Concern is growing in a US university about the firing of a top Chinese-born scientist following raids on his two homes last week.
The scientist, Wang Xiaofeng, a prominent cybersecurity researcher, was initially believed to be “missing”, along with his wife, after his students and colleagues said they had been unable to contact him for more than two weeks.
Concern about his whereabouts grew when multiple local news publishers reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had raided his two homes in Indiana on Friday.
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Local publishers also reported that Wang and his wife Ma Nianli’s profiles had also been scrubbed from the website of Indiana University (IU) — where they were both employed.
“None of this is in any way normal,” wrote Matthew Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University, referring to Wang’s profile being removed.
“I am jumping down with frustration at our academic community. People: we cannot do anything if everyone is unaware of professors getting arrested for multiple weeks,” Green wrote in a post on Mastodon.
Fears that Wang was arrested have since alleviated, with the South China Morning Post reporting he was still in the United States. He “has not been charged with anything, and is well,” a director at IU’s Centre for Security and Privacy in Informatics, Computing and Engineering (SPICE), told SCMP.
Wang was also employed as a director at SPICE.
‘Took a job in Singapore’
Meanwhile, a local publisher, The Herald-Times, reported that the university fired Wang and Ma on the same day that the FBI carried out raids on their homes.
The report said the university’s head had sent a termination letter to Wang, citing his decision to begin teaching at a university in Singapore.
Wang’s peers noted that a termination still wouldn’t explain why the university chose to remove all records of his and his wife’s employment and work at the university.
Alex Tanford, a professor at IU, told the Indiana Daily Student, another local news publisher, there was also concern among the faculty about a lack of communication from the university on the matter.
“He was a tenured professor, and it’s frightening to all of us,” Tanford said. IU has said that it has been instructed by the FBI to not comment on the investigation into Wang.
Separately, American television network CNBC reported that Wang had informed Tanford early last month that the university was conducting “a “routine” investigation over a grant application and how he reported a publication of his curriculum vitae.”
On Friday, while the FBI was raiding his homes, Wang emailed Tanford to say he had been terminated. Contrary to other reports, Tanford told CNBC that the termination letter sent to Wang “did not say why he was being fired.”
The professor also told another local TV station that Wang “was locked out of his office, locked out of his computer,” even before his termination.
‘Innocent until proven guilty’
While the circumstances around Wang’s termination and lack of communication with peers and students remain unclear, his union demanded on Monday that the university revoke his termination.
“Termination of a tenured faculty member is an action that requires the highest level of scrutiny and due process… It is our understanding that Professor Wang was not provided the due process,” the union said in a letter to university head Rahul Shrivastav.
The union said Wang had been terminated “without the required notice and a hearing,” as specified under the university’s policies. It noted that a summary firing would not be justified even with Wang being investigated by law enforcement officials.
“While the outcome of those investigations may ultimately bear on Professor Wang’s continued appointment at IU, the mere fact of an investigation, or of unadjudicated allegations, cannot justify failure to comply with university policies… It is fundamental that individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty,” the union said.
The FBI has not given any statements on why Wang’s homes were raided. It has since clarified, however, that the searches it conducted were “court authorised”.
Wang and his wife have not responded to any media requests for comments.
Who is Wang Xiaofeng?
Wang had worked at IU for more than 21 years, and published a range of academic papers on cryptography, privacy, and cybersecurity during that time, Ars Technica reported on Monday.
He was the associate dean for research at Indiana University’s Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering. According to an archived version of his now-deleted university page, Wang served as a principal investigator on research projects worth nearly $23 million as of 2022.
The page also noted he had received several awards for his work, and his research had also been reported in the media.
His mention has now also been scrubbed from the website for SPICE. But it previously said that Wang’s research focused on system security and data privacy, specialising on security issues relating to mobile and cloud computing, and human genomic data.
”He’s right there on the cutting edge of this kind of research as far as data privacy, cybersecurity and that kind of thing, a lot of dollars in federal research grants,” Doug Kouns, president of Veracity IIR, a security consultancy firm, told broadcaster FOX59.
The sensitive areas of his research have fuelled concern that he may have been a victim of “ethnic targeting”, amid increasing concern in the US about Beijing using its influence to spy on American technology.
That fear led US President Donald Trump to launch an FBI-led programme called the ‘China Initiative’ in his first term. The program aimed to find and prosecute Chinese scientists suspected of espionage and research theft.
It was eventually scrapped by Joe Biden, however, after several cases brought under it were thrown out by US courts.
Chinese scientists working in the US told the SCMP that Wang’s firing and raids on his homes may indicate a return of the China initiative, and could lead to scrutiny of researchers working in fields related to artificial intelligence and semiconductors.
- Vishakha Saxena
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