Letter to the Editor | On honor and cause

Dear Editor,

I was contacted by a journalist from your newsroom on the phone last Monday (8th May) regarding the UM honorary degree issue.

I would like to ask you to publish this statement, as part of my response during that phone conversation which contains content that is not correct and may cause reputational damage to people and the institution that I mentioned.

The reporter called me Monday afternoon around 2:37 when I was on the way to a school. He asked me questions about the issue of “attribution of the honorary degree of universities’ practices.”

During the interview, I mentioned that “We paid a certain amount to him [George HW Bush]” and “UM might pay the honorary degree awardees some money”. These two statements were not clarified clearly during the interview. What I meant is, in practice, a certain amount of honorarium will be paid as a lecture fee for those awardees who deliver guest lectures.

I am now writing to clarify that I have provided incorrect and misleading statements during the interview and have caused confusion to the public. I apologize to everyone whom I mentioned during the interview and to the University of Macau.

Teresa Vong

Editor’s note: First and foremost, we thank Professor Teresa Vong for the clarification, which says a lot about her integrity as a member of academia, and a respected voice in the community.

In her very telling letter, Prof. Vong refers to an article MDT published on Thursday, May 11 stating that former US President George H. W. Bush was allegedly “paid” to receive a honoris causa degree. Our source was solid. She is a faculty member of the University of Macau, and director of a research centre in her field, precisely, education – according to the information available on UM’s official website as of yesterday.

However, to my surprise, Prof. Vong is no longer the director of the Educational Research Centre – nor has been for a good two years. It was she who told me of that fact in an exchange we had on Saturday regarding the sensitive situation.

I think the opacity is pretty much telling of the way UM deals with truth and communication. But that was not the worst example of poor communication.

Our reporter had sent a couple of questions to UM public relations department trying to obtain a comment on the alleged facts on the eve of publication, without success. I must state that we didn’t have to do it, because our reporting was based on an identified, reliable, and official source from the UM. A simple reply denying the alleged payment would trigger a different approach from us and probably we would not be here discussing the matter today.

Instead of attending to our email, UM decided to communicate on the day the news broke. And then, they certainly reacted swiftly and aggressively in communications, sending out a regrettable and unethical short communiqué, in English and Chinese, to all newsrooms questioning our reporting with two short sentences which were direct answers to the 2 questions our reporter had asked them, which they didn’t care to respond to the previous day, and without providing any sort of clarification or evidence to corroborate their denial. At least they had the decency – unlike some – to point the finger directly at us, not “some English press.”

The article in question was suspended on our website, pending review.

Paulo Coutinho