Dan GoodinHere's the latest on XiaoFeng Wang, the a distinguished computer scientist who was summarily fired on Friday from his tenured position at Indiana University, where he had spent 20 years racking up accolades for his research in cryptography, privacy and cybersecurity. It comes from Alexander Tanford, president of the Bloomington chapter of the AAUP, the union representing IU professors, and colleagues of Wang's.
In February, an anonymous person filed a complaint alleging research misconduct against Wang. "The charge seemed trivial -- that he had failed to properly disclose who was principal investigator on a grant application and had not fully listed all his co-authors on an article," Tanford told me.
On March 13 or 14, IU temporarily suspended Wang, banned him from his office and denied access to his computer, research and data while the investigation continued. This is permitted under IU's research misconduct policy. The reasons, though, aren't publicly known.
On March 28, Provost Rahul Shrivastav informed Wang he was being terminated immediately. Shrivastav provided no reason (he mentioned Wang taking a job at a university in Singapore, but this is permitted and not grounds for dismissal). What's more, policy ACA-52, approved by the IU Board of Trustees, prohibits summarily firing a tenured professor.
Also on March 28, homes that Wang owns in Bloomington and Carmel, Indiana, were raided by the FBI. The FBI says the raids were court approved, but so far no one has seen a warrant. The US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Indiana will neither confirm nor deny an investigation.
Indiana University has steadfastly refused to provide any reason for the termination or its failure to follow its own policy. Students and fellow faculty remain in the dark. His PhD students are frantically scrambling to find new advisors. One such student learned of Wang's firing only a few weeks before his PhD defense.
I reached out to Wang's attorneys 24 hours ago, and still haven't heard back.
We really need answers here. IU is tarnishing its reputation for academic independence. The lack of transparency here, both by IU and the FBI, truly sucks.
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