Ma Ying-jeou Associated Press photo
Republic of China in-exile President Ma Ying-jeou has issued a response to the Examiner exclusive report about his error-filled Harvard Law School thesis. The Taipei Times got a presidential spokesperson to respond to charges that his thesis should have failed for containing over 1000 errors.
A retired schoolteacher, interested in Ma's views on the Senkaku Islands, had examined the thesis but was shocked to discover so many blatant errors that she decided to grade the paper. Finding over 1000 mistakes, misattributions, and missing words, the schoolteacher contacted Harvard Law School for an explanation of the sloppy scholarship.
Passed around like a hot potato the retired teacher finally confronted Ma's faculty adviser who dismissed "all the typos" as unimportant. Retired law school professor Detlev Vagts refused to comment on specific errors and told the schoolteacher that Ma grasped the basic concepts and had a good understanding of the law.
Vagts also told the schoolteacher, "I have now no recollection of the politics involved but I know that we would have insisted on his being as objective as possible with respect to the rather sensitive international issues that played a role in his work. One needs to remember that relations between mainland and island China were very different in 1981."
Presidential spokesperson Wang Yu-chi told the Taipei Times, "the value of a doctoral thesis should be its viewpoints and contributions to the specific field."
Wang said the fact that Ma received the doctorate from Harvard was the best proof of the quality of his thesis.
Ma has prided himself on his command of English and served as translator to Chiang Ching-Kuo during his rule of the island. The translator duties launched Ma's political career leading to his control of the Kuomintang political party prior to his election as President.
Back at Harvard University, one of Ma's old fellow students is now a law school professor at the university, William Alford. Alford told the Harvard Crimson that Ma was "a person of real intelligence, probity, and ingenuity."
"Even 30 years ago, when we where students at Harvard Law School, it was clear that he would be making his mark on the world."
While Ma is busy making his mark on the world, a retired school teacher continues making marks on his thesis with her red pencil. After discovering multiple misattributions and footnotes that do not check out, the schoolteacher is busy searching for plagiarism which she now suspects.
Comments
As you can see, Ma and the Presidential Office are VERY sensitive about this, which is usually a good indication that something is wrong. Plagiarism and other abuses were rife among this generation of Taiwanese students who were desperate to remain in the US. Lien Chan's U. Of Chicago thesis is widely said to have been ghost written, for example.
In Ma's case, I suspect that it will be simply a case of shoddy scholarship and poor editing. A contemporary of Ma's from Taiwan told me that the program Ma was admitted to at Harvard was well-known as a catchment program for people with connections in rightwing dictatorships with close US ties. The standard for admission for people from Taiwan was high level connections in the KMT (Ma's father of course was a party functionary and raving Chinese nationalist). Graduation requirement were very lax.
Is it possible to obtain some scans of the schoolteacher's redlined copy? Just a few pages should fall under fair use.
Ma's supposed bar admission is really worth checking up on.
I think probing Ma's doctoral thesis is as crucial as checking up on Ma's supposed admission.
Both will show the West the REAL Ma: incompetent, hypocritical, insidious, cunning, and …
I always doubt Ma's IQ. Many Taiwanese are also wonder why Ma had to spent 8 years to get a PhD degree in Harvard. Why?
Is there money behind the curtain or something too ugly to show?
To a Dr in Taiwan:
Ma's degree is an SJD not a PhD. The SJD degree (Doctor of Juridical Science) is granted for an original contribution to the study of law, but it is usually not at the level of scholarship as a PhD (Doctor in Philosophy). It is possible to get a PhD in law, though the PhD degree is usually given in philosophy of law from the Philosophy Department. UCLA, for example, offers a joint JD/PhD degree which requires that candidates apply to both the Law School and the Department of Philosophy
www.law.ucla.edu/home/index.asp?page=2920
while Indiana University offers an interdisciplinary PhD in law and social science
www.law.indiana.edu/degrees/graduate/index.shtml
Harvard Law School offers a joint JD/PhD degree in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
www.law.harvard.edu/academics/degrees/special-programs/jd-phd/index.html
The normative time to complete an SJD is 3 years, after getting an LLM (Masters in Law), which usually takes 1 year, for a total of 4 years.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Laws
www.law.harvard.edu/academics/degrees/gradprogram/sjd/index.html
Taking 8 years is an inordinately long time for an SJD.
Thank you for presenting various facts of Ma Ying-jeou, such as his acdemic performance and his birth place. He is a public figure, people has reasonable degree of curiosity about his info to see if he is honorable.
Don't students get repeated message from teachers that one never want to make typing errors in one's resume?
Who wants to see the first lady's inauguration ball gown is still full of bids of threads?
Working on one's thesis and is a serious endeavor. What student would want to present it still full of many little mistakes that can be easily corrected? And, if one doesn't bother to correct them, there are at least two directions we can speculate: (1)what kind of person he is, or (2)he is very sure of getting the degree. Regarding the latter, based on what he has the assurance of obtaining the degree?
So this means that a retired school teacher's opinion on her country's president outweighs the certification of Harvard - this is absurd. We must, then, suspend our disbelief and believe that Harvard and its professors also crookedly passed Ma in his oral defense and written exams in order to confer upon him one of the most difficult-to-attain degrees.
This is really a case of personal attack rather than real investigative curiosity. Here, we're arguing over SJD and PhD rather than real issues. And how did Ma take 8 years for his doctorate? He didn't. He earned an LL.M. first and then another 4 years for his doctorate. He graduated in 1981 but completed his thesis in December of 1980.
I recommend people borrow a copy to read it themselves, if they can, before relying on mud-slinging haters' snarks.
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