By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-01-08 17:56:21 | Updated at 2025-01-09 08:24:13
14 hours ago
A Chinese-born former chemistry professor at the University of Kansas who was wrongfully accused of being a Chinese spy has filed a lawsuit against the school, seeking to be reinstated and demanding compensation for the financial and reputational damage he has suffered.
According to court documents, Feng “Franklin” Tao said the university worked with the FBI “to arrange a surprise search of Professor Tao’s lab and home”, alleging “an improper collaboration between KU and the [US Department of Justice] to target” him.
“Upon learning that Professor Tao had been placed in custody, KU’s Deputy General Counsel congratulated the FBI by phone text: ‘Job well done, gentlemen. Congrats, and thanks,’” said the lawsuit, filed this month in a federal court in Kansas.
It added that “KU’s actions and discrimination against its own tenured professor – before, during and after his criminal prosecution – violated its contractual, ethical and legal obligations to Professor Tao.”
Contending that KU’s “egregious conduct” left Tao’s life, career, reputation and finances in “shambles”, the suit alleges that “rather than embracing academic rigor and enlightened, critical judgment, the university allowed itself to join in fear mongering and racist witch hunting”.
Tao was among the roughly two dozen academics charged under the Justice Department’s former “China Initiative”. The programme began in 2018 during US president-elect Donald Trump’s first administration to address concerns about Chinese economic espionage and intellectual property theft in research. It led to investigations of hundreds of Chinese-American scientists and academics, many of whom lost their jobs, and was shut down by President Joe Biden’s administration in 2022 after allegations of racial bias.
