Abstract:

Academia Sinica was once the fortress of academic freedom and independence in the Republic of China. The election of its president was strongly disrupted by political power after the death of CAI Yuan pei in 1940. The members at the appraisal meeting, with their academic conscience, selected WENG Wen-hao, ZHU Jia-hua and HU Shi as the candidates while rejecting CHIANG Kai shek's personal appointing of GU Meng-yu. This could be understood as the victory of academic freedom and independence against political power. However, the further selection of the presidential candidate and the appointment was severely suffered from the intervention of political elements, so that HU Shi was almost dismissed from his post as Chinese Ambassador to the U.S., and it was ZHU Jia-hua as a bureaucratic official rather than WENG Wen-hao as an authentic scholar that took charge of the president. The whole incident showed the limitation of academic freedom and independence. Furthermore, due to worse political intervention, Academia Sinica under the leadership of ZHU Jia-hua had to struggle for survival. This demonstrated that it was hard to win the academic freedom and independence under severe control of political power.