The weekly series of International Seminar Forums opened last night with a defense of the policies of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek in Taiwan and a discussion of the political and educational systems in England today.

This summer 38 men and women from 25 countries are participating in the Seminar's tenth annual session, under the direction of henry A. Kissinger, Associate Director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs. Last night's program was the first in a series of six Wednesday evening forums, all of which will be open to students in the Summer School. Each forum will begin at 8 p.m. at 6 Divinity Ave., and will be followed by an open reception.

At last night's forum, Professor L. Chen, a political scientist at the National Taiwan University, discounted allegations in the American press that the government of Chiang Kai-shek is engaged in suppressing the civil liberties of political dissenters. Chen pointed out that he, a non-party man, has been teaching political philosophy at the University for 15 years without governmental interference. He denied also that the government was dictatorial.

Chen drew guffaws from his audience when he cited as the Nationalist government's most outstanding achievement its removal from Taiwan of all traces of Communist influence. "There is no Communist activity on the island," he asserted, adding with a half-smile, "No other nation can boast the same."

In a panel discussion following Chen's talk, Mervyn Jones, a British free-lance journalist, discussed the prevailing in English secondary education. Jones, a one-time candidate for Parliament on the Labor ticket, criticized the close correlation between public school attendance (3 per cent of the total of secondary school students) and access to positions of influence in business, industry, government, and the professions.

Jones particularity directed his fire at the examination given all English students at the end of elementary school, usually at the age of 11, which determines who will be permitted to enter a state-run grammar school, and thus have a chance to reach college. The selection system, Jones asserted, sorts out the nation's youth unfairly and undemocratically. He urged the institution of the American "comprehensive" high school as the only long-range solution to the problem of fragmented secondary education.