. It was a
repressive move and a kind of “viewpoint discrimination” that directly violates
academic establishments’ institutional rights. More than that, it strikes at the
heart of freedom of expression.
Academics should not remain silent about what Tsai said. Democratic regression
and erosion of human rights tend to start with slight infringements, after which
the heat gradually gets turned up. When those who have the power to resist such
violations tolerate them, the infringements will become more and more pervasive.
If Tsai is not denounced in public today, there will be more and more Tsais as
time goes by.
Hsu Chia-shin is an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institutum
Iurisprudentiae.
Translated by Julian Clegg
|
