On March 28, 2025, Indiana University (IU) dismissed Xiaofeng Wang, a tenured professor at the university’s Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering and the director of the university’s Center for Security and Privacy in Informatics, Computing, and Engineering. The dismissal was effective immediately and appeared to be politically motivated.

Wang had worked at IU for over 20 years and was considered a leading scholar of privacy, data security, and biometric privacy. A citizen of both the US and China, he had studied in China during the 1990s. While at IU, he collaborated regularly with researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Information Engineering, a cybersecurity research lab funded by the Chinese government.

In December 2024, IU administrators contacted Wang to ask him about a Chinese research grant from 2017-18 that listed Wang as a researcher. According to the APA Justice Taskforce, which advocates on behalf of Chinese American scientists wrongfully accused of espionage, Wang was not aware of the grant until the university asked about it; a Chinese researcher allegedly applied for the grant without Wang’s knowledge. Wang provided answers and supporting documents to address IU’s inquiry. In February 2025, IU informed Wang that it would continue whether he had engaged in research misconduct by failing to properly disclose that he was a principal investigator on a grant application and had not listed all coauthors on an academic article.

In early March, Wang informed his department chair that he had accepted a position at a university in Singapore and planned to leave IU at the end of the academic year. Soon after that, IU suspended Wang. He was placed on paid administrative leave, temporarily suspended, barred from his office, and denied him access to his university computers, research, and data, pending the findings of its investigation. On March 24, IU dismissed Wang’s wife, Nianli Ma, an analyst in the IU library. Her dismissal notice provided no reason  and informed her that she was ineligible to be re-hired by the university. On March 28, the US Federal Bureau of Investigations carried out a day-long search of two residences belonging to Wang and Ma. Neither Wang nor Ma were arrested or charged with any crime. That same day, IU Provost Rahul Shrivastav emailed Wang notifying him that he was being fired.

Wang’s dismissal appeared to deviate from the university’s policy on permanent separations for academic employees. That policy states that tenured faculty members must be notified a year in advance of their dismissal, unless the university shows one of three exceptions: demonstrated incompetence, serious personal or professional misconduct, or extraordinary financial exigency, In such exceptional cases, the university must give 10-days notice prior to dismissal, and the Faculty Board of Review must be given an opportunity to review the case. Wang’s dismissal prompted protests and calls for his reinstatement from IU’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, Wang’s colleagues in the computer science department, and over 260 IU faculty and staff members.

On April 1, Riana Pfefferkorn, a professor of cybersecurity at Stanford University, filed a motion with the Southern District of Indiana to unseal the warrants and supporting affidavits that the government used to search Wang and Ma’s homes. In early June, Wang and Ma filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Pfefferkorn’s motion. In their brief, Wang and Ma stated that the government’s and university’s actions had “irreparably damaged” their reputations and “instilled fear and concern in the Chinese and Chinese-American community regarding a potential revival of the China Initiative,” a US Department of Justice Program launched in 2018 with the stated goal of combatting espionage and intellectual property theft by agents of the Chinese government. The program ended in 2022 after civil rights groups, academics, and scientists accused it of racial profiling and fear mongering.

Scholars at Risk is concerned about the dismissal of a tenured faculty member without demonstrated evidence of wrongdoing and in contravention of established university policies. Principles of shared governance demand that higher education leaders adhere in principle and practice to established policies for challenging and removing tenure; policies which are designed to guard against bias, ideological interference, or other improper motives. Failure to strictly adhere to such policies directly undermines academic freedom and undermine democratic society generally.

Sources:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/04/01/fbi-raids-indiana-u-cybersecurity-professors-homes
https://www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/news/local/2025/03/28/fbi-department-of-homeland-security-agents-search-house-in-bloomington-indiana/82710451007/
https://www.wired.com/story/xiaofeng-wang-indiana-university-research-probe-china/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/16/chinese-professor-bloomington-indiana
https://www.idsnews.com/article/2025/04/nianli-ma-wang-xiaofeng-fbi-iu
https://www.idsnews.com/article/2025/04/xiaofeng-wang-iu-luddy-china-grant
https://www.idsnews.com/article/2025/05/faculty-staff-letter-to-provost-xiaofeng-wang-tenure-termination
https://www.idsnews.com/article/2025/03/xiaofeng-wang-aaup-iu-bloomington-policy
https://www.idsnews.com/article/2025/04/iu-computer-science-condemn-wang-termination
https://www.idsnews.com/article/2025/04/xiaofeng-wang-iu-warrants-stanford-motion
https://www.wfyi.org/news/articles/wang-moves-to-join-court-fight-to-unseal-warrants-used-to-search-his-homes
https://www.apajusticetaskforce.org/impacted-persons/xiaofeng-wang
https://indianapublicradio.org/news/2025/06/wang-moves-to-join-court-fight-to-unseal-warrants-used-to-search-his-homes/