By Peter S. Goodman

November 29, 1996 - The Washington Post

BERKELEY, Calif. The University of California campus here is engaged in a heated debate over a proposal to name a new research center for a controversial former Taiwanese president, Chiang Ching-kuo, in exchange for a 43 million grant.

The plan has generated conflict here and on other campuses, revealing deep unease about the growing reliance on politically connected money in American scholarship. Just as Democrats and Republicans are grappling with the issue of foreign influence in their realm, so, it seems, are the nation's academics.

"Would we feel comfortable having the Mao Zedong Center for Humanities Studies, or the Deng Xiaoping Center?" asked Orville Schell, a prolific journalist who has spent most of his career writing about China and now heads the university's Graduate School of Journalism. "It's tricky naming these centers after people who come with a lot of political baggage."

The university plans to seek the grant from the Taiwan-based Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange in hopes of establishing a research institute focusing on ancient Chinese culture.

Though Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Taiwan founder Chiang Kai-shek, is credited with beginning the process of democratization in his island-state, he was also a central figure in Taiwan's authoritarian order, serving as minister of defense and overseeing a period of political repression. He was president from 1978 until his death in 1988.

Chiang's military intelligence chief was convicted in the 1984 slaying of Henry Liu, a San Francisco writer who had profiled Chiang critically.

No final decision has been made on the grant application, which must be submitted next month. But some critics view the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation as a vehicle to amplify the influence of the Taiwan government as it maneuvers for international recognition, despite mainland China's insistence that the island is a renegade province.

In short, the prospect of a Chiang Ching-kuo Center has some people worried about academic freedom and the university's image.

"There's a risk of direct or indirect censorship," said Thomas Gold, a Berkeley sociology professor who studies Taiwan and mainland China. He is concerned the foundation could pressure the university to tailor its scholarship in a certain direction to keep the money flowing.

As public funds for education grow more scarce, universities increasingly must depend on private sources for support. Some fear the money comes with strings attached.

"The question is whether you want your study of the Chinese mainland funded by Taiwan, which after all is a considerably interested party," said Kenneth Lieberthal, a China scholar at the University of Michigan. "You try to keep scholarship independent of politics."

But such concerns are misplaced, said Wen-Shing Yeh, a Chinese historian who chairs Berkeley's Center for Chinese Studies and co-wrote the funding proposal, which covers 10 years. For one thing, she said, the proposal wouldn't involve taking on new staff but would merely augment what the university already does. And the center would support research on Chinese classics and archaeology hardly the stuff of great ideological debate.

Others are not reassured. "The Chinese use archaeology to prove that Tibet has always been part of China," said Gold, the sociologist. "In Taiwan, language study is used to prove Taiwan is a separate culture. Anything can become political. Especially in the field of Chinese-Taiwan relations."

The director of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation's office in McLean, Va., Hsingwei Lee, said his institution now donates more than 3 million a year to American academic institutions. "We are not a political organization," he said. "They can teach whatever they want. We respect the academic independence of the universities."

The foundation was established in 1989 with a 100-million endowment.

About half of that money came from the government of Taiwan, Lee said.

Yeh, who grew up in a prominent Taiwanese family, emphasized that she and her colleagues didn't choose to name the center after Chiang Ching-kuo. The foundation requested it and the faculty proposed to honor their wishes, figuring it would improve their funding chances.

Three other schools have also been invited to compete for the funds Stanford, Columbia and the University of Chicago. Officials at each of the schools confirmed they are considering their own grant proposals.

Five years ago, Columbia lost a 440,000 annual grant from another Taiwan-based organization, the Institute of International Relations, because of a political dispute. Earlier this year, the University of Michigan lost a 450,000 grant from the same institute after Lieberthal signed an academic report that endorsed the American "one China policy."

Berkeley, for its part, needs outside funding. Three decades ago, the campus drew 80 percent of its support from the state. These days, only about a third of its roughly 900-million operating budget is state money, said Dan Mote, a university vice chancellor.

Not that long ago, American money played a similar role in much of the world, funding a huge amount of scholarship in other countries. Now that the money is flowing this way, some academics think their colleagues are being squeamish.

"This is a racket that we were engaged in 30 or 40 years ago and presumably for the same reason: We wanted to influence people," said D. Gale Johnson, director for East Asian studies at the University of Chicago. "I really find it amusing that Americans now feel so uncomfortable about money from other countries."