Over 260 IU Bloomington faculty and staff signed a letter sent to Provost Rahul Shrivastav on Friday urging him to undo the termination of tenured Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering professor Xiaofeng Wang.
The letter also asked the provost to allow the Faculty Board of Review to hear Wang's case, as required by IU’s ACA-52 policy on permanent separations for academic appointees. It also says that to the authors’ knowledge, Wang was not given a 10-day notice prior to his termination or provided a statement "with reasonable particularity” explaining his dismissal, also required by the policy.
The policy states tenured faculty can only be terminated for incompetence, serious personal or professional misconduct or extraordinary university financial exigency. The appropriate administrators must first make “reasonable efforts” in private conferences with the appointee to resolve the issue before termination.
Tenured appointees must be notified a year in advance of their dismissal, the policy states, unless they’re found responsible for serious personal misconduct. In that case, appointees must get at least 10 days’ notice.
The FBI searched two homes in Bloomington and Carmel on March 28 belonging to Wang and his wife Nianli Ma, an IU Libraries analyst. IU fired Wang, a former associate dean for research at Luddy, the same day. In an email from Shrivastav informing Wang of his termination, the provost wrote it was his understanding Wang had accepted a faculty position with a university in Singapore. Shrivastav said in the email Wang would not be eligible to be hired again at IU.
IU fired Ma four days before without providing a reason.
According to a document obtained by the IDS written by a close collaborator of Wang’s, he was previously under investigation by IU for being listed on a 2017-18 grant in China that he allegedly hadn’t disclosed to the university. The IDS cannot yet verify the existence of the grant mentioned in the document.
IU computer science faculty and IUB’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors have also condemned Wang’s firing, with the AAUP chapter alleging IU did not follow due process in terminating him.
Neither IU nor the FBI have commented on the nature of the search of Wang and Ma’s homes. An IU spokesperson said in March the university is not commenting at the direction of the FBI.
Several Luddy faculty told the IDS the lack of communication has made them fearful.
Wang and Ma’s lawyers said last month they are safe, have not been arrested and face no pending charges.
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