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Korea University president Lee Pil-sang, adamantly denying plagiarism, says he will put himself to a trial by confidence vote on Tuesday and Wednesday and step down if a majority of the 1,200 faculty vote against him. The university¡¯s board members have meanwhile said they need more time to discuss the matter. The fate of the president thus rests with the confidence vote.
When the plagiarism scandal heated up, the entire administrative body of Korea University, from the president down and including the truth-finding committee, dithered. The truth-finding team reported to the faculty council on the results of its probe, which discovered six instances of plagiarism and two cases of publishing of the same thesis under different titles. But the faculty council simply passed on the verdict to the board of directors. Now the president is calling for a confidence vote and the board of directors is taking a wait-and-see approach, evidently because it wants to make its decision based on the way the vote pans out.
Many view this incident as a prime example of the negative effects of direct elections to choose a university president. Elections create factions and friction. As soon as the truth-finding committee issued its report, the president criticized the committee for being made up of his enemies and accused his detractors of pressuring him to resign and hide in a hospital room. As if in retaliation, leaders of the faculty council held a press conference exposing more incidents of plagiarism, leading supporters of the president to launch a no-confidence motion against the council president. At one press conference, some academics threw out administrative staff, accusing them of being the president¡¯s spies.
The confidence vote again attempts to settle the disputes that have divided the university through a numbers game. This will simply lead to another power struggle and worsen the division. What is happening in Korea University is a carbon copy of what happened in politics, where the question of whether the president¡¯s action violated the constitution or not was put to the populist confidence vote on President Roh Moo-hyun. Judging the conscience of a scholar by majority rule is anti-intellectual behavior for a university.
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