The manifesto aims to end decades of short-term funding for the teaching of Taiwan Studies overseas.
The News Lens
Date: 2018/09/08
By: David Green
Credit: David Green
Scholars on Friday put forward a manifesto calling for Taiwan’s government to help arrest the potentially terminal decline of Taiwan Studies overseas.
The manifesto aims to end decades of short-term, fragmented and ineffective funding for the field by creating a new body, the Taiwan Foundation, to offer financial support to international universities willing to promote the academic study of Taiwan.
Speaking at the the Third World Congress of Taiwan Studies (WCTS), Gunter Schubert of the European Research Center on Contemporary Taiwan, of the Department of Chinese Studies at Germany’s University of Tübingen, said: “We have to think about how to strategize the Taiwan Studies case and incentivize Western universities to put money into faculty positions.”
The call comes at what the “Manifesto for the Further Development and Entrenchment of Taiwan Studies within Global Academia” calls a “critical juncture” for the field, which is increasingly having to compete for breathing space amid the vigorous rise of China Studies worldwide. [FULL STORY]