February 9, 2022
By Hwan Lin, Dennis Peng, De-fen Ho
1. Purpose
We are reporting on an international doctorate-scamming scandal involving Taiwan’s President Ing-wen Tsai, the University of London, and the London School of Economics (LSE). President Tsai has committed academic fraud almost for four decades, but the University of London and LSE have no intention of telling the truth to the world.
We made this statement for academic integrity, the rule of law, and moral justice.
2. Background of the ThesisGate Scandal
President Tsai had long boasted that she spent no more than two years in London and earned a remarkable “1.5 PhD” degree in 1984 from the London School of Economics (LSE), where the “1.5 PhD” degree means a PhD degree in law and a half PhD degree in international trade. She bragged this self-aggrandizing achievement in her sole-authored book and public talks.
According to her student record, she entered the LSE’s MPhil/PhD program in October 1980 but withdrew by citing financial difficulties in November 1982, leading to a course length of only 21 months.
In August 2019, it was found for the first time that President Tsai was in fact not awarded an LSE doctorate in 1984, thanks to the 50-page report authored by Dr. Hwan Lin, who holds a PhD in economics from the University of Illinois and is an associate professor with the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. This report, initially in Mandarin Chinese, was extended into an English version in October 2019, which is downloadable in: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/ 101939/.
Another two college professors had also actively participated in investigating President Tsai’s academic-fraud scandal. Like Professor Lin, they are from Taiwan: Professor De-fen Ho, who holds a master’s degree in laws from the University of Washington, and Professor Dennis Peng, who holds a doctorate in journalism from the University of Wisconsin.
To intimidate the three scholars into silence, President Tsai sued them criminally for defamation in September 2019, while sealing her early college-professor personnel files for more than thirty years by classifying them as Top Secret information. Her political influence had largely muted the mainstream media as regards her long-term fraudulent crime.
3. Fraudulent Evidence
However, with the three scholars’ persistent effort, a plethora of evidence has been documented to unfold the entirety of President Tsai’s doctorate scamming starting from 1983-1984. What follows is an array of fraudulent evidence that she holds a fake doctorate:
First, there is no record that President Tsai ever deposited her officially examined doctoral thesis as required with the University of London’s libraries at the Senate House and Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS). In her case, an officially examined PhD thesis has never existed anywhere within the University of London, either in physical form or non-physical form.
Second, President Tsai has never been able to show an original PhD certificate issued by the University of London in 1984. in September 2019, her presidential office displayed a carbon copy of a so-called “original PhD certificate” indicating 14 March 1984 as the degree-awarding date. According to the office, the carbon copy was obtained from the University of London. However, this was apparently a lie because Dr. Kit Good, former Head of Data Protection and Information Compliance, informed Dr. Hwan Lin by email that the University did not hold copies of any PhD certificates that the University had ever issued.
Third, President Tsai has been found to counterfeit PhD certificates. The Presidential Office claimed that President Tsai obtained from the University of London a replacement PhD certificate in 2010 and another replacement in 2015, respectively. However, it has been verified that they both can never be authentic, as compared to the authentic PhD certificate of 1984. For any replacement certificate to be authentic, its contents including signature and format must be identical to the original PhD certificate, as has been clarified by the University’s Head of Diploma Production (Theresa Bryne) and Head of Data Protection and Information Compliance (Suzie Mereweather).
Fourth, it is absurd that President Tsai did not even know her thesis title. She had indicated different thesis titles at different times. According to her student record, the PhD thesis title is indicated as “Unfair Trade Practices and Safeguard Actions.” However, when she applied for the position of Associate Professor with Taiwan’s National Cheng-Chi University in Fall 1984, her vita —released from the Taipei District Court — indicated a totally different PhD thesis title, which reads “Law of Subsides, Dumping, and Market Safeguards.” How could she forget her thesis title just about six months after she was allegedly awarded a PhD degree on 14 March 1984? The only possibility was that she did not complete a PhD thesis titled “Unfair Trade Practices and Safeguard Actions” at that time.
Finally, recent messages from the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Officer (ICO) and the University’s information officer also came to debunk President Tsai’s self-claimed doctoral degree. The Council of the LSE denied holding information about President Tsai’s PhD oral examination according to a decision notice of 26 November 2021 from the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Meanwhile, Suzi Mereweather as Head of Data Protection and Information Compliance responded to a Freedom-of-Information request on 11 January 2022 by saying that “the University of London does not hold any information relating to information held by the LSE about Ing-wen Tsai.” That is, neither the LSE nor the University of London has any record of President Tsai’s PhD examination and the associated report. With no official record of passing a PhD oral examination, how can President Tsai be awarded a doctorate on 14 March 1984?
It is evident that President Tsai has committed fraudulent crime. She has no record of passing a PhD examination and no record of depositing final copies of an officially examined PhD thesis with the University of London’s libraries. Accordingly, she faked three PhD certificates to pretend that she has held a doctorate for almost four decades.
4. University of London and LSE: Accomplices or what?
Yet, it is tremendously sad that the two prestigious British universities — the University of London and LSE — chose to cover up the entire scandal concerning President Tsai’s doctorate scamming.
More than two years ago, the LSE posted an unsigned statement at its website on 8 October 2019 to endorse President Tsai’s fraudulent claim. And more recently, the University of London also posted an unsigned statement for the same purpose. Though undated, this statement came online initially on 3 February 2022.
By no means can these two unsigned statements be justifiable, either ethically or legally. It is a disgrace to the two British universities that issued them. We must point out that the two statements actually contradict each other.
For instance, the LSE statement claims in part that “The Senate House Library records confirm that a copy was received and sent by them to the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS).” But this dishonest claim just got debunked by the latest statement issued by the University of London. Now this statement says that “it remains unclear whether copies were deposited with the University’s library, …”
However, the University-of-London Statement is still far short of the truth that President Tsai never deposited copies of an officially examined PhD thesis with the University’s libraries while she was already in Taiwan and had taught as a part-time lecturer at Soochow University, a Private University in Taipei, since 1 September 1983.
Even worse yet, the University-of-London Statement is apparently a broken fig leaf that has failed to cover up President Tsai’s doctorate scamming based on our documented evidence.
First, the Statement says that President Tsai was “awarded a PhD in February 1984 following the submission and examination of her thesis by two examiners.” This severely runs counter to the degree-awarding date of 14 March 1984, which appears on each of the three PhD certificates we have mentioned earlier. Did the University of London actually mean “two PhDs” awarded to President Tsai in 1984? This must be a lie, isn’t it?
Second, the Statement claims that “While it remains unclear whether copies were deposited with the University’s library, that has no bearing on Dr Tsai’s PhD, which was correctly awarded.” This claim severely dents the University’s integrity and reputations for it is a sheer violation of the University of London’s REGULATIONS FOR INTERNAL STUDENTS of 1982-83 (see Item
11.7 on page 1511):
“A candidate will be required to submit three copies of his thesis either typewritten or printed of which two copies must be bound in accordance with instructions obtainable from the Academic Registrar. The third copy must be at least adequately bound.”
So, where are the three copies of President Tsai’s PhD thesis on earth?
According to an ICO response issued on 1 April 2021 (see ICO’s Appeal ref. EA/2020/0286), the University of London explained that “the original copy was lost or mis-shelved sometime between mid‐1980s and 2010s over which period there were numerous structural changes to the library.”
But why is the “lost or mis-shelved” excuse now replaced with “it remains unclear” based on the University-of-London Statement? Isn’t it a shame that the University of London and LSE lack the moral courage to unfold the scandal?
5. Conclusions
In conclusion, the entire scandal has extended from 1983 to the present. As we have described above, so much evidence has emerged and pointed to a four-decade long fraud that President Tsai has committed. We can’t imagine why the University of London and LSE scrambled to cover up the international scandal involving a foreign politician with supreme power.
Today, we three Taiwanese professors are here to urge the University of London and LSE to tell the truth to the world with a deep apology. Otherwise, the current scandal would rise to a level that can easily dwarf the Gaddafi scandal of 2011.
＊ Hwan C. Lin joined the Belk College faculty in 1993. His research interests encompass economic growth, international trade, and computational economics and finance. He often uses numerical analysis to deal with continuous-time dynamic systems. Dr. Lin teaches applied computational economics, numerical methods for financial derivatives, international finance, international trade, and economic growth.
＊ Dennis Peng is a Taiwanese journalist. He was a professor at National Taiwan University, host of Next TV, host of Formosa Television, and created the Do Post, a digital media. After criticizing the ruling party and being expelled by FTV, he founded the Economic and Political Media.
＊ De-fen Ho is an Emeritus Professor of Law at National Taiwan University.
（另有中文版，請見https://www.eatnews.net/blog/20220210-1/）
