Despite being cleared by the courts of wrongdoing, the University of Kansas is ignoring calls by faculty for KU to reinstate tenured Professor Franklin Tao.
The University Daily Kansan reports there’s been no response to letters of support from the Faculty Senate in December and from the Asian American Faculty Staff Council in August.
The letter from the Faculty Senate asserts the university should be free of “frivolous or politically-motivated prosecutions.”
The University fired Tao in 2023 despite the courts overturning the most serious charges the previous year.
Tao was charged under President Trump’s China Initiative in 2019 of wire fraud and hiding ties to China. A jury convicted him in April 2022, but a few months later the judge threw out all but one charge against him, making a false statement.
In its letter, the Asian American Faculty Council argued “it would set a dangerous and unjust precedent for a tenured professor, like Dr. Tao, to be removed from his position as a result of failed prosecution.”
The university has not responded to a request for comment.
Earlier this year, Tao sued the university in a bid to get his job back.
“Rather than embracing academic rigor and enlightened, critical judgment, the university allowed itself to join in fear mongering and racist witch hunting,” the lawsuit states.
President Biden discontinued the China Initiative in 2022. However, some fear Trump will revive it during his second term.
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