Author：Michael Richardson（美國獨立撰稿人）
※ Excerpt aus：https://richardsonreports.wordpress.com/author/richardsonreports/
—（January
7, 2025）The University of London brags it is a “World Class” school yet
Board of Trustees Chairman Mark Lowcock has taken a third-world
approach to university governance by keeping a complaint from
consideration by the Board. Lowcock's unilateral refusal to correct an
erroneous “paradoxical speculation” made to the United Kingdom
Information Commissioner over missing PhD examination regulations will
now not be debated or discussed by the UL's 18 member Board of
Trustees.……（Information Review Tribunal Judge） Kennedy ruled in a
Freedom of Information appeal that he lacked authority to correct the
University of London for erroneously telling （Information Commissioner）
Edwards that the university probably did not conduct its own
examinations in the 1980s as the reason UL exam regulations were
missing. Judge Kennedy advised making a complaint to the school or an
ombudsman.……（Director of Compliance）Grigson wrote,……“As has been
previously stated and having again considered your complaint we
reiterate the points made previously which are still the case and these
are: 1. The conclusions of the Information Tribunal are clear and there
is no further requirement for us to provide any further information to
the ICO as they will be aware of that judgement. 2. There is also no
regulatory or other requirement or obligation that requires us to
provide any further statement.” “On that basis and as previously stated
we do not intend and are not obligated to take any further action in
relation to your complaint and consider it closed.” The rejected
complaint explained the UL told the ICO: “We can find no evidence that
the University of London produced guidance relating to the nomination of
examiners 1982-1984. We now believe that the individual colleges may
have been responsible for assigning the examiners and so any Regulations
or guidance relating to this would have been issued by those individual
colleges.”…… The false speculation that the University did not develop
viva regulations has been definitively disproved by the discovery of the
missing regulations found in a 1983 bound PhD thesis. The false
speculation is also contradicted by the LSE minutes of the Graduate
School Committee in October 1980, an undated LSE publication entitled
Thesis Titles and University Boards of Study from that era, and LSE
Graduate School correspondence of February 1983. The false speculation
also contradicts the UL 1982-83 Calendar “Boards of Studies” section and
the “Examinations” section. The false speculation contradicts the UL
General Instructions for Appointment of Examiners, dated January 1982,
and the UL General Regulations concerning PhD examination fee schedules
and provisions for examinations. The false speculation contradicts UL
Examination Division correspondence to the Board of Studies in Law,
dated May 1983. Moreover, the false speculation contradicts UL Academic
Registrar correspondence to an examiner, dated June 1983.……Lockcock's
maneuver to keep the matter from the Board of Trustees is a breach of
the Higher Education Code of Governance.
大意：針對當年倫大/LSE考試規則的問題，雖然英國行政法庭建議向校方投訴，倫大董事會主席卻拒絕審議，不願提供進一步的說明。目前已經有大量資料可證明，博士論文的口試規範並非由個別學院制定。
—（January
13, 2025）Princess Anne has been the UL Chancellor since
1981.……Chancellor Anne has been the figurehead of the University of
London during Tsai Ing-wen's entire academic career in London all the
way through the thesis scandal that has dogged the UL for the past five
years.……Anne is the patron or president of over 300 organizations,
including the University of London.……As Deputy Chancellor, (Wendy)
Thompson gets paid to do Anne's work as head of the University of
London. While Thompson's tenure at the UL is not as lengthy as the
Princess Royal, the Tsai Ing-wen thesis controversy played out during
her time in charge, although subordinates did the heavy lifting.
Information managers Kit Good and Suzy Mereweather were tasked with
dealing with the Information Commissioner's Office. The Senate House
Library staff knew since 2015 that the UL library never received Tsai's
doctoral thesis after a search was conducted and the old card catalog in
a storeroom was consulted. However, that knowledge was not enough to
prevent Kit Good from telling the ICO that the thesis was received but
lost by librarians during restructuring. Suzy Mereweather corrected
Good's statement, after he departed the school, on the What Do They Know
website. Mereweather wrote that the UL never received the thesis from
Tsai or her examiners, but Mereweather never bothered to inform the ICO,
leaving the regulatory agency record inaccurate. The ICO subsequently
refused Freedom of Information requests about the thesis as vexatious on
the strength of Good's false statement.……The missing regulations that
Mereweather thought never existed were found by a diligent Taiwanese
researcher in a bound thesis proving their authenticity. Even after
being confronted with the missing exam regulations, Matthew Grigson,
Director of Compliance and Mereweather's boss, refused to make a
correction to the ICO.……A complaint about the paradoxical speculation
falsity to Wendy Thomspon addressed to the UL Academic Board was
derailed by Grigson who decided the matter was outside the scope of the
member professors. A second complaint was then made to Sir Mark Lowcock.
Lowcock, the recently installed Chairman of the Board of Directors, is a
Knight Commander in the Most Honourable Order of the Bath. Knighthood
seems to please Sir Lowcock, who promptly proceeded to dismiss the
complaint without taking it to the Board, or Commander Thompson, or the
Princess Royal.……While the integrity of the UL reputation may not be
important to Anne, giving Camilla an unearned PhD award was definitely a
priority. The funny costumes and fancy titles and all the royal
rigmarole cannot disguise the sad fact that there has been an ethical
breach within the leadership of the United Kingdom's flagship school
that compromises the integrity of the university. They seem to think it
is okay to tell the Information Commissioner something that is not true
and then refuse to correct the falsehood when proven wrong
大意：安妮公主自1981年就擔任倫敦大學校長的榮譽職，卻從未重視過蔡英文論文門一案；對於校方人員曾向ICO提供虛假陳述，其他領導者也是放任不管，拒絕加以糾正。此種缺乏誠信的作風有損世界級大學的聲譽。
—（January
15, 2025）Information Review Tribunal Judge Stephen Cragg removed from
case for three errors of law, Tsai Ing-wen's controversial PhD thesis,
and Upper Tribunal Judge Edward Jacobs.……Information Commissioner John
Edwards branded the FOIA request to the British Library as “vexatious”
and sought to have the matter dismissed. Information Review Tribunal
Judge Sophie Buckley overruled Edwards and said the case should proceed.
Judge Cragg was then assigned, along with associate Kerry Pepperell,
and promptly dismissed the case as vexatious. Upper Tribunal Judge
Edward Jacobs took up the appeal and concluded that Jacobs had committed
three errors of law.……“This case is related to the interest that has
been generated in Dr Tsai's PhD degree. The interest is not surprising
given the state of the records kept by the institutions involved and
their inability to produce the original copy of the thesis.” “The
tribunal accepted that [Appellant] was not part of 'a concerted campaign
to undermine Dr Tsai'. Despite that, the tribunal found that
[Appellant] 's purpose is to establish that the thesis does not exist’. I
do not understand how that could be.”…… “The tribunal mentioned the
provision of the thesis, almost in passing,…It proceeded immediately to
demonstrate that the request ‘has very little value’. It related this to
the tribunal decisions relating to the award of the degree and the
records to confirm this, before saying: ‘the fact that an original copy
of the thesis cannot be found, does not mean that it did not exist.
”……“If the request is taken as asking information about the Library's
records and processes, it had a purpose, or at least a consequence.”
“The tribunal went on to consider the breadth of the request and
[Appellant] 's persistence and intransigence given that other
institutions have confirmed the award of the degree.” “I take the
breadth of the request first. The focus of this ground is on the
‘burden’ and the breadth of the request. I consider that this criticism
was unrealistic. Most requesters do not know what information is held by
the public authority. Most do not know where it is held. I read
[Appellant] 's request as covering all bases to ensure that the Library
checked all possible locations. That was sensible in order to avoid the
need for further requests and the risk of those requests being treated
as vexatious.” “Not only is the criticism unrealistic, it also confuses
(a) the information sought, (b) its possible location, and (c) the
effort needed to search for it. If the request required a manual search
in each possible location, the tribunal's criticism would make sense.
But it is surely possible nowadays for electronic searches to avoid the
need for intensive manual searches. And if the time required was
excessive, the Library was not without recourse. It could have relied on
FOIA section 12.”……“What I have said so far is sufficient to deal with
the first three grounds of appeal and to show that the First-tier
Tribunal made an error of law in applying FOIA section 14. That alone
justifies and requires a rehearing before the tribunal.” At the new
hearing, before a new judge, the only issue will be the size of the
burden on the British Library to respond to the FOIA request. It is not
likely the burden will be so onerous as to prevent the library from
providing the requested information about how it was able to catalog
Tsai's thesis four years before it was placed on a library shelf and why
it would do so. One of the mysteries about Tsai's phantom thesis may
finally be solved.
大意：英國高等行政法院法官基於大英圖書館一案的上訴人並未蓄意詆毀蔡英文，僅是詢問相關記錄與流程，圖書館回應的負擔也不會太大，認為一審有所混淆，要求退回重審，並且更換法官、召開新的聽證會。
—
（to be continued）