United Kingdom Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport Michelle Donelan refuses to seek an amendment to the Data Protection Act to close an academic fraud loophole and Republic of China in-exile President Tsai Ing-wen’s controversial PhD thesis. (credits: UK Parliament/Hwan Lin)
Recently appointed Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, Michelle Donelan’s staff has refused to consider an amendment to the Data Protection Act to close an academic fraud loophole in the law. Donelan, who was appointed to her post in September, is overseeing the passage of a rewrite of the United Kingdom’s Data Protection Act. However, Donelan apparently will not support a correction in the law to require public verification of University of London degrees.
Donelan was requested to consider corrective legislation in the wake of two Upper Tribunal decisions that declared the Data Protection Act overrides the Freedom of Information Act in the verification of advanced university degrees. The two Tribunal decisions concern FOIA requests from the public about the 1984 PhD award by the University of London to Republic of China in-exile President Tsai Ing-wen. Tsai ignited an academic firestorm in June 2019 when she submitted her PhD thesis to the London School of Economics Library, 35 years late.
The tardy thesis, entitled Unfair Trade Practices and Safeguard Actions, appears to be a draft document with pagination problems, footnote issues, and handwritten notations including a question mark. President Tsai refuses to release the oral examination viva report on her thesis leaving the public to wonder who approved the dissertation and when.
Donelan’s department quickly dismissed judicial commentary on the controversy. “The government considers that the existing definition of personal data works well, and so does not intend to create a new definition or change the existing understanding of what identifiers fall into the definition of personal data.”
Donelan was Minister of State for Higher and Further Education from September 2021 to July 2022 and her experience should have prepared her for the problems with the DPA/FOIA conflict of law identified by the Upper Tribunal.
Upper Tribunal Judge Edward Jacobs ruled on 18 October 2022, in UA-2022-000491-GIA: “[Appellant’s] concerns and worries about the proper form of the President’s degree cannot be resolved within the FOIA scheme.”
Upper Tribunal Judge Mark West ruled on 20 October 2022, in UA-2021-000416-GIA: “A FOIA request is not a vehicle for discovering everything about President Tsai’s thesis.”
Public concern about the validity of President Tsai’s degree award has been compounded by an admission by the London School of Economics and Poltical Science, where Tsai attended school, that it does not know who the thesis examiners were. At the time that Tsai was a student, the LSE was incapable of issuing its own PhD degrees so the UL gave the degree award instead. Tsai’s academic supervisor was Michael Elliott, now deceased, who lacked a PhD degree himself. Kevin Haynes, the LSE “Head of Legal Team” told the ROC Ministry of Justice that Elliott was one of Tsai’s examiners, which is contrary to UL regulations. The LSE has since backed off Haynes’ claim with his subordinate Rachael Maguire blaming the snafu on a “hasty view” of Tsai’s student record. The current LSE position is that the school does not know who approved the thesis.
Meanwhile, the UL not only refuses to identify the two thesis examiners, but has recentlly changed the date of the degree award from February to March 1984 in its public announcement about Tsai’s diploma. Of greater public concern is the false statement the UL gave in response to a FOIA request that the Senate House Library received the thesis but it was lost by librarians. After a Tribunal examination of the UL claim and a finding it was likely inaccurate, the UL reversed itself with an admission the thesis was never received by the library.
The problem of verification of qualification of a PhD degree is not one limited to President Tsai’s case, it is one of a structural nature, capable of being repeated. The practice in the United Kingdom on identification of examiners is varied; Oxford University, for example, names examiners while the University of London does not identify examiners. Examiners are the gatekeepers of a university’s award of degrees. Examiners have a unique and critical duty in the educational process and have a front-facing responsibility and duty to protect the integrity of a degree award.
The Upper Tribunal applied the DPA personal data protections to examiners on the essential question of verification of qualification of a degree award, thus voiding and negating a public and transparent verification. In President Tsai’s case, with its tardy thesis, unknown examiners to the school she attended, and contradictory statements on receipt of the thesis by the UL, a reasonable person is entitled to ask who approved the thesis and when. Under the present stautory scheme such a question by the public will not be answered, raising the spectre of academic fraud.
The next legislative step will be a request to the Cabinet Office for an amendment to the FOIA in light of Donelan’s refusal to correct the DPA to close the academic fraud loophole identified by the Upper Tribunal.
Richardson Reports 
It seems to me that LSE is part of a coverup conspiracy. For some reason, they are siding with Tsai. For what? My feeling is that if they were to admit that Tsai did not get her doctorate from LSE, they would have another very embarrassing scandal on their hands. Another more far-fetched possibility is that they are under enormous pressure from the governments of the UK, the USA, and Taiwan, to be hush, hush. To help the fight against authoritarianism (i.e. China) and all that. I don’t really see how you, Mr Richardson, can singlehandedly crack this wall of silence. But nevertheless here are two suggestions.
(1) Deep throat. Can you somehow find a “deep-throat” person inside LSE? Someone who knows what’s going on and who’s willing to spill the beans…If such a person can be found, and you can write about all this, perhaps you will be the recipient of a Pulitzer prize, for revealing what an incredibly hypocritical and mean-spirited person the president of Taiwan really is.
(2) Standing. In the eyes of the law, if somehow has “standing” they can sue another person, and compel the law to help him/her find the truth. In my view, the journalist Dennis Peng does have standing, as does another professor in Taiwan (I forget her name). Both of these have had their reputations tarnished by the president of Taiwan. Mr. Peng has even had his passport cancelled. Thus they both have standing. If somehow they can bring a lawsuit against Tsai, perhaps LSE will be forced by the law to reveal the truth of what really happened some 40 years ago.
I am not really optimistic that either of these two options will work. But if you, Mr. Richardson, happen to know any well-known journalist working for say, the BBC or the Guardian, maybe he/she can use their prestige to get access to the inner-workings of the LSE, and option #1 will work.
As to option #2, that is up to Peng and that other professor. He says he is working on a lawsuit of some sort in England; don’t really know what it is.
Anyway, good luck! Thank you for all your good work! May the truth prevail!
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